Location and date are set!!!

Pastor John Casper from the Dowagiac United Methodist Church called me yesterday afternoon to inform me that their Church Board would be "delighted to host Decolores" #87.  It's one thing for a church to say yes; totally another thing for them to say they'd be delighted.  The dates are October 8th through the 11th.  

I've narrowed my theme song list down to 2.  Chis Tomlin's "Jesus Messiah" and News Boys "He Reigns".  

I'm listening to a series of teachings by Ray Vander Laan (RVL) that were recorded during 10 Sunday night services at the Third Christian Reformed Church in Kalamazoo.  My friend Todd has loaned me the CDs.  RVL is a high school teacher at a Christian Reformed School.  He spent time at a Jewish Seminary  and as a disciple to a Rabbi and teaches an Old Testament perspective to the Gospel.  It adds another dimension when you have a better understanding of the culture and traditions during the time of Jesus.  There is a ton of teaching materials at his website at www.followtherabbi.com that has also consumed some of my time along with my daily reading of the NT that I mentioned in the last post.  Take a look at his site.  

Minor developments

It's been a couple of weeks since my initial post with only a few new developments.:

• Discussed the church location with the Pastor, he has to get clearance from the church board.  I'll post the location as soon as I get confirmation.
• Shooting for a date of October 8th -11th
• Awaiting a meeting to receive "the book" and final instructions as to team selection. That should happen sometime during the week of the 18th of May.  
• I received the excel sheet from Harold detailing the history of the weekends.  What a neat spreadsheet.  And to boot, it's really great to see all of the data as to the themes, songs, team members and candidates.  
• I'm continuing to pray for guidance in selecting a theme, song and verse. 

There's an Ultreya this weekend; Sally and I are looking forward to attending that.  We both enjoy the "genuineness" (is that even a word?) of the curistias'. Many times in the Church we all put on our "church face", sing the songs, make the offering, listen to the message, etc.  But at an Ultreya there is a feeling of brother hood, of love for each other and love for Jesus.  

 
In one of the podcasts that I subscribe to the speaker challenged the group to read a Gospel a week for the next month.  Well it's been a while since the Gospels have been on my study list so I accpeted that challenge.  After a week I've decided to go through the New Testament prior to the start of the team meetings in addition to the original challenge. 

I'm teaching an adult class at my home Church and most of my sturdy time has been in preparation for the lessons.  I picked up the class in last November and it's been a bit of a challenge in preparing lessons and then getting the 20-25 attendees to participate in class discussion.  Some Sundays are good, some not so good.