Thank the Lord of Earth and Heaven I can cook BBQ...

...'cuz I sure can't bowl!

We went to worship today (as we do most every Sunday) and God showed today that he listens to prayer.

We are a new, small church and we all know each other by name, and we notice when regular attendees have not been to worship in a while. As secretary of the board of elders, it is my job to send cards to those we haven't seen at worship, so I pay closer attention than most.

God had been telling me that I needed to be in prayer for three families. So I listened, and I was praying for them.

Today was my turn to do announcements and prayer reports/praise requests, and who was in church? Why, all three families that God had laid on my heart to pray for, that's who! One of the families who was there told me they came because they didn't want to get a card! We all had a good laugh about it.

God loves it when we laugh.

One of our members is moving to Georgia this week, and she wrote us a note and thanked her for the spiritual growth she had experienced in the three years she attended our congregation. That made us feel good. We are a conservative congregation, built on what we read to be the Biblical model. We are elder led (a radical idea in the 21st century church). She said she really appreciated the way our congregation was run. I'll put that in the "+" column.

Oh yeah, bowling.

After worship we went home and caught the IndyCar race. It was nice to see one of the drivers from my favorite team win (Team Penske and Will Power).

Then, we went bowling. I am terrible at bowling. Awful really. It doesn't help that we wore rented shoes that made the ball of my right foot blister, or that the only balls with holes big enough for my fingers had once been used to knock down buildings from the end of a cable, but I have no excuse. I am just that bad. We played two games, and I didn't break 100 in either game.

Yep, that bad.

But to see the smiles on the kids faces when they got a strike or picked up a spare makes all of the pain worth it.

I may complain sometimes about how my boys behave, but I really do have three very wonderful sons, and I am reminded of that every time I see them have as much fun as they did today.