JoAnne and I took time to visit Verona Beach State park for a quiet picnic. The lake was calm, the sun bright and the park sparsely populated except for the camping area. It’s so close to Sylan Beach for miniature golf, or ice cream too. The park is very well kept this year as well. I take the binoculars to watch the birds and the boats. JoAnne sketches. I don’t recommend feeding the gulls–you’ll have more than you ever want to see coming around very quickly.
Category: Joy Notes
Posts that intend to inspire
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You could call it the mother lode of daylilies, but I just cannot resist the sheer beauty of a hillside filled with a variety of hemerocallis in bloom. That is what you see at Grace Gardens. (Hemerocallis is the formal scientific name for a daylily.) I try to visit at least once each summer and I have already been there twice this year. Each time I go I end up adding one or two more of these elegant flowers to my own collection. Tom and Kathy Rood invent new daylily varieties too. Kathy has one named after her now that has been featured in a magazine because it is very fragrant. I knelt down to smell its pleasant fragrance on this trip. I recommend visiting just to enjoy the beauty. But be prepared to get snared by the charm of hemerocallis too. Open house is this Saturday.
http://www.gracegardens.com/
JoAnne and I made it to Family Camp July 6-10 this year. From one standpoint, district pastors are supposed to go at least for one weekend. But from another and in my view more important one, it is crucial to put oneself in an atmosphere where God has a chance to speak to you. Preachers get little opportunity to sit and listen; they are usually the ones talking. So I value the times in the year like family camp when I can listen to messages from others and God can speak into my life through his chosen medium of preaching (1 Co. 1:21). It addition to evening messages, family camp also provides seminars and Bible classes. Though I don’t usually get to all the studies and seminars, I generally find the ones I do get to very helpful. Two seminars I attended this year (one on missions and one on influencing our culture) will help resource me for the year to come. Two of the three evening messages I heard spoke to me personally and were a great blessing.
In addition, at camp we see so many people that we know. This year, as last, we visited a high school friend of JoAnne’s who is also a Houghton Alum, Linda Long. We also ate dinner at camp today (July 10) with extended family we had not seen in a little while, my Mom’s first cousin Janet and her husband Al Benning. We had delightful conversation. In addition we saw many friends we have known in our previous church and in the district.
We were excited to learn that the camp and district are considering putting a building over the tent pad. I think it should have been done years ago. But now is a good time to get it done. It will help the camp very much. The big tent is so vulnerable to bad weather. One year, while I was family camp director, it blew down. It was a wonder no one was killed. Another year, when I had H. B. London on the platform, probably the most nationally known speaker we have had, a lightning bolt crossed right in front of him. God has graciously spared us, but it’s time to end this roulette with weather; do the wise thing, and get the building done!
For a couple years now, men from Community Wesleyan have been organizing a fishing retreat in the Adirondacks on July 4th weekend. This year, Rhett LaForte asked me to bring the message at their Sunday morning service, so I decided to go with them. The retreat was at Forked Lake and required us to boat or canoe to our campsite. I love to canoe and fish and just be in the Adirondacks. Just smelling the atmosphere—that hemlock, pine and spruce laden breeze—adds a week to your life, I think.
This was a real joy for me. Canoeing on a new lake, new mountain vistas, bird watching—I glassed a pair of yellow-rumped warblers, and just relaxing made the retreat well worth the effort. There was also the joy of growing friendships, sharing meals, working together, chatting around the fire, getting to know each other better, and building bonds among the six men who went (Rhett LaForte, Shaun Harrington, Bob Kipping, Ben Mackey, Dave Schwarz, and me). Perhaps the greatest joy of all was working with the four boys that went along; helping them fish, teaching them about boats and canoes and tenting and outdoor life; the joy of passing down what you know to the next generation.
Part of a retreat of this type is meeting the challenges.
This last weekend was a big celebration weekend for me and for my wife too. It was Father’s Day and I enjoyed appropriate attention and good food on account of that occasion. It was also the weekend we could tell our friends at Community Wesleyan the good news—those who had not read my blog or heard by the grapevine—that our daughter and son-in-law are expecting so we are going to be grandparents for the first time! That is cause for celebration! I hear that grandkids are the greatest!
Then to put the celebration over the top, Monday, June 20, was our 41st anniversary. We spent the bucks last year for the big four-O. So this year was lower key. We soaked up some sun amid the beauty of the Syracuse Rose Garden—delightful smells and eye-popping beauty. Then it was out to dinner at Red Lobster—I highly recommend the maple glazed salmon and shrimp. JoAnne says our wedding happened on a bright sunny but windy day a lot like this June 20! We consider each other a treasure and pray that God grants us many years of good health to enjoy together.
Sunday on Father’s Day, between our two services we had the joy of baptizing Eric Moon and Jerry Mercier by immersion. Eric’s testimony of being influenced to turn his life around and follow Christ by his father’s example, brought tears to our eyes. Jerry’s testimony of God’s gracious intervention and answers to prayer brought assurance to all of us of God’s tender care. Personally, being a part of Jerry’s baptism was a double blessing to me as Jerry has become one of my Wednesday morning prayer partners and a dear friend because of it.
Testifying to our faith through the tradition of believer baptism has a history going back into the New Testament itself. Jesus instructed his disciples to use baptism as a mark as they enrolled people as his followers (Matt. 28:19). In his Pentecost sermon, Peter encouraged people to be baptized (Acts 2:38). Saul who is usually called Paul was baptized shortly after his conversion (Acts 9:18). While the Wesleyan Church does not require immersion style baptism as we did last Sunday for believers, we use it whenever possible because the symbolism (as described in Romans 6) is the most complete.
What a joy to celebrate with Eric and Jerry as they obeyed Jesus direction. Our prayers are with them as they seek to live day by day as disciples of Christ.
JoAnne and I are on the proverbial cloud nine as we have recently learned that our daughter, Keely, and her husband Mark are expecting! Early next year we are to become grandparents for the first time. What wonderful news!
The only hard part about it was that we were given the preliminary news a couple weeks earlier but were asked not to tell it for a couple weeks. This was really hard as people are always asking us whether there is any news about grandchildren yet. It’s tough to keep good news in, especially for me. Well now we can say, “Yes there is news!”
So if we seem to be a little distracted or have our head in the clouds, you’ll know the reason.
What a patch of strawberries! It’s been so long since I filled my homemade basket tray that I forgot when the last time was. This year I’ve had the joy of repeatedly filling it – we are up to 80 quarts at this point and I’m still picking strawberries. We’ve given away nearly half of them. That’s what many gardeners like to do. It helps even out the feast and famine nature of gardening. You give away some of your bumper crop, and someone else will likely give you some of their next bumper crop.
As a hobby gardener, sometimes it is a while between good harvests of one particular crop. That’s the way it has been with me and strawberries. For several years I nursed an old patch hoping for a good harvest; only to be repeatedly disappointed. The old plants never seemed to put out runners like they should have. So two
years ago I planted an entirely new patch hoping that soon I could fill my strawberry tray with fresh strawberries. But waiting was still the name of the game. The first long year I was advised to snip off all the blossoms and just encourage the plants to get stronger. Then last year we did harvest some strawberries, but not enough to fill my tray. The meadow voles ate as many as I did! But the plants continued growing and I kept weeding the patch and I added a little manure for fertilizer too. The plants multiplied and filled in the patch completely.
A week ago Saturday, I brought a handful of ripe strawberries into the house and said to my wife, “I think we will be picking strawberries on Monday.” Little did I guess how many. My small patch overflowed with berries; six quarts on Monday, 24 quarts on Thursday, and 21 more quarts on Saturday! Lots of strawberry shortcake, strawberry jam, strawberries for the freezer, and hopefully a strawberry rhubarb pie too! And lots of strawberries to give away to friends—another favorite thing gardeners like my wife and I like to do.
Just call it a banner week for a hobby gardener—a strawberry banner that is!
A few weeks ago we visited Keely and Mark and while we were there we took time to relax in the gardens at Elizabeth Park in West Hartford, Conn. I have written before that I like to look for quiet spots to relax. Well, this is a beautiful one. It’s main feature is the extensive rose garden which was not in bloom this early in the spring. But it also features this exquisite annual garden which is very well tended. In the spring it is planted to tulips. It also has goldfish ponds and grassy areas. I have not had time to blog about it until now so here is a gallery of some shots we took.
