A spaced-out day

Last Saturday 23rd, Kathryn was away visiting Sally in Roanoke, so Dad and the kids took a trip to the Virginia Air and Space Center.

A few photos...... (a full lot will shortly be on the slideshow...)

We ended the day watching Apollo 13!

Grace resonates

D:
I was listening to my friends Geddy, Alex and Neil aka Rush ("thinking man's heavy metal") on my mp3 player in the car, a usual state of affairs and, after listening to a few songs noticed how often the word "grace" popped up in the lyrics. Wait a minute! I thought it was us Christians who talked about grace, we have the message of grace. Not Neil Peart, a secular humanist par excellence!
It got me thinking about the whole concept of grace and how a desire to be recipients of grace, or receiving unmerited favor and mercy is just woven into the DNA of all of us. How talking with non-believers about grace could be a bridge and a place to start a good conversation, since it's a topic we can all relate to. Even more scandalous, my non-believing friends could teach me about grace and how to live extending grace! After all it's the likes of me, a self-absorbed 40 something evangelical who has a message of grace to live while living gracelessly all day long....
Thanks to Rush for starting this puzzling train of thought.....

Posh Nosh and conversation

D:
Had a delightful dinner with my daughter on Monday - a kind of Daddy/daughter date mixed in with an early Valentines event. It's so much fun going out for dinner with Emily! She dressed up, I dressed up, the waitresses at "Freemason Abbey" in Norfolk said "How cute!" (to her, not to me you understand) and we had 3 courses and wine upstairs. I've discovered from previous dinner dates that gourmet cuisine (or posh nosh as Mrs. Beckham would call it) really promotes some great conversation between us. Emily had some great questions for me, and we talked about spiritual stuff as well. Examples were, "Do Catholics go to the same heaven as us?", Wasn't I born a Christian?" (no Em, it's your choice!) and (thinking about friends at church who have lost their son after a week), "When babies go to heaven, do they grow up there or stay as babies?" I nearly choked on my Caesar salad!
Anyway, it was a fun evening and thanks Emily for being such a delightful young lady to dine with!
(Kathryn, please don't get too jealous, your date is tonight....)

Prayers for the Broken Hearted

K@ here - 

Today I must point you to a blog that is in our links column, but that I will put here now.  bhmoonriver.blogspot.com  This is a blog mostly of the last 5 months when one of the women in our church found out that the little boy she was expecting had Trisomy 18 - a genetic disorder that causes the infant to either die before birth or shortly thereafter.  Sully died Sunday night, but I want you to go read the blog from beginning to end to see into the grief and growth that this dear family has gone through.  It's not something I'd ever wish for myself or anyone, but it is absolutely beautiful at the same time.  The struggles and battles they've fought within themselves and with the Lord is amazingly written about with an honesty that is seldom seen.  Go.  Read.  Weep.  Pray.  Hope.

Confessions

K here-

I have a confession to make - I watched the Superbowl last Sunday.  The commercials were not worth the money those now poor companies paid for them.  I started watching the game instead.  It was probably the best (American) football game I have EVER seen  played.  That's not saying much you must realize.  I've watched precious little.  However I have been an exceedingly laid back observer of football since I was a young child...

I remember going to Friday night high school football games with my folks.  Dad was the team (as well as town) doctor so we sort of had to.  Plus my babysitter's brother was on the team too.  Anyway, the only one I really remember was when the game ended because the heaven's opened and the rain poured down.  We were soaked to the skin and I loved it!  

Back to last week.  I watched it.  Dominic basically put the kids in bed while watching as much as he could since he was the acting football widow-er in this instance.  After they were down, we watched the rest of that game to the bitter end.  It was spectacular!  Now sure, I don't have all the vocabulary down, nor am I conversant when it comes to first downs and such, but I was totally amazed.  Of course I was rooting for the NY Giants just cause I was tired of hearing about New England so much, but WOW!  I might have to watch again next year... We'll see.

 

Andrew-isms

K here -
Andrew has a way with words...Today we went his parent teacher conference where his preschool teacher Mrs. Atkinson said he had a lot of vocabulary and talks a lot.  We couldn't agree with her more!  She was encouraging us to teach him his last name in case he ever got lost.  In the car we started right in working on this.  Well, according to him our last name is Christmasmaps.  It went downhill from there!

Then we are in the grocery store and he points at a can of pineapple rings  and says "Pineapple tires".

Yesterday I asked him what he had for a snack at preschool and he said Yeman-aid.  

Encounters in Target

D:

Well, January has just wound down and I've had a good three weeks of my new lifestyle. Always in our minds is - where next? God, we're as ready as we'll ever be. So, prayed together on Wednesday morning that God would direct us to some people and opportunities. Then, within 24 hours a couple of "coincidences happen.

I'm off to Target with the kids on a Wednesday evening, and am just fueling them up with Iceeze as any good responsible parent would, when I run into a couple I haven't met in 3 years. The guy did music at Trinity for a while. We chat for a bit and then he brings up the fact that they were until recently considering doing oversees missions, in Europe of all places. I told him frankly the subject was of absolutely no interest to me and walked off..... Not exactly! So I got his email and hope to follow up with them about what they were considering doing with church planting in Belgium. Not the kind of conversation you expect in Target...

The following morning we meet with Ursula Spooner, a delightful older lady who "just happened" to be one of the speakers at our missions conference at Trinity last week. She "just happens" to have done missions in Central and Eastern Europe for the last 25 years, and lives in a town called Vienna, Austria (I think that's how you spell it...) So we have a great chat and she tells us about some opportunities such as the Vienna Christian school. 

So the moral of the story is that praying together can be hazardous to your health! Seriously, if you're reading this, God bless you, and pray for us for wisdom!