A Great Day

(My intention was to post this on Monday or Tuesday, but we’ve been enjoying the Olympics each night so I didn’t get to it. I decided to leave it written somewhat from the perspective of a few days ago and follow up with more news in a day or two.)

I’d almost swear that my grass is trying to make up for lost time now that it’s gotten a little rain. I mow and it seems like the yard looks wooly again two days later.

A GREAT DAY. We had the privilege of going to Murfreesboro last Sunday to attend church. We went to be with a friend of mine from high school and watched her and her husband participate in a baptism ceremony along with dozens of other people. It was a great day.

I am a little sketchy on these details, but as I understand it World Outreach Church does baptize people throughout the year, however, yesterday was set aside as a special day for baptisms. They had two swimming pools set up in their courtyard and baptized around 400 people over the course of several services.

To fill in the back story here, Tessa and I were friends in high school. Several of our teachers, as many do, enforced assigned seating in their classes and the usual method was to sort people by last name. Since Tessa’s last name then was Searcy I found myself in the seat behind her quite often. I lost track of her after graduation only to wonder what happened to her for about 25 years until we reconnected on Facebook. (By the way, I deleted my account on Facebook a little over a year ago because it was just consuming too much time.)

I don’t remember exactly what happened, but our conversation on Facebook somehow got on topics relating to Christianity. As the conversations grew we switched to email and it evolved into my typing up my Sunday School lessons as I organized my thoughts each week and emailing them to her.

Tessa surprised me four weeks ago when she emailed to say that she and her husband, Thomas, had been attending church and were going to be baptized on the 29th. When I shared the email with Vicki she said, “Well, of course we have to go.” It was a blessing to be in Murfreesboro and share in this special occasion with the girl who used to sit in front of me in high school. I am so thankful to be able to see how God works in people’s lives.

THE TRAVELERS ARE HOME. Vicki and the kids got back home last Saturday. They stayed with the Jones family for the first half of last week and we talked frequently through Jenna’s iPad. Whenever we talked they were either about to swim, drying off from swimming, or playing a board game.

Vicki surprised the kids last Thursday when she told them they were going back home by way of a trip to Dollywood. Since they got to Pigeon Forge late in the evening their tickets covered that afternoon and all the next day. I know they had a wonderful time, but I can’t get a lot of details out of them. I do know they had to convince Nate to ride the new Wild Eagle and that he loved it afterwards.

At any rate, I got four tired, happy people back home last Saturday. It was a nice last hurrah with only one week of summer vacation left.

A MOST DISCOURAGING WEEK. I don’t make it a practice to share a lot about work here, but I did have a most discouraging week at work last week while Vicki and the kids were gone. For those of you who don’t know what I do I manage the student information system for our school system. I have been working on a project for over a year to migrate our data from the product we use to its successor. This project has included training all our users in the new software.

Last week, as a result of a secretive corporate take over, the company that produces these two products was bought out. The new owners immediately announced both software packages were now in maintenance mode and would be retired in two years. We immediately had to migrate back to the old software and throw all the training out the window. Now I am looking at having to repeat all I’ve done in the last year plus with a new product that hasn’t been selected yet, and it may be necessary to do it in a shorter amount of time.

As discouraging as it all is at least my family was able to travel and has gotten home safely, we are all in good health, and I still have a job and can provide for them. And the icing on the cake is that I got to see a friend of mine get baptized last weekend.

Joe