Family ties (May 5-7)

The rest of Friday was uneventful. We went to the church building and took measurements for the rooms. We went to Value Village where Linda looked around for some curtain materials for the classroom we are redecorating and then to the paint store to get pricing for the paint – Sunday I did a preliminary work plan & “budget” estimate for review at the progress update meeting. This week I need to finalize the work plan and get some materials to be ready for Saturday’s work day.

Sharon Valli dropped in for a short visit on her way home from the university. Her husband Pauli has had to work out of town for the past several years and they are counting the days until he can retire in 2 years.

Saturday was fairly cool which was good because I spent most of the day inside - I finished the Powerpoint and notes for our Pascagoula presentation Sunday night. I cleaned up some email. I have a separate account for Algoma University and it was backlogged since I’m not teaching right now I don’t check it every day.

Linda had been talking to her sister-in-law June about the new Robin Williams movie “RV” and she called Saturday asking if we wanted to go out to dinner and then to the movie. We went out to Harmony beach (30 miles north on Hwy 17) to have smelts These are a small fish (4 to 6 inches) are caught in nets at the mouth of rivers as the head upstream to spawn— having an annual feed of fried smelt is a bit of a tradition in the north – although we hadn’t done this for many years. Unfortunately, the batch of smelts we got were “sour” and we ended up having whitefish instead – the movie was funny – how could it not be with Robin Williams in it -- with an theme that promoted personal integrity and family values. Of course the RV “incidents” were extreme but we could relate to many of them from our experiences. We had some great laughs at some of the sequences.

It had been several years since we had been to a movie theatre and many more years since we had spent time with Terry and June other than at Goodmurphy family events.

Sunday morning we went to services. Roger spoke on God’s view of marriage – based on Jesus comments regarding divorce in Matt 5. After service one couple shared their intent to be married in June and invited the congregation to attend. We pray that with God’s help they can build the type of marriage that is “until death do us part”.

Sunday evening we presented our report on our trip to Pascagoula to give the people here some understanding of what the people on the Gulf coast were dealing with. We also shared our belief that this was something of value to us in our faith journey- strengthening our understanding of it being “more blessed to give than receive” and our understanding that the measure of our love for God is demonstrated by loving and having compassion on others in need.

Linda had also told June about our Sunday night presentation while helping her with the twins last week and June had said that maybe she & Terry would come to that. Unfortunately, Linda, at the time they were talking Linda thought we were doing it during the fellowship time at 7:00 following the evening assembly. Because we were out Saturday night and they hadn’t mentioned it Linda thought they wouldn’t come and so we hadn’t let them know it was really at 6. SWouldn't you know .. they showed up at 7 and missed the presentation – we will have them over sometime soon and give them a private viewing. In any case, they were there for lunch and Terry had a chance to visit with some of the people he knows So one consequence of the “twins” has been a chance to get to visit Terry & June more times in the past week that we usually do in a year.

Well its another week – Linda will be busy with the twins and I have a long list of things to do so I need to get at it.