Not Much News II

Today began with rain but ended up as a beautiful sunny day. We went to Izzy's for lunch with Joyce's brother and his wife. Our worship time was good but some people out of town and others ill. We didn't have a quorum for the leadership meeting so we took no action on an item that needed action. We'll do it next week. Stay tuned.

Back and Forth and Up

We are in Grants Pass now. It's back and forth we go - to and fro. We drove down the coast Sunday and it was a beautiful day -- a little chilly but nice and sunny with just a hint of fog to make distant scenes look wispy. We go back to Newport Friday. The "up" is real nice, too. There were 27 in worship Sunday. Okay, that's less than the 42 on Easter but the great part is that ALL of these were local people. No out-of-town visitors. Isn't that great? The church is coming back from the precipice.

We had a leadership meeting after worship and they wrestled with some significant options centering around their property. A motion was made and then tabled (at my suggestions) to be acted on this next Sunday. This will give people time to think and pray on the decision. Stay tuned. I'll talk about the final decision in the next blog. All in all, I felt good about Sunday. I didn't even like the sermon going in! But it turned out to be a good, spirit-filled day and I guess the sermon was okay. Oh, let me tell you about "yellow Sunday." That's what we had and everyone wore yellow, or something yellow on what they wore. And we had some simple yellow artificial flowers to pin on anyone who didn't have yellow. There is no theological reason for this. It's just that I started it when we were in St. Helens so I could wear my yellow sport jacket and not feel out of place. Agate Beach is now the third church to "inherit this tradition." It is lots of fun and everyone enjoys it because yellow is such a bright color. The cover of the worship folder was a simple, line drawing of a church to be colored in like in a child's picture. Everyone also got a small box of color crayons. During the sermon I had them color in parts of the picture in response to the sermon. I though it was fun!!!!!

The picture is of our pianist and the fuzzy headed preacher! Her name is Joyce so we have to be careful people know which one we are referring to.

Well, hang in there with us. We love the church and the people at Agate Beach but one of these days this blog will be talking about something else. But for now, this is our life and we love it.

Holy Week!

Busy week getting ready for all the activities of Easter. First of all, we had a Good Friday evening service called Tenebrae or Service of Darkness. Those present thought it was a good reminder of what Jesus went through in paying the price for our sins. I thought it was effective but I was disappointed that more people were not there. Saturday we spent part of the day cleaning the church and doing some weeding outside. "Outside" meant working in a light mist and heavy wind. In fact, right now (Sunday evening) it is raining and wind is howling at the windows. Today was good. We began with a wonderful breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, strawberry waffles, fruit, orange juice, coffee, etc. Then Joyce did a chalk drawing from about 10:40 to 11:00. People could sit in the worship area, listen to the music or visit, and watch a scene of the Garden Tomb unfold in front of them. Our worship was mainly centered on those who were witnesses of the resurrection. I think it was a good worship time and the people seemed to agree. We had quite a few visitors from the neighborhood at both the breakfast and the worship with a total of 42 at worship. That included about 5 or 6 children. Many of the extra folks were from the church neighborhood. So all in all, a good day. And I'm tired so this will be short. Keep remembering us.

A Little Different Day

This is a picture of some of the ladies in Joyce's Bible study group. This is the end of the hour when they get to play! They are painting some ceramics Joyce's sister, Sharon brought down.

Things went quite differently at church yesterday -- but still good. If you know me very well, you know that I like things to be all planned out, everything in order, and everything to go as planned. But I know it doesn't always happen that way. Sunday it didn't. We have our music and scripture for the sermon on PowerPoint and projected onto the wall (as a screen). Well, the thing wouldn't work! The guy operating it just couldn't get the projector to recognize the computer and project all the stuff onto the screen. A few minutes before 11:00 I asked him if he thought he could get it working, or should I start photocopying words to the choruses. I photocopied. Fortunately that didn't take too long for the choruses and the two hymns we were singing were in the hymnal. So we did it "the old fashioned way." That worked okay and nobody minded. We'll get the think fixed for next weekend.

Since Sunday was both Palm Sunday and April Fool's Day, I began with a little thing about important events that had happened on April 1. All this was leading up to singing happy anniversary to a couple in our church who were married on this date. This was also Jana and Korak's anniversary. We had a good time and someone commented that the Lord was certainly present. In addition to Him, there were 28 there -- eight were visitors from out of the area. That includes our friends from Grants Pass, Ken and Ruth Curphey. After worship -- actually after our coffee and donuts after worship -- "we" distributed over 300 invitations to Good Friday and Easter. And another 200 are being passed out in the retirement community across the hiway. The "we" who did the distributing were actually ten! Isn't that great!

Speaking of Ken and Ruth, they came Saturday and got "roped" into accompanying Joyce and I to dinner and then to see the play, "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." A couple in the church was supposed to go with us but the wife got sick and couldn't go. When you visit us, you never know what will happen!

Last week I had to mow the grass! By "had" I don't mean anyone made me, it was just that tall and the day was great. There isn't much lawn so it wasn't hard except that it was tall. We also took time a couple days last week to go see the whales pass by. We saw a few the second time we went out. There are 3 good view points close by.

Now this week is intense preparation for the Good Friday Tenebrae and the Easter worship. We are praying for lots of local visitors.

Ken ordered a club sandwich. Look at the size of that thing! I won't show you the picture of Ken trying to get his mouth around that! P.S. He did NOT eat it all.

What a beautiful day for whale watching. This is taken on Cape Foulweather looking south. The point of land behind the top bar of the fence is Otter Rock. The next one up is Devil's Punchbowl. The one way up at the top is Yaquina Head. We live just this side of that one.