This past week Lisa & I spent our 19th wedding anniversary in Perdido Key, Florida. We had some much-needed alone time, and we got to do some fun things down there as well. We ate at several local favorite restaurants, took long walks down the beach, and visited the nearby Pensacola Naval Air Museum. That was a fascinating trip! We also found the Pensacola Lighthouse, the first one built on the Gulf Coast. It is 150 ft. high, and 175 steps to the top! The weather for our time was warm and mostly sunny, and we completely enjoyed being away from the busyness of our daily lives. I think the older I get, and the longer Lisa & I are together, the more I deeply love her, and the more I want to do things together with her. The girls are everything to us, but we know one day soon they will go on to make their own lives. When they do, we want to make sure we don't have to get reacquainted, that we can spend the rest of our lives enjoying the years together.

This past Sunday we did a special promotion for our 5th graders before they move up to middle school this week. We had a gameshow for all of them to be contestants in, they selected all the music, and we showed funny video highlights they wanted to see from the past several years. I challenged them to have courage, make wise choices, and follow Christ, based on the story of Paul's nephew in Acts 23. I gave them an equation for life, to sum up what we hoped for them-

Live what you learn + Do the right thing = God's blessings

Good code to live by- so few Christians today learn (much less live) God's Word, so few make wise choices based on His Word, and yet they all want God's blessings. We told the kids that God honors those who honor Him. That's a truth all of God's "children" need to heed.
Rob

This past weekend one of our well-known children's leaders lost his wife to cancer. She had only been diagnosed with it back the end of June, and now she was gone. The shock and sadness of a loss so sudden and unexpected was hard to comprehend. I was thinking about it today, because so far in my life, I've not lost anyone really close to me. It was sad when each of my grandparents died, but I was not extremely close to any of them, since they had lived far away most of my life. When I think about my own parents aging, and about getting older myself, I find myself thinking about Heaven and eternity more. Its hard for us to imagine it, since all we know is this life, this place. I can't imagine the pain it will be when my parents pass on, or if my wife, girls, brothers, or close friends were to die. But we live in this life for only a short while, then God promises us a place of no tears, no goodbyes, no ending. The older I get, the more I find comfort in that, though I can't completely comprehend it yet.
No more death, no more goodbyes, no more funerals- How I long for that day!
"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,..." Revelation 7:17
Rob