Happy Birthday, Chad!

Our youngest is now 14!  He is a great young man who loves people and all the kiddos love him!  We are so proud of him and know that God has something great for his life.  Yes, his birthday was yesterday. We had a party and everything but did not have time to put up a post about it.  We enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Logan's Roadhouse with Grandpa and Grandma, our family, Sharon, along with our weekend guests, Connie and Lindsey Bernard.

After our lunch, we all went home and had his favorite food— brownies!  He is not a cake eater, but can destroy a whole pan of brownies.  It was a great time of laughter, family and friends.  

Chad is almost as tall as Cameron now and growing daily!  I do believe that he will be taller than all of us and that is exactly what he wants.  Our prayer is that he will continue to commit his life to God and grow just as tall in the Spirit.  

Happy Birthday, Chad.  We love you and want the very best for you.

2 More Baptisms

I had the privilege of baptizing Vano's mom (also Henry Gonzales' sister), Mary, in Jesus Name this morning at 10am.  I had been talking to her for about a month about it and Bro. Brian Pursel had taught her a Bible Study several months ago.  Vano was filled with the Holy Ghost and baptized about a month ago.  His mom has been in the hospital and was moved to HealthSouth Rehab Center last week.  She was ready to make this great step and the HealthSouth staff was awesome!  They had dressing rooms, a 4' pool with an automated chair to lower her into the pool and even congratulated her on her brand-new experience! They are pictured above.  This makes the third baptism this week and none of them were during service times.  I already posted about the first one from the nursing home.

The second was Thursday morning at 10am.  Robert (not pictured) worked with Joe Ouellette for several years on Sheppard AFB and knew about our church through that connection.  He came to church about a week after I arrived and has been coming on Sunday's ever since.  Bro. Joe has gone on to his reward, but his legacy is living on!

Thank the Lord for what He is doing!

Thirty Keys to Wisdom Series

Last night, we finished our series on Solomon's Thirty Keys to Wisdom.  We often consider him to be the wisest man who ever lived and his wisdom is recorded in the Holy Word of God, so it would be to our benefit to learn from him!  We took 8 weeks to complete this series and it is available on our church website under "Teaching Series."  I guess that would work out to be about 6 hours of teaching!  I don't believe that my teaching is anything special, but I have enjoyed going through these points and talking about them individually.  

As children of the Almighty God, we will often be called upon in someone's time of need or decision.  It is important to have His wisdom stored away in our hearts, so that we may give a solid answer.  Our world could use more wisdom.  It is "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (2 Timothy 3:7)  This is a sign of the endtimes.  Why not strive to grow in wisdom and make a difference in the lives of those around us.

Savanna & Scarlet, Alayna & Ashlyn

Last week when we got home from vacation, Jonathan, Brenda and the girls were in town for a few days.  

We had a great time with family, and I snapped a few pictures.  

This post is especially for my sister, Linda.  

The rest of you just get to enjoy it.  LOL!!

Today's Baptism

Just wanted to let you see the gentleman who was baptized today from River Oaks Care Center, one of our new locations for ministry.  The administrator was very supportive of our church taking him to be baptized, but wanted to make sure that the resident really wanted to go through with it.  So, he asked him and the answer was very sure.  "I need to be baptized!"  Congratulations to the Nursing Home team!  We are praying for a continued harvest in an area that many people shun.  The resident is pictured with Bro. Randy Hallford.

Life Tabernacle Update

Quite a few things have happened and other events are coming, 

so I will just give you a random overview:

• We have spent several days helping a family in our church whose home was flooded on Tuesday morning.  The lower portion of their sheetrock walls had to be cut out and the insulation removed.  The carpet was ripped out, the doors and trim had to be removed, much of their furniture and mattresses had to be trashed.  They lost so much in this flash flood that was not in a flood plain!?  Our church reached out to help them (probably 50-75 members over the last few days) and helped their neighbors in the process.  Tonight we took up a great offering to help them be able to rebound from this. While we took this offering for the flood situation tonight, we sang a new song, "Rain, Lord!"  I thought that was quite ironic!  Of course our song was about the Spirt raining down, not literal water!  Please be in prayer for the Pursel family as they struggle to recover.
  
• Our Spanish service had 10 brand new visitors and the Lord moved in a mighty way.  
  
• We started a new nursing home service today and will be baptizing a resident tomorrow afternoon.  We will also be baptizing a gentleman on Thursday morning.  
  
• Our Pantry of Life is back and functioning, in fact, we helped three families with food on Friday.  
  
• We had the largest crowd in service this morning since we have been here.  We are looking forward to September when everyone is back in town!  
  
• We had a lady delivered from cigarettes in a our prayer line a couple of Sunday's ago. She has not had one since and says that she has not even wanted one!
• Our Back-to-School service was tonight.  Bro. Joseph spoke to the children, Bro. Trevon spoke to the youth and Bro. Curtis spoke to the college students.  School starts tomorrow in Wichita Falls, so we prayed for all of the students and teachers to close the service.  I believe that this year is going to be a great one for each of them.
• This coming Sunday, August 31st, is Fifth Sunday Fellowship.  We will have our 11am service only.  No Sunday School or Evening Worship.  It will be followed by dinner in the Fellowship Hall. 
• Bro. Mark Green will be speaking on Wednesday, September 3rd.  He will be introducing the Junior Bible Quizzing program to our church.  We are beginning this exciting program this fall.  
• Our installation services will be the weekend of November 14th.  Friday night, the 14th, Bro. David Bernard will be speaking and a reception will be held for everyone who attends.  Sunday our morning speaker will be Nathan Hurst and the evening speaker will be Wendell Elms.  We would love to have any of you be a part of this weekend. 
  

Have a great week!

Getting Ready for School

Getting home from vacation meant it was time to start thinking about school.  Classes begin here in Wichita Falls on Monday.  Cameron will begin his Junior year at Rider High School.  Chad will be in 8th grade at Zundy Junior High.  Zundy was not our original choice for a junior high - we wanted McNiel - but we know that "all things work together for good..."  We are here in the will of God and know that He is in control of all things.

Keep our boys (and all students) in your prayers in the upcoming weeks.  School can be a stressful time for some kids, and the peer pressure can be great, but we serve a greater God!!  I firmly believe a kid can make it through public school and live for God through it all - especially if they are covered with the prayers of those who love them.

Monday - Last full day of Vacation

Monday was our last full day in San Francisco.  

We, again, rode the trolley cars to Union Square - Cameron just had to go back to one of the stores there.  LOL!  The trolleys are really fun - some of the streets feel like a roller coaster in slow motion.

  We went into the biggest Nike store I've ever seen.  It was 4 stories tall!!

 The Levi Jeans Co. was started here.  We were told that Levi Strauss came to California in search of gold.  When he couldn't find any, he decided to make pants - the rest is history.

After walking around Union Square for a while, we headed back to Fisherman's Wharf where we met the Shoemakes for dinner.  It was great to be able to spend a few hours with them.

The last picture here is especially for Kassie & Priscilla.  

We made this stop just so y'all could drool. LOL!

We are now sitting in the Phoenix airport. We have a 2 hour layover and will be in Oklahoma City around midnight - on to Wichita Falls around 2:00 a.m. We've had a wonderful vacation, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone Wednesday night!!

Sunday Tour

We started off with a lunch from Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39.  It was an enjoyable time.

We boarded an open air double-decker bus and took a tour of the downtown area.  We had a guide that pointed out interesting sights.

The building below has objects flying out the windows - all kinds of things!  You can also see a couch being pushed over the edge of the roof.

The city hall looks much like a capital building.

The entrance to Chinatown.

And we spotted a racing limo!

There are tons of pictures from the tour that we cannot fit on here. :(  Maybe you will want to sit through all of them later, but I will not bore you anymore!

We ended the day at Pier 39 where we started!  We enjoyed an awesome SEAFOOD dinner at Bubba Gumps.  Chad is imitating Forrest!  "Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you are gonna get!"

The views of the bay were spectacular.  If you need immediate service at your table, you show the "Stop, Forrest, Stop" license plate.  I think Cameron was needing something!?!  LOL!

We enjoyed the stuffed shrimp...AND another bowl of clam chowder!

Saturday - anything but seafood!

Saturday morning, we slept in and decided to take a slow day.  I approached the concierge and asked, "Where do we go to get 'anything but seafood' to eat?!"  She told us that if we would go seven blocks to the north of our hotel, we would arrive in North Beach, "Little Italy."  So, we took off in a different direction than we had gone all week.  Here you see the park in Washington Square.

We walked the streets and looked in the little shops.  A Italian street festival was taking place and they had some beautiful music and tons of people!

We chose to eat in a little quaint Italian eatery.  The monte cristo, burger, fries, spaghetti and ravioli were very good!

There was a church on the square, the Sts. Peter and Paul, where a wedding was taking place!  We learned that their address is actually 666 Filbert, but they will only take mail in a small office at 660 Filbert!  It has beautiful architecture and a bell tower that chimed over the square.  This is also the church where Joe DiMaggio and Marylin Monroe took their wedding photos.  They wanted to get married there, but the church would not allow divorced people to marry in their facility.  So, they went to the courthouse to get married and took their pictures in front of this church!  This is the neighborhood where he grew up and there is one of his steakhouses on this square.

We stayed true to our "no seafood" day and had mexican food for dinner in the Cannery.