Weekend update

• Our Spring Giveaway was a great success. Thanks to all the people who donated items and helped serve the people who came to receive this blessing. One lady's story was particularly encouraging and was awesome to see God use us and our stuff in her life. A single mom who was living in a recently leased apartment with no furniture except a bed for her daughter. And even though she had nothing, discouragement was making her reluctant to come, feeling that she probably wouldn't find what she needed, and fueling reasons not to come such as bothering her sister to bring her and no way of getting the stuff home if she did find something. Through the encouragement of her sister she decided to come. By faith, she made a list of things that she needed to make sure she wouldn't take more than she needed and was there before 9:00 (we said from 9-11 but they were lining up at 8:30 at the church.) God gave her everything on the list and Jim and Jeff loaded it on a trailer and delivered it to her house. She testified of God's faithfulness to meet her needs and to always bringing a blessing when she needed it most. It was a privilege to meet her. There were many others that we were able to help.
• Our people were amazing. The time, energy and love that they put into this outreach was very encouraging to me.
• Had a great Sunday. First and second time visitors were in the service. That's always good.
• Preached the last sermon in the Elephant series. Dealt with judgmentalism. It was good but I am glad to be done with this series. It has been a great series and have had a great response from the listeners and it has also been a necessary series if we are really serious about reaching the world around us and the generation to come but it was a difficult series to put together and required a lot of transparency on my part. I don't know if everyone could handle too much more transparency.
• Had an interesting lunch with Bob and Monica. Could God be up to something? Of course He is, I just hope it includes me.
  
• I was excited about the Hawks taking Boston to Game 7 but they looked like the 8 seed that they were billed as on Sunday. It does give us promise for next year.
• I wish the Braves could play the Reds every day. They spanked them all weekend.