Hello!  Thanks so much for your help in our annual White Christmas project.  This year, we will be focusing on a family of three: a mom, a daughter, and a son.  For a breakdown of what they are needing, please click here. We will be having our Christmas party on December 13, where we will wrap the presents that everyone buys.  For those who want to shop together, we will do the shopping on this same day after morning services. If you are planning to help out, could you please post a comment on this blog post, letting us know what you intend to buy?  This way we will make sure they get some of everything, and not just end up with 10 pairs of pants and no shirts.  It is fine if you want [...]

I just wanted to say a big “thank you” to everyone who came on the retreat, and to all of you who have been asking how it went. We really had a terrific weekend. We were able to spend part of Saturday hiking in the Smokey Mountains, and got to actually go under a waterfall.  One of the big highlights of the trip were the cabins themselves.  They had lots of amenities, and everyone was able to be very comfortable for the endurance of our stay. Saturday night we provided our own entertainment, playing some games like Questions Only, using a gigantic T-Shirt so that the kids could take turns playing the role of a 2-headed dragon, and for the grand finale we heard some original tunes by our kids who utilized drinking straws as [...]

Today in class we talked about Psalm 78, where Asaph wrote down several stories of Israel’s experience as something he wanted to pass on to future generations so they could know their own history, and also know how to better please God than their ancestors did. We broke into three groups and each group was given the challenge, “If I could place some Bible verses in a time capsule to pass on to the next generation, here’s what I would include.” Each group had a different topic to “advise” their descendants about.  I was very pleased that everyone took it so seriously, and they really came up with some terrific passages.  Here are some of the results. Group One: Advice For People Who Are Young Psalm 119:9 – How can a young man keep his [...]

We had a terrific time at the Oakleys’ last Sunday afternoon. They have lots of outdoor space, and there was plenty of room to play frisbee, football, and whatever else we came up with. One of the highlights of the evening was definitely the Mummy decorating competition. David, Alayna, and Megen all looked pretty convincing. We used this as a starting point for our devotional where we did a sort of interactive reading of the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. We let different people play different roles. It was pretty cool to get to the part where Lazarus is to come forth from the tomb, and we had a real “mummy” ready to emerge! We finished things off with a hayride outside, then we came in to prepare some care packages for [...]

It was lots of fun!

This is from our May 28th trip to Holiday World. Lots of fun!

Congrats to Cody Partlow, and many of our other friends for finishing strong!

Congratulations to Kassie, Kelsi, and Elliott!

(Click on any of the pictures here for a larger version of them) Our Bible classes all centered around being peacemakers. We talked about envisioning God’s dream of peace. We looked at what NOT to do, and some of the “stones” that we all need to lay down, as well as what we SHOULD be doing, to be like Christ who brought peace between us and God. On Sunday, Nathan Miller pointed out to us how that what might have formerly been a weakness for us, God can make into a “stepping stone,” to help us grow into stronger Christians than we were before. Meribah itself is really nice. It has a great playground, a super cool A-frame chapel building where the singing is as good as it gets, and an indoor gym. It was [...]