I love Sundays when you see God working, people serving, disciples growing, new people attending and kids all over the building! That was what we experienced . As for my musings …

-Our Pastor and Spouse District retreat was great last week. It was a great time of relaxing, of being with my wife, of encouragement and of getting to know some more pastors and their spouses much better. Big thanks to my church for sending us on this retreat.

-We had a whole bunch of children in attendance it was awesome. 15 of those kids were preschool and under. Our children’s workers really are superstars.

-We had major technical problems yesterday. This time it was big problems with our projection software. It never did work. My wife and our sound guy worked a whole bunch to get everything into a different program in time for our worship service. Our sound system survived another week.

-I loved sharing praises and prayer requests with our congregation yesterday. Our vision of becoming a people of prayer and a church that is known for really praying is beginning to come true. Part of our prayer focus at the moment is a lady from our church who is serving on a mission trip to Central America and one of my daughters and son in laws who just arrived in Kenya to serve this week. We are also becoming very involved globally. We have always given for world missions now we are praying regularly for it and sending people.

-I loved talking with several people about how they are applying yesterday’s message and a couple of previous messages in their everyday lives. That is discipleship.

-My wife and I picked up 3 of our grandkids on Friday evening and brought them home for the weekend. It has been a lot noisier around our place the past few days with an 8, 5 and 3 year old taking up residence. Their parents are the ones who are in Kenya for a few days. The noise level has been raised and so has the energy level, it has been wonderful.

-Our church youth group gave my wife and I each a stadium seat to use as we attend many school sporting events. They are in our school’s colors. This was part of their Pastor and Spouse appreciation. I serve a generous group of people. I am so humbled by how they encourage, support and appreciate us. I love bragging about them.

-We had a new family in attendance again yesterday. The couple who attended for the first time last week were back and said that they will be continuing to attend. Our people are doing a very good job of inviting and speaking positively about our church around town.

-The small group that my wife and just started for married couples met for the second time this week and we added another family to the group. I am very excited to see what comes of this group and this study.

-I really felt like I stumbled a little in the sermon yesterday. Which is unfortunate because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that several people really needed to hear and embrace this message. As always, I prayed yesterday early in the day that God would speak clearly now matter how I spoke. I am really praying that people heard God’s voice yesterday where mine failed. The good news is that it is always about God coming through, the bad news is that at times I make it little more difficult for people to hear.

-Tonight I have our regular monthly church board meeting. I love my leaders and usually look forward to board meetings, really I do. How fortunate am I? However, tonight the Cubs are playing game 3 of their playoff series versus St. Louis and the first pitch is scheduled for a little before the start of our board meeting. Any chance I could call in sick for this one? Do you think anyone would believe me? Thank goodness for a DVR.

Here’s hoping you feel appreciated this week. Here’s hoping that your favorite team wins this week, unless your team is playing my team.

Dennis