Trip to Bowling Green

Kathy and I left last Wednesday evening headed for Bowling Green, Ky to visit Hope and her Family. We did not get very far before our stomach's begin to whine that they were hungry, so we stopped in Newberry and ate at the Cabanna Cafe. If you are a fan of Shrimp and Grits that is a must make trip so you can stuff yourself with the best shrimp and grits in the state of SC. We spent the night with Louise Garren (Kathy's mom) in Hendersonville, NC that night. The next morning we ate at the Cracker Barrell in Hendersonville with Kathy's mother, brother (Robert) and sister (Carole). It was nice getting to spend some time with them!

After breakfast we were on the road again getting as far as Tanger Mall in Sevierville, Tn before having to stop again. Wow we saved so much money at that place it almost broke us. We finally got to Bowling Green about 5:00pm (central time) just in time to watch our grandson (Jacob) play in a soccer game which they won 3 to 2. While we were visiting I came up with a new name for our 3-year old grandson Mason --- He reminds me of Calvin in the Calvin & Hobbs comic strip. He is cute as a button and he is going 90 mph all the time.

If you are not famailar with Bowling Green that is where Western Kentucky University is located and there was a tremendous amount of excitement in the air due to their basketball team playing UCLA in the NCAA tournament that night at 9:00pm (That would be 10:00 EST). That is already one hour past our usual bedtime, but we did manage to stay up and watch the game until sometime in the second half -- if I had of known that Bowling Green was going to make a come back I would have watched to rest of it (I would have loved to see them beat UCLA). I now understand that USC is talking to Western's coach about coming to SC --- that would probably be a good move on USCs part if they can get him.

We left Ky Sunday morning and stopped to visit Bernis & Louise (brother-in-law and sister) in Jacksboro, Tn. We also got to see our niece Kathy, her husband Richard and our great niece Crystal. Crystal is a beautiful young woman! Bad knees must run in the Wells' family as Louise was having total knee replacement this morning.

We had a wonderful trip! Now we have got to start getting ready to go to Charleston this Thursday for our annual "Cooper River Bridge Run" trip. We can't wait.

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The will of God never takes you to where the Grace of God will not protect you.

Frequent Forgiveness Miles

If there was such a thing as 'frequent forgiveness miles' I would be able to go on a long, long, long trip. I for one thank Jesus everyday for his love and grace that saved a sinner like me, and he continues to forgive me for my sins daily.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Ephesians 1:7

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Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever!

Purse or Suitcase -- You be the Judge

As I was having my coffee this morning I noticed the size of Kathy's purse that just happened to be sitting on the kitchen counter. I took the following picture of said purse with a 12oz coke can beside it so you could get an idea of it's actual size. I would guess that you could get at least a case of cokes inside this purse with space to spare. I am real curious (but dare not ask) what in the blue blazes does anyone need to carry this much stuff with them for? The only things that I ever need with me is a billfold (that contains a little cash, drivers license, debit card, and etc), knife, handkerchief, cellphone and keys.I am probably going to be in trouble for this one --- if you don't see anymore post to this site you will know I did not survive.

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God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called!

Going Away Party CAKE

My good friend Mr. Comfort sent me the following with a note attached that said, "just think these same people will be taking care of us in the nursing home"

Okay so this is how I imagine this conversation went:

Walmart Employee: Hello this Walmarts, how can I help you?

Customer: Yes, I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week.

Walmart Employee: Whatchu want on the cake?

Customer: Best Wishes Suzanne. And underneath that, We will miss you.

Sad but true -- This actually happened! (they say)

FUEL PRICES

Kathy and I purchased a 2004 VW Beetle with a diesel engine on October 24, 2003. The price of a gallon of diesel at that time was $1.30 -- gas was somewhere around $1.60 per gallon. I filled up the little mellow yellow fellow this morning and as you can see (or maybe not see) on the receipt to the right the price of diesel has increased somewhat in the last 4 and 1/2 years to $3.69 per gallon (Gas this morning was $3.08). According to my math that is 184% increase in 4.5 years, which is 40% increase per year or .769% per week. At this rate of increase we can expect diesel fuel prices to hit $10.50 per gallon sometime during the year 2012.

I sure am glad that we live in a county that has a free enterprise system and there is not a greedy bone in anyone's body. Just a little FUEL for thought!!

The Power of Prayer

Rocky is our pastor at Northside Family of Faith, and his sermon yesterday morning was on prayer. I would like to share with you some of his comments and thoughts from that sermon.

The Great Commandment is our passion (Matthew 22:37-40) and The Great Commission is our purpose (Matthew 28:19-20). However, The Great Omission is often times prayer!

So why don't we spend more time in prayer? Could it be that Satan has convinced us that we are to busy and we really don't believe it will make a difference anyway? Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. What would happen in this country if all of the Christians got on their knees everyday for one hour and sincerely prayed to God our Father? Do you think there might be a few changes on the horizon for this great nation if that was the case? -------- READ ON!

During our Global Mission Celebration last weekend I had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with a missionary from South Korea and he shared the following facts: 35% of the Korean population are Christian when only a few years ago the percentage was almost zero. South Korea has approximately 15,000 missionaries serving in countries all over the world with a large number of those being here in the good old USA. ***NOW FOR THE AMAZING PART*** Every morning at 5:00am all of the Christians go to their church and spend a minimum of one hour in prayer before they start their day. Could it be that prayer is what ignited such a revival in South Korea?

Just food for thought. I hope that everyone has a great day!!

CATS ADOPT US

We used to be a 3 dog family , but one by one they all got old and went on to dog heaven (or wherever good dogs go). We really enjoyed our dogs, but it really hurts when you loose them after having them for 15 or so years. Therefore, we made the decision that there would be no more pets in our family for that reason. What we did not count on was the fact that someone was going to send us a cat or two to keep us company. In December of 2005 a gray fur ball showed up at our house and we made the mistake of feeling sorry for him. We feed him and sent him on his way, and "his way" was to make his home with us. He adopted us and after days of a lot of deliberation and deep thought we named him KC for kitty cat. KC has been a wonderful cat -- he comes home twice a day, demands food and then goes about his business of being a roaming cat. He will honor us with his presence in the house if it happens to be bad weather outside. We have only had to bail him out of jail once for $15.00, but he got sick while visiting there and it cost us another $200.00 to get him healthy again. WOW we sure do love cats!!
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The sleeping giant pictured to the left is another story entirely! Kathy and I have been opening the gym at Northside Baptist Church every morning at 5:30am for the past several years (we just retired from that job last Friday). Anyway one morning last September this poor little cat was hanging around the church meowing like she had lost her best friend, and someone told us that she had been there for a couple of days. We could not quit thinking about her that day, because we just knew that she would get run over due to all the traffic around the church. That evening we make one of our many thoughtless decisions and went to the church to save this meowing cat thinking we could find her a good home. We could not find anyone that wanted a free cat or anyone that would even take the cat if we supplied the first year of food, so to make a long story short this cat also adopted us. Again after much deliberation and thought about what to name her we came up with the original name of CC for church cat. CC does two things better that any other cat we have ever seen "Sleep and EAT". When you mix those two together what you get is one "FAT CAT"!!!

Creating Blogspot

It is Thursday morning here in Lexington, SC and I am creating a blogspot. I really don't know what I am doing, but hopefully it will be OK for a beginner. As you can see I have added a picture of Kathy my wife, best friend and soul mate who I love with all my heart. I will write more later when I get all of this put together.