Top 10 happenings of 2015

Don’t look now but 2015 is almost in the books.  What do you do when the year is about over?  You recap the highlights, of course.  I have listed the top 10 highlights of 2015 below.

How can you pick the top 10 of anything?  You just have to pick, knowing that you have missed something; but here is the great thing.  You can add what I missed in the comments section at the end of this article.

Let’s start the countdown.

#10 Come home!  This was our year round message.  Some came.  We are still calling.

#9 Tom preached in the local bar.  He went in to put up a poster for the spaghetti supper that would raise money for the Back to Africa mission and ended up proclaiming the good news, witnessing a customer reciting John 3:16, and left with a small offering.   He returned with a few Bibles and Gospels of John a few minutes later for those who might be hungry for the bread of life and thirsty for living water.   All things to all men so that some might be saved—works for me.

#8 Tom and Rick returned to Africa.  This time they trained pastors and church leaders in Kenya and Uganda and shattered part of the leadership model used by senior church leaders, offering instead one given by Jesus.  Are we ready to be the servant of all?

#7 Rain!  We prayed for it.  We got it.  Lakes and ponds are full again.  Welcome to the land of the faithful.  As a result of coming out of a seemingly never ending burn ban, local youth celebrated with hotdogs and marshmallows by a fire after a November football game.

#6  Whosoever Will was unanimously voted the best hymn of all time by the ordained clergy of the Burns Flat CPC.  Whosover will may come!  Okay, it might only be Tom’s favorite but we did, with the help of Kristy Denbo, add a few more songs to the children’s repertoire.   Why yes, the monkeys in the jungle do say, “Thank you, Lord.”

#5 Garrett Stegall in the pulpit—yes, you heard it right.  Garret preached not one, but two sermons in 2015.  He is on tap for yet another message in early 2016.  Mom may get her wish after all.

#4 VBS!  It’s always great.  This year it was scientifically great.  Great job girls!

#3 Disconnect Notices went out throughout Burns Flat during the Walk A Block for Jesus.  Connecting the Disconnected became a local mission in 2014 and got into gear fully in 2015.  There is still much to be done.  And #3A—we did a walk a block in Canute blitzing the town with Gospels of John.

#2 Chewy Tuesdays!  This simple sack lunch has become the epitome of God’s Love in Action.

#1 F4 Revived and Revitalized!  Wow!  What eyes to see the mission field we have with these children that find love in God’s house on Wednesday nights.  What a blessing to have the adults that we need to guide these young ones in the way they should go and do it with love!  What started  a decade ago as a gathering for fellowship and education has become the most important of missions in the life of this church and in this community.

Thank you Lord for trusting your servants with these most worthy assignments and for being your witnesses to your mighty acts!

GOD LOVES YOU – LOVE ONE ANOTHER

Don't forget to add your highlights below..

                                                 

Dirtouflage

The next generation of digital camouflage has come to western Oklahoma.  We will call it dirtouflage.

Old timers in these parts like to spot a newbie—that’s a newcomer in your old timer vocabulary—and then they ask the same question.

“Do you remember the Great Flood in the Bible?”

You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to know the answer.  All say, “Yes.”  Even the occasional atheist knows about the flood.  They may or may not believe it, but they answer in the affirmative as well.

One of the old timers will then reply, “Yup, we got 2 inches of that.”

Dry is the new normal in western Oklahoma.  It has been 2 consecutive years of very dry.  Wells are going dry.  Farm ponds are dried up.  Lakes and rivers are all low.  Pasture land is scarce.

But into every life a little rain must fall.  Much would be welcomed, but only a little fell yesterday evening.  In fact, so little rain fell that it was just enough to make mud but just not enough to wash the mud off of the local vehicles.

The result was dirtouflage.

Dirtouflage resembles modern digital camouflage but it is much more transient for the dirtouflage will blow away if it doesn’t get washed off first.

It is still dry in western Oklahoma.  Folks understand drought and dust bowl more than they like, but they are still able to laugh when the sky gives up just enough moisture to make droplets of mud.