The Promise of Living: I'm still here

Well, I've started getting some requests for a blog update, since it's been a few weeks since I posted anything of substance, so I'll try to fulfill those requests today. I've been pretty busy over the last month. I made two trips to Indiana on successive weekends at the end of February. On the first I played the piano for a wedding and preached at Trinity Lutheran. On the second, I took my NEP roommates with me to the "Middle East" as we would call it (or the "Midwest" for the rest of you). We gave a presentation at the Synod of Lincoln Trails Youthfest in Urbana, IL, and then came back to Terre Haute and gave some presentations at Central Pres. Brian came and spent most of this past week with me in Nashville, which was fun. I've also been keeping busy with music at the church. I'm subbing for the organist for three weeks, playing for the Wednesday night Taize services, plus I played for a memorial service last Sunday afternoon and am playing for an ordination service next Sunday. My fingers haven't been used to all of this work.

Here are a few pictures of what's been going on.

INDIANA SNOW: On the drive between Paris, IL, where the wedding was, and Terre Haute.

NASHVILLE SNOW: Patrick made these great snow people/animals on the day of our big snow here (1 inch).

This snow family met a slow and painful death.

Sad!

What would a presentation by Young Adult Volunteers be without piles of free goodies? We made the awesome bendy sticks into "YAV." The Youthfest planning team invited us to give two workshops on the YAV program.

At the hotel in Urbana (The Eastland Suites), they have a huge bird in the lobby. Strange.

The bird has quite a vocabulary of four-letter words.

Chasie became interested in the bird and asked to go into its cage area while this guy was cleaning. He said sure, because the bird loves women. We noticed that after he took the bird out of its cage, he was wearing all sorts of protective gear--thick gloves, goggles, etc. We also noticed that our dear housemate Chasie did not have any of these things on as the guy was trying to get the bird to stand on her arm. As Chasie was holding her arm out and the bird starts bobbing its head, the cage cleaning man says "GET BACK! GET BACK! HE'S IN ATTACK MODE!" So Chasie leaves the room not being able to hold the bird. Then we ask the guy why he wears all of that protective gear, and he proceeds to say, "Oh, I don't trust that bird at all, he'll peck my eyes out." Thankfully, Chasie lived to tell about it.