Rambling for the sake of rambling

My, my. I haven't posted anything in a while. This post probably won't be very entertaining, but I'll take this opportunity to get you all caught up with what's going on with me. So here's your chance - if you don't care about what's going on with me, navigate away from this page now.

If you're still with me, then I guess you have one of those inquiring minds that want to know.

As some of you know (and some of you probably don't), I have been involved with a church plant in North Lima for the last 10 months or so. The church is called The Gate. In the fall, we started meetings with what's called "the lauch team". Our team consists of the pastor, Dave Knickerbocker and his wife, Vanda, me (I'm the worship leader), and about a dozen other people who left a big church to come join us. The launch team met for Bible studies and training all through the fall, winter and early spring to get ready for what's called our "preview services".

We had our first preview service last Sunday, and I have to say, it went very well. We've been blessed with a wonderful building right on Pine Lake - it's small, but adequate for our size right now. All in all, it was a wonderful time of worship in a very intimate setting. It's been amazing to see how God directly answers our prayers - from providing us a perfect setting, bringing together a group of people with a common goal, and touching the hearts of some people we've been praying about, and prompting them to come to our first service.

We'll continue every Sunday with these preview services until our "public launch" on September 9. At that point, we'll move our church to the South Range High School gym. Hopefully by then we'll have some more people who have committed themselves to join us on this journey. I'm hoping for a drummer :)

On a more sour note, my ex-martial arts instructor is threatening to sue me because I'm attending another school. He's sent my sister three threatening letters saying he's going to bring legal action against us because we're both going to American Karate Studios now and teaching classes there. He seems to think that this is Korea instead of America. North Korea, it seems, where people don't have the freedom to train wherever they please.

I'm not worried about it; it's an annoyance more than anything else. I hear his business is doing poorly, and I'm sure he's just trying to scare us into giving in to his ridiculous demands. He's saying we owe him money for breach of contract. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have an attorney here at work drawing up a scathing rebuttal. I'll keep you all posted.

Let's see... what else?

I'm getting a lawn mower! And, I get to mow my own lawn all summer long!

I'm going to plant a garden this year. I've not ever done anything like this before, but I'm sure there is someone that I know who would be willing to help me get started.

I've been getting a lot of freelance work lately. It's a real answer to prayer because I've had some things come up that will need some extra funds.

All in all, life is good.