Happy 4th of July to you! I hope you celebrated the birthday of our great country in some way. I was explaining to my Sunday school class that our country was based on the idea of freedom of religion, the freedom to worship God without fear. Yet, today so many people do not appreciate nor take advantage of their freedom to worship God. Our founding fathers put “in God we trust” on our money to make sure we as a nation remember that we stand for, I hope we never forget.
Roger and I have been vacationing with my brother and his wife. This year we went to Yellowstone and to Mt. Rushmore. We also went to the Badlands; I am always amazed by all the sights and wonders that I see. Just imagine God made all this great earth for us to explore and to enjoy. Man may have carved out the faces on Mt. Rushmore, but only God could make a mountain so big. I have to tell you I am a lot like my mother I truly enjoy water, and we saw lots of water and waterfalls. We also saw the geysers; now explain to me how anyone but God could make something blow that amount of water every 90 minutes. Enough about my trip, on to church news.
I truly appreciate Esther for playing for me while I was gone. The youth of our church aretruly a blessing. I hear one of the boys, Kyle Hampton, went on his own trip to the Smokeys with some friends. I hope he had a great time. Jon and Lindsey are spending some time down at the lake, we sure miss them. Sunday Donald preached on the eternal love of God. Did you ever stop and think about it? God’s love doesn’t stop no matter what you do. His love is eternal and forever. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. If we could ever love Him with as much devotion, imagine how good of a Christian we could be. We do slip and falter, but not to worry, just reach out to Jesus, He is there waiting for us. He is our loving Father. Our attendance was down a little, I guess maybe other people are doing summer things. I hope to see them soon. We miss you when you’re not in church.
We are starting to make VBS plans. We will need teachers and helpers, and we always need lots of kids, so start making plans now. It will be the first week in August. The youth are also talking about a yard sale and maybe a coffee and donut Sunday morning. You never know what we may start planning next and we would love to have you be in on all the fun.
Monday night we had our celebration for the 4th at church. We had some singing, visiting and of course we had plenty to eat. Larry Hutchinson made us his famous homemade ice cream. It was wonderful. Portia made fresh blackberry cobbler. I sure want to thank all the wonderful cooks for helping with the food. We also better not leave out the men who set off the fireworks for us. We sure appreciated the great display. We appreciate J.J., Roger and Donald. I think Lane wanted to go help J.J. maybe when he gets a little older.
Remember to take advantage of your freedom to worship God and if you need a reminder, just rub the coins in our pocket. You don’t have to actually feel the words to know that for now, they still say “in God we trust!”
