My Last Day Off

Tomorrow I go back to work to begin my contract for the 08-09 school year. At least I have been able to take some time off this week. It has been breezy, and we have enjoyed lower humidity. Last week started off warm, but things have cooled off considerably.

SPECIAL BOYS. Our boys are typical boys. They are full of energy and mischief. We have to work hard to stay a step ahead of them, and even then we sometimes want to pull our hair out. They keep us from getting cocky in our parenting skills for sure. And then they can turn around and say or do something that will just make your heart melt. Vicki kissed Nate on the cheek the other night as she was putting him to bed. As she pulled away he put his hand to his cheek and with pure love beaming out of his eyes said, “I’m going to hold this so it will last until morning.” Vicki promised to give him a fresh kiss when he got up.

Last week, while Jenna and I were gone to Kentucky, Vicki took the boys to Mrs. Judy for haircuts. I normally keep my hair pretty short. The gray doesn’t show up as badly that way and it cuts down on maintenance time (my hair hasn’t been long enough to brush or comb in years). Mrs. Judy was starting to give Ben his normal hair cut when he told her he wanted it to be really short--he wanted to be like his dad. When I got home he couldn’t wait to show me his short hair.

Last Sunday as we were leaving for church Nate grabbed a piece of paper on the way out the door. He handed it to me in the van so I could read his memory verse for Sunday school. This particular verse was a simplified version of Exodus 14:13, “See how God will help you today.” Nate recited the verse a few times to make sure he had it in his mind and then paused a moment before asking, “What if I don’t need any help today?”

Then there was today when Vicki needed Nate to try on some clothes. He was really starting to fuss about it so Vicki said, “If you keep fussing I’m going to make you take a nap.” Confronted with this new reality he quickly said, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Mommy.”

NEW KITTEN. We grilled hamburgers over at Pauline’s the other night. The kids finished eating and were playing in the yard when they came running back to the deck. They had heard a cat crying near the road. I went with them to investigate, and we found an abandoned kitten next to a tree growing in the ditch. Its face was scratched up. It can’t be much past weaning age. The kitten was really scared at first, but warmed up to everyone by the next day. It has long hair and is dark gray (almost black) with white fur around is nose, on its underside, and on its feet. We haven’t agreed on a name yet, though the kids want to call it Blake, but Jenna likes Lily.

We grilled out again a few nights later. After the meal Aunt Mar picked up the cat and it settled in her lap. Both looked like they were really enjoying themselves.

I guess we could have had a second pet if we wanted. We found a small snapping turtle in the yard. I did not suggest keeping it because I knew those turtles can have a mean disposition. We carried it to nearby pond and turned it loose.

A NEW RIDE! Well, it’s new to me. We were planning to trade this fall. Hitting the deer just started the shopping process earlier. After 13.5 years and 183,000 miles, it's time. We bought it Tuesday. I am now driving a 2006 Dodge Ram 1500. The previous owner bought it new and put 27,000 miles on it, trading it when a bright blue truck caught her eye. It has a four door crew cab -- EVERYONE FITS COMFORTABLY!!! Even Mom and Aunt Mar took a ride with me and the kids. It’s charcoal gray and is the short bed version. I’m sure I’ll have more reason to complain about gas prices now, but most of my driving is to Springfield and back (8 miles one way). When I drive on the job I get mileage.

I have not yet sold the S-10 as I am still patching the gas tank with J-B Weld. If anyone wants to buy a used truck just let me know.

When we came home with the new truck Vicki said to Jenna, “You know, Daddy bought his green truck in 1994. If he keeps this trend up you’ll be 24 before he trades again.” Then Pauline chipped in and said, “Jenna, you’d better get married before then or he won’t want to pay for your wedding!”

TRASH AND TREASURES. This weekend we had our annual community yard sale in Cross Plains. We all went up there early Friday morning and came home after lunch. The kids found a lot of toys for themselves, Vicki found few treasures, and I found a new gas leaf blower for $50.

A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING. Carrie Jernigan got married last night. Her husband’s name is Jacob Meyer. He hails from Bethel, Pennsylvania. They will live here for a while, but I think they have plans to return to Pennsylvania.

Carrie had planned an outdoor wedding and with the cooler than normal temperatures it was a very pleasant occasion. The 5 o’ clock ceremony was held in front of the gazebo where Scott and Amanda, Carrie’s parents, were married. The gazebo had been placed in the yard between Kenny and Lori’s house and Mr. James Earl and Mrs. Sue’s house. We moved to a large tent in Kenny and Lori’s backyard for the reception dinner and dance. It was a fun evening. We were 10:00 getting home.

SYMPATHY TO A NEIGHBOR. While we were at Carrie’s wedding Mr. Jimmie and Mrs. Susanne’s horses got out. One of the horses (Spurs) got hit by a car driving down the highway, breaking its leg severely. They put the horse down this morning. This has been a hard year for Mrs. Susanne. She recently lost her mother and an aunt.

Joe

Have You Done Your 180 Yet?

This last week of spring has been most pleasant. The days have been comfortably warm and the nights cool. I wish it would last all summer.

Oh, before I get started, yesterday was Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary.

PAULINE IS HOME! Pauline’s doctor ordered a scope of her stomach which revealed a hiatal hernia and numerous ulcers due to years of arthritis medication. The ulcers appear to be the source of her bleeding. We were all happy to hear this since it is treatable. With this news the Jones family headed for home last Sunday morning. Pauline stayed in the hospital until Wednesday, however, because she had a touch of pneumonia.

While the Jones family was here it fell to Darice and me to keep the kids. We all had a great time visiting with each other. The kids played over at our house most of the time. We also took the kids to see Pauline several times as well as taking them swimming over at Kenny and Lori’s. Darice and the kids went to Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes in Springfield last Saturday evening and we tagged along. Darice and I got a good laugh at ourselves later. Here we were, a man, a woman, and six kids stair stepped in ages walking into church looking pretty much like a good Catholic family.

CLUB 180. So, have you done your 180 yet? What I saw this week makes me wonder if I take my walk with Christ seriously enough. A group from Mt. Carmel went on a mission trip to the Club 180 Ministry in Cumberland, Kentucky. Cumberland is on the southeastern edge of Kentucky, almost in Virginia, very near the headwaters of the Cumberland River. It’s about a five hour drive from Cross Plains. We were all planning to leave on Tuesday, but with Pauline in the hospital Vicki and the boys stayed home. Jenna and I left on Wednesday and came back late Friday night.

The cities of Benham, Cumberland, and Lynch were once home to a large coal mining operation and boasted a population of over 24,000 representing 24 different countries. The coal mines are now closed and the area has about 4000 people. Cumberland is well off the beaten path, you don’t find yourself there by accident. As a result, the area has few economic opportunities these days. The town is a lot like what Gatlinburg, Tennessee, looked like before tourism exploded there.

The Club 180 Ministry is operated by Terry and Angie Burkeen. Their focus is to give the kids of Cumberland a place to hang out, getting them off the street and in a Christian environment. A year or so ago they bought an old furniture store building and the building next door. Both buildings were owned by the same man who had them listed for sale for over $300,000. The owner, who had been unable to sell the buildings and who believed in what the Burkeens are doing, sold them the property for $50,000. The bottom floor of the furniture store has been converted to a recreation center complete with a stage for music, a snack bar, pool tables, ping pong, air hockey, and video games (Jenna got pretty good at Guitar Hero on Play Station 2). The second floor is being renovated into offices and an after school tutoring center, and the building next door is slated to become a gym for tumbling classes and Upward Basketball. The ministry maintains the Rotary Club Park behind the building as well.

The kids I met there are something special. They have a lot to overcome. These are the kids, with their choice of hair style, clothing, body piercings, and tattoos, that most of us would watch wearily out of the corner of our eye. They are the people the Burkeens are reaching for Christ. You can see by talking with them how the Holy Spirit is truly changing the direction of their lives by 180°.

The Burkeens, who are about my age, are special people themselves. Meeting them makes me reevaluate my own faith. Three years ago they lived just a few miles from us in White House. They went with their church on a mission trip to the area and felt God calling them to do His work there. In October 2005 Terry quit his job. He moved to Cumberland in January 2006, and Angie and their daughters followed in June. They live completely on faith and prayer. They do not receive a salary for what they do, nor does their ministry receive regular support from any denomination or group of churches. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING, comes from donations. They have never had a need to go unmet, and feel completely at peace with what they do and how they do it.

I lost count of all the people from our church who went up there. There must have been 40 or more of us total, but it was hard to keep up as folks came and went to fit their schedules. The amazing thing was how much was accomplished. One team painted the back wall of the old furniture store building (about 2000 sq. ft. of a tall wall). The next team built a 12’ x 50’ deck off the rear wall overlooking the park. This deck is stout enough to hold a lot of kids without fear of failure. We had planned for this project to take all week. It was done Wednesday afternoon. We put in a drop tile ceiling, worked in the local clothes closet ministry, cleaned a house for one family going through a hard time, gutted the kitchen and scraped paint at the house the Burkeens recently purchased, readied a computer lab of donated equipment for the future after school tutoring program, and offered a medical clinic for mothers and babies. Mary Alice Yates will probably post pictures at mtcarmelbaptist.shutterfly.com some time this week.

I was really proud of Jenna. We did not work together on any of the various projects that were going on so we weren’t around each other much during the day. All the adults she worked with each day complimented her to me saying what a hard worker and pleasant girl she is. Talk about making Dad feel good.

SIGHTSEEING. We did get some time to do a little sightseeing around Cumberland. The view from Kingdom Come State Park (official site -- more information) is breathtaking. Coming down from the 2680 foot overlook we got an up close look at a black bear (about 25 feet away). We also went to the Portal 31 Mine (official site -- more information) where we met former miner Robert Lunsford who is quite a character (see a video interview -- QuickTime needed). We also went to Black Mountain (4145 feet) which is the highest point in Kentucky and right on the Virginia border.

THE ADVENTURE COMING HOME. Jenna and I stayed upstairs at the Club 180 building this week. We hadn’t planned to leave Cumberland until yesterday morning, but the septic line got clogged up so we decided to leave after supper Friday night. We were about an hour or so from Bowling Green on the Louie Nunn Parkway when we came upon a deer carcass. It was laying crossways to the road and by the time my headlights revealed it I didn’t have enough time to miss it without losing control of the truck. We bounced pretty good (I was surprised Jenna didn’t wake up), but I couldn’t see any damage so I kept on. To make a long story short we later discovered the deer ruptured either the gas tank or fuel line (and with gas at $4 per gallon too!). We ran out of gas at the Orlinda exit, just 17 miles from home. Fortunately, Bro. Bill and Cindy were about 20 minutes behind us and I had their cell phone number. We rolled in at midnight.

Jeff Garst towed my truck home this afternoon. As we were unloading the truck from his trailer we had plenty of room to inspect the gas tank. It turns out the front, bottom corner of the tank was rusting. Hitting the deer was probably a good thing in that it accelerated the problem so that I would notice the leak sooner and it wouldn’t be a long term fire hazard. However you look at it I think it is evident that God was watching over us since I never lost control of the truck and the leaking gas never came in contact with a spark for about two hours of driving.

Joe

SonHarvest County Fair

In the two and a half weeks since I last wrote our lives have revolved around Vacation Bible School, and it has consumed Vicki’s life for longer than that. This year’s theme was the SonHarvest County Fair. We have worked hard getting ready for it to happen and then enjoyed being part of it from Sunday evening through Thursday evening. Yesterday, before we had a chance to recover from VBS, Pauline called Vicki saying she felt bad and needed to go to the hospital.

Pauline has had several days over the last few weeks where she admitted to not feeling well. She suspected it was one of the medications she is taking. But she has always bounced back enough to just continue on with her daily routine. Yesterday morning she felt worse than ever. Her doctor ordered several tests and concluded she is anemic due to blood loss. Now we know why she was feeling bad. They gave her three units of blood last night which has helped a lot.

Pauline’s guess about her medication was backed up by her doctor, and he has now ordered some tests to see where she is losing blood. They are going to scope her stomach this morning as part of this. She will be in the hospital at least one more night. We are all very thankful this problem has been found and can be corrected, though she will need time to gain back her strength.

When we called Will and Darice, who were vacationing in Gatlinburg, to inform them about Pauline, they decided to come this way. So, our kids have gotten an unplanned visit with their cousins.

To back up and report on our VBS a bit I must say it was a big success. The farming theme made it really easy for us to decorate this year. As I said, this has occupied most of Vicki’s thoughts for several weeks now. Since coming back from Colorado Springs the kids and I found ourselves fending for ourselves in the evenings more and more. Vicki even took Jenna to work with her several days last week to help her get ready. Jenna proved to be a wonderful right hand woman too. I am not getting as much time off this summer as I normally do so the boys stayed with Pauline a lot. Add trying to keep three yards mowed and I hardly saw the boys at all. (Thank you Kenny for mowing part of Aunt Mar’s yard for me.)

As I have already said, VBS started Sunday night. It ran for four nights with a family night on Thursday. We averaged over 240 people (adults included) for all four nights. The neat thing was that we had over 300 people registered. They just didn’t all come on the same night. Our family night was a lot of fun too. We had all kinds of activities from bull riding, to a watermelon eating contest, to hitting Bro. Bill with pies.

For the past seven years I have made music videos from pictures and video footage taken at VBS. My work schedule made that impossible to do this year. Then we discovered Animoto. For $30 a year you can use this web site to create video slideshows (videos that are 30 seconds or less are free). Mary Alice Yates and Clint Brickles got their cameras out and shot over 1000 pictures over the course of the week. I was able to go through these pictures each night, pick out the best ones, upload them and some music to Animoto, and 15 minutes later I had a music video. We showed a couple of these each night and then uploaded them to YouTube for people to enjoy at home. Here are some URLs if you want to look in on all the goings on at our VBS.

mtcarmelbaptist.shutterfly.com -- Mary Alice uploads all the pictures taken here.

www.youtube.com/mtcarmelbaptist -- Our music videos can be seen here.

Enjoy!

Joe