Check it out here.

We bought Braden an RC boat, and he was dying to take it out to the pond to try it out. He was pretty excited.

It’s always fun to get to spend some time together with family. It made for a relaxing evening, even though the bugs were out like crazy. Oh, and it was hot and humid.

Now that I’m grown (mostly!) I enjoy it as a teacher. Let me back up just a bit. I teach the teens in Sunday School at church. I always try to make it as fun as I can, but there’s just a different atmosphere at VBS. We enjoy other activities like crafts and games during VBS, but even during lesson times it seems more fun. As a teacher, it’s great to see the interest the students show in learning about God.

Probably my favorite thing about it all is that there is a big crowd of young people excited about what they’re doing, and it’s all centered around the church. There’s no better place to be!

Let me know what you think!

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We had planned to start loading up the van at 7am, so we had some time to relax a little while before scrambling to get everything loaded and ready to go. About 6:30, we got tired of that. We went ahead and started loading up, and we were all able to leave by about 7.

We headed down the mountain and stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. I was disappointed to find that they didn’t have biscuits and gravy, but we all had a good breakfast to last us for a while.

After breakfast, we headed to the Lewis’ house so that Bro. Lewis could drive us to the airport, and to say all our goodbye’s to the rest of the family.

Once at the airport, we found long lines at the checkin counters and at the security checkpoint. Security seemed a little tighter than normal – the terrorist threat level was orange… I can’t remember what it was when we left the Nashville airport headed to Denver. Either way, we made it through without incident and headed to our gate.

The airport was packed. We could hardly find a place to sit to wait for our plane to board. We finally did, however, and we patiently waited.

The flight was great, and Nashville never looked so good. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time in Colorado and were so happy to be able to help the Lewis’, but I think we were all ready to be home. We landed in Nashville at a little after 2pm Central Time, waited impatiently for our luggage and headed for the van.

We were pleased to find that the van started (We’ve had a little trouble with that lately). We loaded up and hit the road.

Cracker Barrel looked good to everybody, so we stopped there for lunch/supper to hold us over for the rest of the trip home. We arrived home about 8, and it never felt so good!

Again, I want to stress how much we loved Colorado. The Rocky Mountains in their majesty make our Smokey Mountains look shrimpy. The dry air climate is something I could get used to. And last, but definitely not least, we were so glad to be able to be a help to the Lewis family and Aurora Independent Baptist Church. We stuffed bags with the book of Romans and an information card about the church, and worked on handing them out on Friday. Some of the material had been ordered, but didn’t arrive until Friday, so unfortunately we weren’t able to focus on that until Friday. The hard, tedious part has been finished, however – I think the approximate number of bags ready to go is in the neighborhood of 5,000. Now they just need to be passed out around the neighborhoods!

Please help us pray that God will grow the church and touch lives in that area. Aurora alone (a small section of the entire Denver area) has over 300,000 people. In a later post (which I’ll post soon!), you’ll see how the houses are stacked on top of each other it seems. There is a tremendous opportunity there. There are very few good churches in the area, with a huge harvest ready to be reached.

On Friday, we spent some of the morning gathering up our luggage so we didn’t have to try to cram everything together at the last minute on Saturday. We spent the morning at the camp doing that, and resting before what the afternoon would hold.

Friday afternoon, we went to the Lewis’ house and began stuffing the same 2,000 bags with cards we had been waiting for delivery on. Once we got a few hundred of them ready, some of us men went and started hanging them on doors in local neighborhoods. When we came back for supper, we found that most all of the Romans books had been put in bags along with the cards by the ladies. We wound up with about 5,000 bags ready to go overall.

After supper, several of us went back out and put the bags on more doors. Of the few people we were able to talk to, they all seemed receptive of the literature and the idea of going to church. Our prayer is that God will have His hand in all the labor, and the information in the packets we made ready, and move on the hearts of the people we came in contact with. We are praying that Aurora Independent Baptist Church will grow and flourish for the glory of God.

On Monday, the only mission work we were able to do was remove some packets of information from doors in a neighborhood the church had some unfortunate complaints from. The good news is that out of the fairly large neighborhood, we only found about 8 packets left on the doors there, which means many, many more than that number reached their intended audience.

To be able to do more work, we are waiting for a delivery from the printer with the information to put in bags that we’ll hang on doors in more neighborhoods. We are eager to work, but unfortunately the timing is slowing us down for now.

For the remainder of Monday, we were able to go into the Rocky Mountains and see some of God’s beautiful creation. If you’ve been following my twitter and facebook updates, you’ve seen a few photos from that trip. I’ll have more to post here on the blog when we return home. We also spent a little time going through a few shops in Estes Park.

For Tuesday, we spent the day getting some much needed rest. Our bodies haven’t yet gotten used to the time change, so we’re struggling with all that comes with that.

We walked around and explored around the camp, played some ping pong and basketball, and took naps. Maybe we’ll be in better shape for the remainder of the week. What I dread, though, is getting adjusted to the time change when we get back home!

After church, we went to the Lewis family’s house for lunch, then went back to the camp to rest.

We attended church services at First Baptist Church in Englewood tonight. We received a warm welcome and enjoyed the services.

We’re headed to Dairy Queen now for some supper, then we’ll be headed back to the camp for the night.

I had a piece of cold pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut for breakfast before I started doing too much. After that, in my usual fashion, I hurried to get ready to go.

Once ready, Becky and I took our luggage over to Mom and Dad’s so that the pastor and the rest of the crew would only have to make one stop to pick us up. We loaded up in the church van and headed for Nashville.

We arrived at the airport extremely early and had about a 4 and a half hour wait before we could board the plane. We’ve all had a good time so far – on the van ride to the airport ad in the airport waiting for our flight. While we waited, we all had some lunch at the restaurants in the airport.

The time finally came to board the plane, so we anxiously waited fir our row to be called so we could get on board and get situated. It was fun getting to see first-time fliers’ reactions to the take-off and ascent through te clouds. Becky and Emily’s reactions were especially entertaining.

The flight went great, and we arrived in Denver a little early. We got a ride to the Lewis’ house and had a great chili supper and were able to rest for a little while.

Now we’ll head to Walmart to pick up a few necessities and head to the campground for the night.

Stay tuned for daily updates. For constant updates through the day, visit my twitter page at http://twitter.com/jds81.

The first thing I did was get the tiller and run it through the whole garden. It was beginning to look like part of the yard with all the grass..er..weeds growing in it. That by itself cleaned things up nicely.

I had 14 healthy tomato plants, plus one more that was really thirsty. I got those in the ground. We’re not planting quite as many things this year, so I had some extra room for tomatoes. I left extra space between the plants so it would be easier to get around them all once they start bearing.

I also got 4 each of some bell pepper and jalapeño pepper plants. Those all looked good except for one..it was a little thirsty as well.

I had wanted to plant some gourds, but never got any seeds from them last year. Well, where they were growing last year, some more started to come up. So I moved some of those plants to another part of the garden.

The same thing happened with cucumbers. We bought some seeds this year, but some of them didn’t come up very well. Some of the old cucumbers from last year started growing again, so I moved those plants to the cucumber row.

I planted some beans that a family in our church gave us – Turkey Craw. Everybody seems to like them pretty well, so we thought we’d give them a try.

I also had to replant the okra. I saved some seeds from a few pods last year, but those never came up.

It was a nice evening to work, and a great time to get it finished. We got some good rain last night, and the thirsty tomato and pepper plants revived and looked strong.

You can’t see much yet, but here is the garden as of this morning. (Click to enlarge)