March 22, 2009--Penner vist and outreach plans

Last week Ellie-Mae's came down for a visit. They were on their way through so they could see a basketball game, but they stopped over for a night. We had a lot of fun together, as usual.

Here are our kids all lined up according to height:

Here's Ellie-Mae and me:

This week we worked on building the first skateboard ramp for the outreach we are planning in May. We'll be building a total of five sections similar to the first. The one in the picture will be a stand-along piece, but we'll be putting the others together to build other structures. One wil be back-to-back so the kids can skate up one side and down the other, and the other will be have a flat piece in between to make a half pipe (I think that's what they're called.)

We also set up our band equipment outside. I'm still amazed how God has put all this together. None of this has cost the church a penny. We have a mixer and speakers and amps and instruments and everything. We wanted to put it up and see how we'd sound outdoors. We were missing one member of our band who was on vacation, but the rest of them came and it sounded really nice.

Our drummer let the kids play on his drums for awhile, and they did pretty well, actually. They all have been gifted with natural rythmn. Even Timothy was keeping a beat.



Our guitarist was the last one to arrive since he had to work, (he's not in the picture below) and we practiced a few songs. Right in the middle of practicing, all of a sudden things went quiet. The power just blinked off and was gone. We thought at first we'd popped the circuit breaker, but Erick went and checked and all the power was gone, both in the house and the church. We had to quit practice early, because without power all that worked was the drums. Since we didn't have anything else to do, we went to town to buy some parts for the kids' bicycles. Spring break is next week and we figured they'd probably do a lot of bike riding. Erick saw that the gas tank was low in the van, because I hadn't filled it up last time I drove it. I told him it wasn't that low--we had a quarter tank. He insisted the gas light would be on by the time we got to Terre Haute and I told him it wouldn't be. So we made a little bet--I'd buy ice cream if I was wrong, and if he was wrong he'd buy it. Just as we got to the outskirts of Terre Haute I declared victory--and immediately the gas light came on. He said he'd won because we hadn't actually entered Terre Haute, but since we couldn't agree who was the clear winner we said we'd both chip in. The lights still weren't on when we went to bed. We did see what had happened, though, while we were out driving. A truck had hit a telephone pole. We lit candles and got the kids off to bed. The lights finally came on at 10:30pm.