Church Day

We stayed at the church a long time today, but that's okay.  We started out our morning with a continuation of the series, "Extraordinary Tales from the Bible," where you can see us above talking about the story with the widow and her jar of oil that miraculously kept pouring out more oil in other jars.  We went on to talk about David and Goliath, and how funny that later on during praise and worship for our main service upstairs, the songs chosen had lyrics that reflected two stories we've been preaching about at KidPak.  We saw what you did there, God!

Anyway, it was another solid morning.  And a funny one!

To illustrate the height of Goliath, Josh made this tower of cardboard boxes, complete with a character's head on the smaller top box.  He could barely see through this tiny eye-hole, but it definitely gave the kids - and us - an idea of the true height.  Josh had somewhat measured it out.

We left church to grab a bite to eat at Wang's nearby, and that was really good.  And what was funny is seeing so many other church members there too - I'm not sure if Wang's fully realizes the impact Free Chapel has on their restaurant.  Anyway, we were eating there because we knew we'd be coming right back to the church, which of course we did.  There was a service tonight, one not to be missed.  We arrived pretty early, but that's okay because we went down to the office to settle in on the couches there with blankets and so forth.  I popped in a VHS of a Christmas special that we thought might help us with ideas for a Cowboy Christmas special, as we're doing that "Lone Star Christmas" again soon.  It wasn't as helpful as we thought it might be, but it gave us something to watch as we rested.  Honestly, some of us dozed in and out.  We also got some work done towards the Christmas production too.  But soon enough, it was time to head upstairs to see our guest speaker.

Yes, we were back to listen to Perry Stone once again.  We've been listening to him for a long time, back before this blog even started.  I think the first mention on this blog is in 2009.  Anyway, Maddie got to sit in on his message tonight too, and that was a unique event, the three of us attending a service together.  Josh sat with us upstairs.  The focus of this series this month has been on Bible prophecy.  And long before the attack on Israel, this series was developed as a theme to educate church members about this very topic.  As was pointed out tonight, something like 27% of the Bible is prophecy, much of it already having come to pass.  We talked about a lot of the things that have come to pass tonight, and of course we talked about what is coming to pass right now in Israel.  Mom and I knew a lot of this already, but like many other things in the Bible that we're used to hearing, there are still many that did not know what was being shared.  It was a good service, and it just reminded me of the early days of Free Chapel so much.  I remember one of the first times I was at this church, it was to see this man during a five-week revival.  Every night there was something new.  And how amazing that by night's end, here we go again:  two more nights were added.  We'll be returning tomorrow night, and the night after that.  

Maddie learned a few things tonight, and had a good time in service.  We got home, and after such a long day we still had a bit of an appetite for dinner, so we ate a little and then watched some television, a really bittersweet episode of "Monk" to close out season 3.  Then it was time for reading, and time for bed.  

I was up at 5am this morning, just up.  So I went for my workout downstairs in the basement, something I've managed to do every day since I got this treadmill assembled.  I did part 5 of 6 of the Big Foot exploration series, and am pretty close to finishing this up tomorrow.  It's been fun.  I also walked along the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, which looks so different from when I used to walk it so many years ago.  I didn't anticipate walking by a Ripley's Believe it or Not!  That was a nice little surprise, as our series is somewhat based on that.  I also didn't expect to see Peanut World there either.  It's not the big Planters Peanuts place that I remember seeing, but it still bring back a big of nostalgic memories - I really remember Mr. Peanut most of all with Atlantic City.  Yeah, I know there's the Monopoly stuff and the beach.  But this guy was always there to greet us, and for some strange reason, that was something I really wanted to see most of all:

I didn't see him this time, but no worries.  I have a plush Mr. Peanut at my home that I keep to this day.  He's kind of a big deal.

Anyway, I got my exercise in this morning and it was early.  So I was pretty tired tonight.  We all were though - it was a long day.  But it was a good one.