Visit from the fam

Allison's parents came down to visit for Brian's school break and to celebrate Allison's birthday. So we've been going around and showing them various sights around Columbia. Kelly through a small wrench in the plan by getting sick yesterday, but Grandma enjoyed spending the day with her and she is better and running all around again. The rest of enjoyed a thrilling, or maybe more humorous, soccer game of 8 year olds chasing after the ball.
Next was introducing Allison's father to Chick-fil-a and it was off to the air show. That was pretty cool. Brian got to sit in the pilot's seat of various helicopters and jets, jump on some space ship shaped inflatable bounce pits and...the actual air show was spectacular. They simulated bombing a field and attacking a field...complete with some sort of explosion on the field. You could feel the concussion and the heat from some of the explosions. The show included jets, some apache helicopters, and a few tanks even - alright, not really part of an air show per se...but it cool still.
Today was the celebration of our pastor's first anniversary with the church. Lunch was great and I hear that the service was wonderful...I however spent the 2 1/2 hours watching the kids in the nursery. It was fun...but quite tiring by the end :) After watching the lines make it close...but fall short (sorry Heather...wish they could have given you a win to watch) we headed out to Lake Murray and some southern bbq. The bbq was good (same place that Pete and I went), but we stopped to pick up what is supposed to be a southern treat that Pete and I passed on...boiled peaunts. We stopped to get them and as soon as I opened the container to get some...I knew it was going to go well. There's really no way to describe it except terrible...we tried to feed them to fish at the lake...even that was a no go.

One final fam note for all of you who have been waiting with baited breath...Kelly has taken quite well to her dance lessons and is enjoying it quite a bit now...much to her mother's pleasure.

In news from CIU...we had a prayer day this past week. It's a day when they suspend classes so that the university can focus on prayer. It has really been challenging to my prayer life coming down here because there is such a great emphasis on it at the university...prayer day being a great example. A cool insight from the devotionals that we had with my professor that day. Acts 6 gives the story of the apostles delegating the work of the church so that they could put their efforts into two main things "prayer and to the ministry of the word." The leaders of the early church saw prayer as one of there two main responsibilities. What a challenge for those of us who hope to be leaders in the church today.