To the Max (April 1 & 2)

(Note - I added some pictures to my last post so if you'velooked at this since Saturday night you might want to look again)

Well, I survived April Fool’s day without making (more than usual) a fool of myself.—of course we didn’t know anyone so we didn’t really have to be on guard that much.

We are back into WALMART camping spending Friday night just off I-10 in NE San Antonio– it is convenient and the price is right- especially after the unexpected repair costs. The downside is that it tends to be noisy (there is usually traffic noise and often a “street sweeper” cleaning the lot) and it isn’t very dark with those large Halogen lights overhead. But we are grateful for the convenience and I’m sure if we try we can find reasons to say “Oh Boy WALMART – our favorite” (I’ll explain this later).

We have had a problem with the front TV being loose and were afraid it might come free sometime when we hit a bump –Linda has made a habit of holding it when we hit any bumpy pavement -so I decided to fix it. It took some time to figure out what the problem was and then I needed a small piece od wood to put in behind the fiber glass lip in order to have something to fasten to. Fortunately, I had a piece of plywood and had my handsaw in case I needed it in Pascagoula - so it is fixed. It seems that there is always something. As we were preparing to move we discovered that the door clip for the closet door was broken so that’s another repair job. I want to be able to say “Oh boy – another repair job- my favorite thing although I confess I’m not quite there yet” ((again I’ll explain later)

There was a Goodwill store near the Wal-Mart so we went there. Linda went shopping for some books and summer clothes while I fired up the generator so I could relax in air conditioned comfort - read and then dozed off for a while.
We then went 4 miles further up I-10 to check out the Oak Hills church were Max Lucado preaches. It is a large “campus” facility with a humongous parking lot . They have some Saturday evening activities but after things quieted down we were able to find a fairly quiet corner of the parking lot to stay over night. They have 3 services Sunday a.m.8:30, 10 and11:30.Since we were right there we decided to go to the8:30 service. (despite “springing forward” which meant 7:30 by our internal clocks.

The auditorium would seat (rough guess) in the area of 3000-4000 people. The 8:30 service had (again rough guess) about 1000 people present. Their bulletin said that they had over 5000 people at services the prior weekend.

While our main desire on Sunday is to assemble with other Christians to honor and praise our Lord I will confess that we alos hoped to hear Max Lucado speak. We have always enjoyed his books and thought hearing him would be encouraging. So we were disappointed when the first couple we met said that Max wasn’t going to be there that morning – he was away speaking at another church. However, it turned out that he had pre-recorded a message for the people at Oakhills on Saturday evening and that was used – they have their own professional TV camera and recording set up and they have the facility setup so they can “broadcast” onto large screens so we did hear him although not quite in person.

He was in the midst of a special series on the topic “Everyday deserves a chance” The lesson series is based on acronym G.O.D.(Grace, Oversight and Direction) and his title was ”Graced and Grateful” -- The main point was that because of God’s grace we needed to have grateful hearts – no matter what happened. (I could relate to that fromour experience on Wednesday) – He started his lesson talking about a day in the lifeof a dog—saying things like 6:30 a.m. “Oh boy – Dog food –my favorite”; 8:30 “Oh boy – A car ride my favorite” etc, etc. what ever happened it was” Oh boy my favorite” – he followed that with a “Day 283 of my cativity” -- the diary of a cat in the same household experiencing the same events but was an attitude of rebellion and resentment at everything that happened. He used this modern day parable to lead to the parable Jesus told of the 10 lepers and only one – a Samaritan returned to thank him. He asked “which are you?” the grateful or the ungrateful – He suggested that because of God’s grace we could have a grateful heart in all things. Stop being people who looked for weeds in the garden of life and instead looked for and found the flowers – no matter how bad it might seem. He told the story of the young daughter of a colleague of his who had called here dad to say that her bike had been stolen – rather than being sad she was bubbling – He said “Why aren’t you sad - and she said “don’t you see -- of all the bikes they could have taken they choose mine” so “Oh boy – another noisy night –my favorite”

After services we drove to Fredericksburg and spent a quiet afternoon at the Lady Bird Johnson municipal park before moving to “Oh boy – a WALMART –my favorite”

Take care & God Bless

p.s. Doing this post courtesy of Best Western parked in their parking lot. We just learned that our grandson Hunter was hospitalized last night with a bowel obstruction. Thankfully (in the 2nd email) we learned that it was due to constipation and won't require surgery - we pray that he recovers quickly and there are no complications. We are also grateful that it didn't happen while they were travelling.