HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know we had a great day hanging out and eating with my family. We had a great meal at the Veranda house in Senoia with my folks, my grandparents, my aunt and my brother and his family. It was so nice to just relax and hang out with the fam all day.

Another one of the highlights of the holiday weekend came the morning after Thanksgiving. Tracy and I went to bed for a COUPLE of hours the evening of Thanksgiving and then woke up a little before 2 AM the next morning and somehow found our way to the church. It is amazing how few cars are on the road in Woolsey at 2 o'clock in the morning. We were coming to meet what we thought would be only a couple of youth to help us prepare for our "Black Friday" ARK PROJECT. We were shocked to actually have 10 youth and 4 other adults meet us at the church at 3:00 AM. They were a huge help in boiling water to prepare 25 gallons of hot chocolate and brewing 10 gallons of coffee for us to give away to people who had been standing in line all night at BEST BUY in Peachtree City. The youth that showed up were in surprisingly good spirits considering the fact that most of them had decided to stay up all night to make sure they were ready for this morning. They did a great job of helping to prepare everything and we were loaded up and headed to BEST BUY by about 4:15 in the morning. We arrived just in time to pass out free hot drinks to many faithfully determined customers just before the doors opened for them to start their holiday shopping. Some of the people at the front of the line said they had been waiting for nearly 16 hours! I am still not sure if these people are to be crowned as warriors for fighting the near freezing temperatures all night long, or complete lunatics to be feared and avoided. These were of course the people who were most excited to see a cup of anything warm to drink. They enthusiastically accepted our offer of a free hot chocolate or coffee. Some even had a second cup before the doors ever opened. Once the doors opened, we were able to continue offering a drink to people coming in and out of the store that morning. Luckily we had a second crew of youth to come that came around 5:45 to help. They arrived just in the nick of time as the first crew seemed to be starting to suffer from either cold to the brain or severe sleep deprivation. I was never sure which? But they were able to revitalize the first crew and we were able to continue serving until around 8 am that morning at which time we all headed for a good bite to eat at good ole' Chic Fil A.

It turned out to be a great opportunity for us to "serve our community and share a little bit of the love of Jesus Christ". We were actually able to meet many people here in our community from all over the world. Different ones were able to have conversations with people from China, Japan, and even Kosovo. I was quite proud of all of our youth as they truly did a great job representing themselves, our church and most of all Jesus Christ. I have to give them all a big thanks for what they did. Thanks also to all of the parents and volunteers who helped us in this project and who got up early to deliver their kids to the church to participate in this project. I also want to give a HUGE thank you to Managers Rick and Kevin and the rest of the staff at BEST BUY. They were great hosts! Hopefully we can serve with these folks again soemtime.

Here are a few pics from the morning for you to enjoy.

Lifehouse Skit

Here is the video that some of our students performed. Enjoy!!!!

This Life is Short....So What Will We Do With It?

This past week has been quite an interesting one. It started out in amazing fashion. Sunday morning we got a special treat at church as some of our youth performed a short skit during our worship celebration. Tracy had been working with 7 of our students for about a month on this skit to Lifehouse's song entitled "Everything". They did an outstanding job with this skit. I saw countless people through out our congregation that were literally moved to tears. I could not have been more proud of these guys and girls. Pastor Chuck gave a sermon that went right along with the skit that was also quite powerful.
The skit was basically a powerful portrayal of how seductive satan can be in our world as he tries (quite successfully at times) to lure us away from the love of our sweet Savior, Jesus Christ. The skit also showed though how Jesus is always standing by waiting to step in on our behalf and protect us from satan's onslaught, if we will only reach out to Him. Check back soon as I will try to upload a copy of this skit for you all to enjoy.

Later in the week I had the honor of serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of Dr. Raymond Louis Scott. He had passed away early Sunday morning after several weeks of deteriorating health. This was one of the most emotional funerals that I had ever been to as all three of his remaining sons shared about their love for their earthly father. They shared about Dr. Scott's passion for his family, for teaching, for loving, and for serving others. They truly showed what an amazing legacy Dr Scott has left behind as each of these sons shared about their own personal love and devotion for Jesus Christ that they had developed from watching their earthly father love and earnestly seek to know and follow his Savior. I could not help but to be inspired to work even harder as a father and husband to leave a similar legacy through my own wife and children.

He will certainly be missed but I know that he is currently experiencing his great goal in life...sitting before the throne of the one and only God of all creation, reunited with his son Richard, and axiously awaiting the rest of his family as they continue to serve Christ here.