It's our FIRST BIRTHDAY

I can't believe it has been 1 whole year of public church services at our local high school. Tomorrow is the anniversary of our church "launch."

Today, we reduced the price of regular gas by 25¢ at our local 7-eleven (it was $1.86 per gallon). People were very happy to receive this gift from us. I hope many of them decide to attend our church. This week has been pretty rough, though. Our middle son got the flu and then gave it to our other sons. So, I couldn't help my husband at the gas station. We were low on people being able to be there, because our music director was out of town w/her family, and they had to have praise team practice today, right at the time of the gas buy-down. Other families had to work or whatever they do. Then, my husband really has an awful cough and was losing his voice. I didn't want him to wear himself out in the cold wind, because tomorrow, we're having a celebration/lunch for our 1st anniversary. AND, I can't go to church tomorrow, because I can't bring sick boys to church!

So what did happen? A new family (just visited for the 1st time last week) joined my husband plus a couple of other guys from church. If we didn't have them, we wouldn't have had enough people to survey and talk to the people in line waiting to get discounted gas. I came the last hour and kept my sick boys in the van. I'm glad I came because it was good getting out there and talking to the people letting them know about our church.

When tomorrow is over, I know my husband will heave a huge sigh of relief. He really had it rough, this week. Besides being very under the weather, reports for our church plant had to be finished and due, and he began a new class for his masters. We'll be going into our last funded year for the church plant.

This taught me that, next time, we ought to do a sign-up for the next outreach we have. We should assign people to ONE hour. One hour is manageable, AND it really gives people the spark of excitement that serving in the community does. All of those people really don't know what they missed out on. When all you do is take in, you get bloated. Serving is exercise for the soul. You can quote me on that.