June 25, 2007--Church and new van

Yesterday at church we had agreed to help out in Jr. Kids church at 11:00, because the couple that were teaching it needed to leave early. We knew we were going to have to leave the service early, so we kept an eye on the time. The pastor was teaching out of Romans 1:26 and 27., "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchaged natural relations for natural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." After reading this, he said that he believed that we were coming to a day in our country where preaching what the Bible says on that topic would be a hate crime, and that many people already believed that you are bigoted and intolerant if you believe what the Bible says in that passage. About that time we looked at our watch and realized it was time to leave, so we slipped out. What a time to walk out during the sermon! I was sure everyone would be wondering if we were walking out because we were protesting the sermon. I mentioned to the pastor after the service why we had left, and told him I hated to walk out on the sermon at that point. He laughed and said, "Yeah, I was going to ask Erick what his views were on that subject." I think he was joking, at least I hope he didn't really think that we were walking out because we disagreed with him! ************* Later that evening we went and got our "new" van. It's so nice! I drove the station wagon home and Erick drove the van. We had about an eighth of a tank of gas when we left from church (evening service) to get the van and drove about a half hour there and about another half hour home. I wasn't sure we were going to have enough gas to do all that, but we didn't want to have to put more in if we didn't have to. Amazingly, the needle stayed at an eighth of a tank through the entire trip! I felt like the widow who had the jar of oil that didn't run out. Either that needle was stuck, or God caused us to not use any gas on that trip. He's so good to us!