My Boy Turns 13 Today!

I just came from having lunch with my son Zach. I asked his teacher if I could have him be a little late and he was more than happy to let him miss the whole class period. We went to Max & Erma's right near our house and his school. It has been a restaurant he and I have eaten at on two other special occasions.
God has truly blessed Melissa & I by giving us Zach.

The Annual Encounter Christmas Party

Who-hoo! Tonight is gonna be fun!
We're having it in our mother church's very nice basement. It has three sections: a game area, a cafe w/ tables & chairs and a stage & seating area. We will end up using all of it. People are bringing desserts or appetizers and the church budget is paying for the cups, plates, hot and cold drinks, etc. We'll leave a bunch of time at the beginning for people to arrive and connect and then we have Luke & Beth Fields giving a testimony about how the Lord has worked in their lives this past year. After that there is a very fun large group game my wife Melissa has helped put together. My hope is that people can relax and enjoy each others company, laugh a lot, and be encouraged to trust in God more.
I'll be sure to post some party pics. tonight or tomorrow.

The beginning of a new month

With today being December 1st I thought it'd be good to challenge you to try something: consider reading through the book of Proverbs on each of the 31 days (there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs). At Encounter we just finished a six week series called, "Making Life Work", where each week we looked at how the Proverbs can teach us how to make the wise choice. Knowledge is a good thing I told our people, but "wisdom is knowledge applied". Give reading a Proverb a day a try. I've been doing it off and on for years. There's plenty of very practical principles you can apply to your life.

Family fun starts early

I told you a few entries ago how I was looking forward to Melissa's sister and our brother-in-law Michael coming over with their three kids. Well they ended up coming a day early arriving on Monday night. We've already got three games of Catan under our belts, a cherry pie is hot and on the counter as I write and most of the gang is watching "Biggest Loser" right now. Kinda ironic.
We plan to relax around the house, maybe catch a movie, watch some football, eat lots of treats-n-turkey, and praise God for all He has so generously provided. We are so blessed!

Zach's school project and band concert

Today was a neat day to be a parent, especially with regards to my 12 year old son Zach. He's been working on a science project that has to do with forensics and I got to see him interview a detective at the Dublin police headquarters. My friend Mike Epperson is Dublin's Chief of Police and he helped set the meeting up. When we arrived at the Justice Center we first met with Mike for about ten minutes and then he brought us to Detective Gilleland. After Zach asked him a half dozen questions we headed to the crime lab. We were shown some pretty cool stuff but Det. Gilleland went out of his way to say that what we see on TV is bunk when it comes to CSI stuff.

Right after the interview Zach and I headed home and ate a quick supper and then I dropped him off at Scioto HS where his middle school band was going to put on a concert. He's part of the percussion section and therefore gets to play a number of instruments. If you look closely on the left hand side of the pic. Zach is the third guy standing up. After the 7th and 8th grade bands played we got the treat of hearing the Scioto High School band. They were fast, loud and accurate with their moves and music. The girls really enjoyed watching it.

This is not meant to be a really mean slam...but it looks as though my son may choose to be a "band nerd" over a football star when he gets to Scioto HS. Oh well, it's his life and not mine.

Any thoughts from the three of you who read this blog?:-)