Early December

Thanksgiving has come and gone.  Christmas is just around the corner.  This month is full of excitement and activity.

This past week was a week of mixed emotions again.  We held a private service for the interment of the ashes of my good friend Jim Murcray.  It was a struggle for me to get through it with no emotional breakdown.  Tears flow easily when a bond of friendship and love is so strong.  But I know I shall see him by and by, in that great place called heaven.  So, with mixed feelings of sadness and celebration, we once more said farewell on this side of the great divide called death.

Then, I got extremely sick on Thursday.  I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say I did not stray too far from the loo (if you don't know what that is, look it up...ha!).  I didn't want to get Sondra sick, so that night I slept in the living room on the couch.  Added to that was the fact that we continuously sprayed Lysol around every room I walked through.  Fortunately, my sickness only lasted 24 hours.

But try as we might to keep Sondra from catching any bug that I had, it was certainly a valiant effort but it had no positive results.  Sondra got sick on Saturday afternoon with much more severe symptoms than mine.  However, they only lasted about 18 hours.  She missed church this morning to make sure all was well.

Yesterday morning, before the bug hit her, she went out and bought a beautiful Douglas Fir tree for the house.  It is not decorated, with all that went on, but it shall soon be a tree that we will delight in for the next several weeks.

Yesterday morning (Saturday), I went to a scheduled meeting for the Alumni Board of California Baptist University in Riverside.  I am a graduate of CBU and have been elected Chairman of the Homecoming Committee for 2010.  Because of that role, I am serving on the Alumni Board as well for the school.  After the meeting, a wonderful woman who has been part of the staff and administration for the school for as long as anyone can remember, told me she had something for me.  She went to her office and came back with a Bible that had belonged to a Cal Baptist biblical studies professor that passed away some years ago.  She gave me a Bible that was written in, marked in and underlined by this great man of God, Dr. Olie T. Brown.  What a blessing.  It was a touching gesture and gift of love.  Thank you, Wanda Price!

Today was a wonderful day of worship.  A young man, former drug addict and a current parolee from the state prison system, was baptized as he found true purpose and meaning to life in Jesus.  He is even finding the strength to give up cigarettes in the last couple of days, and he is excited about this new found faith and ability to meet challenges of life.

There is much to do this week, so I must get about the business of rest and sleep.  I hope you are enjoying the peace and goodness of a God who meets the eternal needs of the heart.