Finally!!

I finally got to do the sermon illustration that I've wanted to do since seminary. One of my friends talked about how on Pentecost Sunday he did a visual illustration with fire and water. He talked about how he started out talking about baptism with water...and then began to talk about Pentecost and how the fire came down and rested on the disciples.

He told me how I did it and ever since then I've been wanting to try it sometime. Well, today I got my chance. I used this illustration for our Children's Moment thinking that the children would like it and thought it would be something they would remember.

After a little nervous start (I couldn't get it to light) we finally got the fire to begin burning. It was very cool! Our lay leader got this picture of it. Thanks Kim!!

I think that this is probably an illustration that will be used several times again.

Before There was Color

My oldest got his yearbook yesterday. We were looking through his pictures and he was pointing out himself on every page he was on. He'd gleefully go, "Look mom there I am again...and there's me and there's me..."

I was upstairs today looking in the closet and found a box of my old yearbooks from elementary school. I brought them downstairs to show him.

I pulled out my kindergarten yearbook and had him guess which one was me. It took him a couple of tries but he found me. We pulled out my first, second, third, fourth and fifth grade books. He got better and better at finding my picture.

He asked me questions about my teachers like "were they nice? what were they like? was your principle nice? was he smart?"

Finally when we looked through my first six years of school, he said, "Wow mom...that's pretty cool so they had yearbooks when you were in school too?"

"Yes, just like you had."

"Yeah, but that was before they had color, right? Cuz all of these pictures are in black and white. Everything is in black and white."

Yes, J, I lived before there was color...gee do I feel old.

My elementary school is pictured above...it's not super colorful but you can see it's definately not black and white.

Look Out, We May Be Choosing the Next Lineup

Yes, it's official we are a Nielsen Family. Jim got a call some time ago and signed us up to record what we watch from early this morning through next Thursday.

Watch out, if we have our say the main shows on TV will be Yes, Dear; Still Standing; Power Rangers; Law and Order; Sheer Genius among other shows.

National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Days like today can draw us closer to God as well as closer to each other. We are blessed that we can gather together on a day such as this in a public place with people of other denominations and other religions and pray together.