Franklin and I are still bobbing around in the wake of the Feast, but we have hope that things will settle down soon.
For the past two years, Franklin and I have been leading the Young Adults group at our church. Every Thursday night our home gets invaded by all manner of 18 – 30 year olds. They arrive at 7:00 and stay until midnight – eating all our food, requiring serious counseling, spilling coke on our furniture, borrowing our DVDs and books, surreptitiously feeding popcorn to the dogs, and generally having a grand time. For some reason we have really enjoyed this. Unfortunately, Franklin and I feel that since we are involved in so much here in Jerusalem, we don’t have enough time to fully meet the needs of this group. We’ve been after our pastor to hire full-time leaders for the group for a while. Well, it has finally happened. We announced to the Young Adults group a few weeks ago that we will be handing over leadership to a young couple from Canada who will be working with the group full time. Although we are going to seriously miss leading the group, we feel this is the best for them. And anyway, we can still have them over to eat all our food, spill coke on our furniture, surreptitiously feed popcorn to the dogs, etc. whenever we like.
(deja vu alert) We’re really excited about the upcoming week, because my mother is going to arrive Thursday morning for a visit (end deja vu alert). No really, she’s back already. We can’t wait to see her. This time she’s packing the StarWars Trilogy DVDs instead of Blow-Pops. She’s bringing a tour group, and we’re going down to the Dead Sea to hang out with them (life is so hard). Actually, the group she’s bringing is here for the grand opening of “The Pavillion,” which is an old underground movie theatre downtown which has been converted to the new meeting place of King of Kings Assembly (the congregation that Franklin and I attend). Franklin is going to be heavily involved in the grand opening, playing guitar and bass, and we’ll both be participating in a review of “The Covenant.” Ah, show biz.
Around the house we are struggling with a centenarian dog - our ancient greyhound Amos is almost 16, whis is roughly 112 in human years. He is very healthy for his age except that he is now having back problems. He can’t stand up for too long (which isn’t so bad) and he is losing control of his bowels (which is unbelievably, catastrophically bad). He is currently living outside (for obvious reasons). We are worried because his quality of life is dropping, and shows no sign of spontaneously picking back up again. We are giving him pain pills, and that helps (with his pain, not with his bowels).
On a lighter note, Franklin and I will be visiting the good old US of A next month. We’ll be state-side from November 19th - December 28th, and we’re looking forward to seeing all of you.
Thank you all so much for your prayers, the Feast was wonderful! We had the highest attendance since the intifada started with over 4000 participants from over 65 nations. The worship was awesome, with the perfect balance between the wisdom and experience of the older singers, dancers, and musicians and the exhuberance of the younger team members. Things went well in both the finance department and the projection department. And Franklin even got to help lead worship during two of the morning seminars. It was really wonderful to be reunited with friends from overseas that we only see during the Feast. We especially enjoyed getting to hang out with Mom, and the group she brought. We really appreciate the love and support we have from so many great people.