In Lebanon Now

It seems like this is becoming a “post every two weeks” blog. Well, my mantra is becoming, “I’m retired; I can do whatever I want.” Yeah. Right. Well anyway we have been keeping busy and out of trouble – no arrests or anything like that. The BIG thing that has been occupying our lives is the sorting, tossing, and reboxing. Joyce has done a marvelous job on her craft room. I am still working on the office but I’ve made a lot of progress. I have two file cabinets (eight file drawers) full of stuff. I can’t see why a retired person needs that many files. So I have been tossing and tossing and tossing. That is emotional. These are files I have saved for years. I have time and energy invested in them. Some are old sermon research files that I started in seminary. They are outdated now and most of them I haven’t used in years because research on the internet is easier, contains more information and is more up to date. But I remember Joyce and me setting up those files. She helped me file a lot of papers and as I look through them, I think, “Wow, this is good stuff. This information is great.” Then I think, “But wait, when am I going to use it? Never! So dump it.” And I do. Some of the files are old class notes that I saved for research. Of course, I have emotional attachment to those. Getting rid of all those files requires a kind of hard heart or a shutting off of the emotions. I’m not good at that. But we’re doing it. We have filled our own recycle container (like a large garbage can) 4 times and our neighbors at least twice. Wednesday we took a large pickup load of stuff to the dump. This was junk from the house, garage, and shed. Since we were going, we threw some tires on top that our neighbor, Mary, wanted to get rid of.

Another allday activity is reflected in these pictures. Can you tell the difference in the house between pic 1 and pic 2.

Do you see the difference? The airconditioner in the wall is missing! We took it out, got a piece of T-111 siding, Joyce painted it three times and we got it nailed in -- all in one big, loooong day.

We are now in Lebanon. We came up Friday, stopped at Beth’s to get the RV and have lunch with her, and got here in time to send Joyce off with the gals to Ladies Retreat. She and Ginger shared a room and we also had about 10 others from here. They had a good time and got home this afternoon.

I preached today, primarily because Trevor and Shanette are in Bakersfield, CA. Shanette’s cousin was murdered Tuesday morning in her home so they went down to help the family. All the details aren’t clear yet but the police arrested a guy yesterday for the killing. Maybe when they get back we’ll get some more information. Tomorrow they are conducting the funeral for the lady. Of course all this is hard on the whole family and Trevor and Shanette need lots of prayer.

So we are here now to do what we can. I have some meetings this week and I’ll also meet with some of the people. When Trevor gets back we’ll talk about the church here, but basically what I hear, everything is going well.

Here is our fancy camping spot in the church parking lot. It doesn't have very many amenities but it doesn't cost much either.