Sunday School Week Two: once again, I only made it through 1/2 of the notes I had prepared. I’ve decided that for next week, I won’t prepare any fresh material – I’ll use the material I didn’t get to.
Again, many thanks go to Dr. Layton Talbert for his work in planting seeds, nurturing thoughts and fostering a love for the OT wisdom books – especially Ecclesiastes! I quote Dr. Talbert when his own words are most fitting and I am indebted to much research he has presented that made me see how Ecclesiastes fits into the whole of Scripture!
Download audio file.
Download notes.
This past Sunday was the first of 13 or so lessons I’ll be teaching at Kettle Moraine Baptist Church Sunday School on the book of Ecclesiastes. Here are the audio file and notes.
I hope to get a podcasting plugin working here on my site, so in the future that’ll make downloading easier.
I have been quite remiss not to have written for so long (it’s been since… Nov. 7 – oops) and this update comes with my profusest apologies for allowing so much to go by without keeping in touch. I am indeed sorry.
Where have we been in the last (gulp) two months? November: the Mother/Daughter retreat and some empty weekends including the Thanksgiving holiday. Mother/Daughter was great; we had lots of, um, mothers … and um, daughters here and they did many … motherly and daughterly things. All was well. We male people stayed mostly out of the way. Thanksgiving was good – went home, spent time with family and oh yes – a funny story. A “comrade and maybe even relative of mine” (hereafter abbreviated CAMEROM) and I were heading back to WI after the turkeys had been sufficiently consumed. As we drove along I-90, aforementioned CAMEROM looked out the window and said “Hey, isn’t that ‘some other friends of ours who also shall remain nameless’ (hereafter abbreviated SOFOOWASRN)?” And sure enough, in the van we had just passed rode SOFOOWASRN! Well, CAMEROM wanted to wave to SOFOOWASRN and who am I to stop an exchange of friendly greetings, so I drove even with SOFOOWASRN’s van while CAMEROM waved. All was well until … CAMEROM wanted to stick his head out the window and wave. The wind moving past a vehicle on I-90 is moving at least 70 mph – plus any gusts that may come across the vehicles. I heard something hit the rear window behind CAMEROM and heard CAMEROM exclaim, “Oops!” His glasses had blown off and were 1/2 a mile behind us on I-90. I replied to CAMEROM, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.” It is of course, all SOFOOWASRN’s fault.
Then came December – and snow! I have said many times (during winters in South Carolina), “I sure do wish I could have a real winter with snow.” I am now satisfied. I don’t need snow for another 4-5 years, I think. It’s been fine – except trying to drive through it. Daniel Lopez & Abe & Nathanael Troester (younger brother of the famous David Troester) and I have had to make a few trips through the snow and it’s not been particularly relaxing. The driver is tense, and when the driver is tense, all the passengers fear for their lives. Except for the one time I fell asleep – passenging, of course, not driving! But sledding is fun!! ‘Specially on ice. :) December had more empty weekends except for a Ukrainian congregation retreat and Winter Teen I (after Christmas). December also had Tuba Christmas! For me, anyway, not for the rest of the staff. Camp sent me to a church in Sandwich, IL (yummy!) for a promotion trip (I promoted camp; camp didn’t promote me) which was at the church of a guy I used to play in BJU’s Tuba-Euphonium choir with. So I went down on Saturday, went to rehearsal with Jon & his dad and we played Christmas carols at a bank and at a mall. About 50 of us – tubas and euphoniums (baritones). It was beautiful. :) Really brings a tear to my eye, you know.
Abraham moved back to Alaska in December – he’s helping his dad in the church there, taking care of music and some other things in the church, and waiting for his lovely bride to come from Ambassador and be wed to him. He was a great roommate and I miss him here, but I’m glad for him to be able to serve up there in Alaska where the Lord led him. Nathanael Troester moved upstairs and is my new apartmentmate – he’s also a good friend and great guy to work with.
Jonathon Fruin moved to Camp too – he’s kind of maintenance/kitchen staff. He’s filling the role of retreat dishwasher and fire-keeper and then helping with projects and warehouse organization during the week.
Teen Winter I – 14 campers came. Kind of discouraging – I mean, it takes just as much time to have a retreat with 114 as it does with 14. But God is good and He worked during the retreat – one young man prayed to receive Christ as Savior, and a young lady made good decisions about some sins in her life. We had some great snow too! During our outdoor activity, a bunch of good packing snow fell – so the game ended in a snowball fight. :) We also had an indoor activity that culminated in a competition between two campers trying to find gummy snowmen in a big bowl of flour. The winner was Matt! (Yes, that’s “Matt getting towel-whipped” from Joel Steven’s Facebook Video fame!) He found 42 of the little buggers in 3 minutes! And he burped with flour gooeys hanging from his mouth – what a way to celebrate the victory! :)
Then there was the staff reunion, a time of fun, food and fellowship, replete with laughs, photos, bowels, nearly all night vigils, and snow-mo-bugging! If you came, thanks – it was great! If you didn’t come… shame, shame – you had better come next winter!
Then Pastor & Deacon Retreat – lots of good fellowship, great preaching and all the wonderful things that make Camp Joy what it is!
And next, Teen Winter II – 47 or so campers for this one. Do you remember the letter about Lake County’s school camp? Of course you don’t; that was 4 months ago and no one really reads these letters anyway, so I’ll remind you. They were very spiritually needy, and as a result, we had our hands full with discipline and crowd control issues. They were 15 or so of these campers. It was heart-breaking to hear the preacher give clear invitations and to see many teens sit in their seats instead of going back to do business with the Lord. But there were some who tenderly responded and praise the Lord for them!
Now we’ve got our first try at a Music Ministry Conference – it is a small start, but it is a WONDERFUL retreat. I mean this whole-heartedly – each of you needs to get in touch with your music pastor and tell him that this retreat is a huge blessing and a great help to music pastors. Pastor Harding has been doing an exemplary job preaching on music: God’s view of the arts, understanding Biblical music standards; and the workshops have been down-to-earth and practical! Wow – I like this retreat – it is a real winner! So, go email or call your music pastor (yes, you) and tell him what a blessing this retreat will be to him when he comes next year! (Of course, I understand that some of you are from Australia or Canada or Greenville or some other far off place and it wouldn’t be practical. Those of you who fit that category don’t need to be quite so dogmatic, but please at least suggest it. :)
Well, that brings us right up to the very present. What next? Annual Board Meeting next Tuesday, church teen retreat the following weekend, junior winter retreats the two weekends after that, etc, etc, etc.
This is TheoQuiz – a software developed by a BJU Seminary student. It quizzes you on Greek & Hebrew vocab, chapter content, systematic theology verses, and several other categories. Most of the time it works well, but if it doesn’t, sorry. I’m just passing the program along since it’s useful, but I can’t answer any help calls. Hope you enjoy it! Download here.
This is a pocket-sized study help that I made a few years ago when I was at BJU – just print the pages double-sided, cut them horizontally and staple in the middle! Download here.
Well, it’s a new year and there’s a big change on my website – since life in these here parts is getting so busy, I’ve decided to cut back to WordPress only. Yep, that’s right – none of my own code or CSS or anything. I kept finding browser compatibility issues with my own code but I couldn’t seem to find time to fix anything, so I figured I oughta do the efficient thing and use something great that’s already available. So here it is! I’ll be getting a fancy theme and my own color scheme and all that soon. Everything will be categorized by blogposts so all the stuff I had on my old site will be available here too.
It’s been a loooong couple weeks, so I’m gonna sign off for now and come back when I’ve got time later…
