Our busyness

Hope your week was filled with God's blessings and joy!

Sunday morning, we had the opportunity to hear one of our own share the Word at Grace. Alison Sauls, or I should say, Pastor Alison led worship with her talk about stepping out and doing what is not natural, following God's Word in our lives.

Saturday was filled with excitement everywhere. Bread was being wrapped, the basketball team was busy with games, visits were happening, Bright House II work going on. A big group from The Church at Red River worked most of the day laying down flooring, repairing ceilings, moving doors, adding electrical boxes and more. Our friends were doing ok. Mosquitos are a problem. Robert is still waiting for his voucher for inside housing. The hot humid weather is making life harder. A request from Scott for frozen water would help. Each year at this time, we bring frozen jugs of water to each camp. It helps supply the guys with cooler water longer during the week. Please bring your milk jugs and we can fill them up with water and put them in one of our freezers.

Another week of camp is in the books. Each year we have challenges with temperment, feelings, anxieties, and life. Our children's environments are not ones that create harmony and they bring their anxieties with them to camp. It is a challenge every year to get past those feelings and help them to choose lvoe instead of hate. Please pray for our young adults as they deal with those challenges.

Thursday was hot and lively around the center. Joey and Ms Abbie got us into a rhythm of harmony by singing some songs and hearing the Word. Being the first of the month, our numbers were small. Hot dogs and mac and cheese was a hit with all. Our market continues to provide opportunities for relationships and bonding. Our clothing room helps provide much needed clothes to our community. New friends showed up, new opportunities to lvoe one another were provided.

Continued prayers for healing for Ginellen. She is doing ok, still sore, but hanging in there. Prayers for others who are in need of healing. Prayers for our community and dealing with the challenges of living in poverty.

We had the priviledge of having our 3 year old grandson with us this week until Wednesday evening. I took off a few days and we all played together. Wednesday evening as we met our son in Tyler to return our grandson back to his dad, our grandson ran from his dad's car because he did not want to leave his pawpaw and nelly! Tears of joy and sadness filled all our eyes as we said goodbye to our grandson.

I was thinking, about our experiences over the week and hear Jesus saying, it is not about the doing, it is about the relationships. I am not sure I have ever taken a few days off, stayed home and played?! I have a mentality of, if I am doing something constructive I am being lazy.

We find ourselves busy all the time, everyday, every hour for what? I understand we have our day jobs to maintain our life styles but we need to remember it is not about the stuff but about relationships. Our grandson does not care about my day job, he cares about us, his grandparents being there for him. He starts soccer practice this weekend, he asked, pawpaw are you going to be there?!

Our community provides a place for our children to come and be safe for a few hours everyday during the summer. At the end of camp, the children will remember the relationships they have formed with our young adults not about all the stuff they did. We work with the children after school during the year. Yes the children get help with their reading and enjoying their snacks, but they run up to us and give us a hug. It is about the relationships they form during the year that they will remember. The basketball players enjoy being able to play and practice, go different places, but they enjoy the relationships that are being formed with Matt, Vikki and Chuck more. We see our young community children grow up into young adults. They come around and visit with us every year. The relationships that are formed will last a lifetime.

Our relationships begin with Jesus. As Joey shared in chapel, then that lvoe of Jesus we receive, we are able to share with others. Then as we talked about from 1st Corinthians 13: 4, we are able to share the lvoe that is patient, that is kind, that does not envy, does not boast and is not proud! Amen

Hope the coming week will be rich in God's blessings to you and all you meet. May we all remember it is not about being busy but about our lvoe for one another.