Gospel Fest

A few members or our praise team and myself ventured to Bonita United Methodist Church today and participated in their annual Gospel Fest. My friend Don Clark and others have organized this for a few years now and I've gone every year. This is the first time I've brought church family with me.

It's a great time with all kinds of gospel music performed from CCM (that would be us) to black gospel and even secular tunes with a spiritual message.

Wonderful people from the church also make or bring great food (especially the desserts) and an offering is taken up to help Love Inc.

I tried to take those that were there on a little bit of a spiritual journey with God from our first understanding of a great and wonderful God that we don't understand..to the coming of our messiah to the fact that we are saved and it is time for us to respond.. The set list was..

God of Wonders (Byrd/Hindalong)
Forever (Tomlin)
Rain Down (Crowder)
Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel (a la Sufjan Stevens)
A Beautiful Collision (Crowder)
Jesus Messiah (Tomlin)
How Great Thou Art ( a la Baloche)
All Creatures (a la Crowder on Illuminate)
Surely We Can Change (Crowder).

It was a great time.. some of the gospel groups we heard and worshiped were phenomenal. We received great feedback regarding our presentation as well. It's always a great time to hang out with loving Godly people and worship with them.

Sweet!!!

Read about it here

The David Crowder Band website..

Always has interesting stuff... beyond the norm of other bands.. there used to be Crowder head where there was the bald head .. and next to it were a beard, hair, glasses and ears.. and you could put them on the bald head and make your own Crowder head. My daughter and I used to put his parts in all the wrong places just for fun.. and then re-set and do it again... we imagined that David got a snapshot of each funny looking head made sent to him each time the thing was re-set..and we laughed..and made more goofy looking Crowder heads..

There were also different stories and things you could read about songs as you passed your cursor over the lights that looked like they were a part of some circus sign..

Anyway.. there was an email sent out by the band the other day stating lots of things but one of which was the secret code had not been broken.. they made mention that you could reply to the email with a question and if Mike D got around to it he might respond.. so I replied.."so what's the secret code"..

He emailed me back and told me and I got this..

http://dcb01.com/aster/isk/76001.html

Check it out...

Also.. if you go to his website..and go to the DC*B website..??...listed on the left, you can put your cursor over the remedy emblem on the bottom left and then click on it for an interesting read...

There is a red vine on the upper left that all I can make it do is grow..

If you find something else out let me know...

Oh.. and to get what I got..you click on the * in the upper right.. a remedy bee is released and you must move it with your arrow keys to catch the bugs .. make sure you get all of them!

Hate... I... just in case David is surfing his daily surf.. ;-) >

davidcrowderband.com

Survivor's guilt....

Ike certainly played havoc with many people's lives.. even before he got here many were dealing with a lot of stress and relocating and finding places to eat, sleep, clean up, etc...

Well we're suffering from something that Donna has coined as "Survivor's guilt"

We have been blessed.. and I don't mean blessed because we only lost power or the tree fell away from the house like so many others have declared.

We have fared better than most through this crazy ordeal.

I've already told you about our Brookshire Brothers experience.. amazing.

Well then Ike finally makes his way on to land. Donna hates that the storm is going to hit us while we're asleep. But when we go to bed it's a little breezy with a slight overcast. No big deal.

The storm hits in the early morning and we start watching the weather channel. I get on my computer and start watching the progress of the storm and the path it is taking. I'm watching on line broadcasts from Houston and Beaumont..

I feel so bad for all those folks in Houston and the golden triangle, I hope my brothers are ok (and they are) as well as cousins etc. (they are).

The wind kicks up.. harder gusts and as time goes on the lights flicker... and stay on. Later I hear some big noise on the roof.. I go outside to see what's going on. There is a small limb on the roof. There are a couple of larger limbs down but the trees are all standing secure.. the next gust blows through and scares the heck out of me.. I go inside.

A few hours later we start checking on people and listening to the radio. Seems everyone we talk to has lost power.. Friends tell us that if we have power we're the only people in Lufkin with power.. I know she's wrong because I can see the TV on in the house across the street. Outside that I really don't know.

I'm also checking twitter throughout the day and find that people well north of me have lost power like Jinx but he has twitter up on his BB so I keep him posted on what's up and the storm center and direction and speed and cool stuff like that...

We ride the entire storm out and never lose lights, satellite (which we usually lose when a front comes through), or internet. Amazing. We invite friends over that are in the dark and play some games and watch the USC/Ohio State game.

We have a very well attended casual communion service at church the next morning. It is a beautiful service. Cory, we need to pray like that more often..

Anyway.. I then do fortune 500 transportation company stuff the rest of the day.

No power at work but really it just makes life a little simpler there for a while. I have to say I'm kind of enjoying it..

Donna puts the word out to friends that we have freezer space for those that don't want to lose their food..they can store it with us.

One of Donna's friends offers us some meat that she says she won't eat. Just eat it, don't worry about freezing it for her.

I find out it's meat from the Grand Champion Steer from the Houston Livestock show and Rodeo.






I do not know if this is the actual steer but it could be...

Ok, those steers don't go cheap so I go check this out here. If the steer weights out at around 2000 lbs and dresses around 1400 lbs..going for $300,000 means I was eating meat worth about $214/lb... so that filet I had was worth somewhere around $160..and we got it free.

Wow..

I'm buying a lottery ticket tomorrow.

If I win..I'll feel even more guilty but I will then be a full time minister too...

Lufkin Panther Football is missed

Since we were not able to watch the Lufkin Panthers play this week due to Hurricane Ike.. I thought I would share some video from the nail biting ending of the Lufkin Panther game against John Tyler last week. We barely won 13-12.. everyone was galvanized to the game. Fan excitement was high!!!

What a blessing.. a Brookshire Brothers encounter.

Hey all..Thursday Donna was doing some running around and getting some final purchases done in prep for Ike. One of her stops was Brookshire Brothers at Gaslight in Lufkin, TX.

No doubt the place was busy.. she made her selections and went through the check-out. The checker told her the amount was $350 or so. The amount seemed a little high but considering some of the things she was purchasing and the other things on her mind she went with it.

Once the checker was finished Donna went to put it on her card.. The checker said "Ok you're debt card has been charged, thank you for shopping at Brookshires".

Donna said.. I haven't run my card yet and it's not my debit card. It's my credit card.

The checker tried to figure out what was going on and couldn't. The checker called a manager in and went to check out the register tape and the system and see what happened. He came back to Donna and said "there's not enough stuff in your cart to cost you this much, let me look at this".

Apparently what had happened the previous charge had not been closed out. He was going to just look at the ticket and see where our product started and where the other customer's products ended. The checker told him.."the register tape doesn't print like that any more...they are grouped by product, they are not in the order of being checked".

The manager told Donna.. "Well today is your lucky day. You get your groceries free.". Donna tried to get them to re-ring them but they wouldn't do it. Since she was honest and didn't take advantage of their error and hurt the other customer they were more than glad to give her the groceries..

I'm telling you it was more than $200 in groceries...Free.

I like Brookshire Brothers. Kudos to you BB.

Stuff Christians Like and stuff..

OK a while back I posted this.

Then Monday Sept 8th Stuff Christians Like posted this.

If this every hits the market.. I better get my royalty checks..

His is more detailed.. he just has more time on his hands.

My Friday.. a little late

My Friday was a good day.. nothing really exciting happened but here is a brief run through..





Came to work and I think since we had just had some people visiting our terminal from corporate everyone was a little wired. Everyone was laughing and cutting up and doing our normal "hatin" on each other. We also have one particular member of our staff who loves to get others off of their train of thought and is always hijacking conversations....he was in rare form this Friday.





Later had a very good staff meeting although we didn't bring in Chick-fil-a this time. One of my people had made some awesome chicken spaghetti the night before and she brought the left overs and it was awesome!!! very spicy too!!





Spent the afternoon doing some random tasks and planning music for youth on Sunday night...





I realize I have not been keeping up my set lists.. sorry about that.. I will do better this week.. I think.





Wrapped up the day and met my bride at the house and we headed to .... yes... finally....

Went through the drive through.. drove to the stadium and did some tailgating and went to the LP-John Tyler game. Oh and who are you going to pull for Todd? Lee? JT? or LP? I just thought I'd ask again in case someone missed your post.










Friend of mine (Scott Skelton) took this pic at the game while he was shooting game shots and pics of the band and pride.





LP was underwhelming, but we got the W.





Off to the house and off to bed. Had a busy Saturday ahead...

text messages between a mother and son on the first day at Angelina College

Austin-I'm off

Donna-Good Luck

Austin-I forgot paper

Donna-Get some at bookstore

Austin-I'll b late

Donna-Don't know what to tell u

Austin-and there is no place 2 park

Donna-ask someone, u should have gone ealry

Austin-I had 2 park on the street all the way past the bridge and I 4got 2 get something 2 write with

Donna-I can't help u. Deal with it. U have had time 2 get ur stuff together

Austin-and I'm late

McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich vs The Chick-fil-a Sandwich

Howdy all...Today I finally taste tested the McDonald's chicken sandwich...but first some history..

I can still remember when the only Chick-fil-a I knew about was in that mall in Houston we went to a couple of times a year. It was always a really cool treat to take part in the delicious chicken they served at that little mall storefront. It was one of the few fast food meals my dad took part in and looked forward to. I guess that's really the reason this food place has such a special place deep down in my soul.

Chick-fil-a is really good. I love the chicken sandwich.. I love their grilled chicken salad... I love their nuggets. I love to buy a nugget tray and bring it in for my weekly staff meeting at the un-named fortune 500 transportation company I work for. I HATE their shakes..because they are so good..

Am I in love with Chick-fil-a? Not really... There are other real restaurants that I really "love" but the thing I like about Chick-fil-a is that it is fast food and it's aways very good. The people are always super friendly, well dressed, neat and tidy. The facility is always pristine. So many positives for a fast food place so it's a good solid choice. The restaurant is also a ritual for me and Donna after band practice (if we don't make it to mid week peak).

Sooo....finally to the alternative.


The McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. First of all..it was about a third smaller than the Chick-fil-a sandwich so when I took it out I was a little taken by the size. I didn't compare prices so I don't know what the "value" is but I just know what I'm used to and that wasn't it. Presentation=strike one

The pickle.. the chick-fil-a sandwich has one.. I used to take it off when I was a kid but now it is part of the sandwich experience. It's usually soft and pretty tart. You know it's there from the flavor.

The McD sandwich has a whole bun covered with pickles.. 3 of them..and they are not as sour as the cfa sandwich pickle.. also..they are almost like gummie pickles.. almost crisp but not quite..a little hard, a little soft, a little rubbery, but a weak pickle. Sorry... Pickle= strike two

The chicken itself had a good texture and consistency and the crust was nice but there was little to no flavor..I never realize that cfa chicken was seasoned but it obviously has some seasoning on it because it was missing from the McD sandwich.. chicken=strike three.

the catcher missed the ball on a swinging third strike so the runner runs to first but....

The bread.. I'll tell you that I was never really overwhelmed by the cfa sandwich bun..it was a tool that held the chicken..it was an effective tool in that it didn't detract from the experience. The bread was fine... the McD sandwich??? As I bit in to the bun it was like the bread crust layer peeled off the bread and wrapped itself around my teeth like some adhesive bread coat...and I mean it stuck to my teeth. I had to work it off with my tongue. That was really weird. Bun??=thrown out at first...the sandwich is out.

I guess I'd eat another if I had a chicken sandwich jones on a road trip and the only place to eat at was McD's but usually if I'm stuck with McD's I'm gonna go for their crown jewel the big mac...

I really like Chick-fil-a.

God is good!

My Friday...

Started off very early at La Unica.. picking up 80 burritos to bring it to work.. It was time to have a package handlers appreciation breakfast but most of my package handlers don't have schedules that allow me to take them to breakfast after the morning sort.. or to lunch. So I brought them breakfast burritos..




It was also National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. So for all the hard work that my drivers do I wanted to recognize them and I brought them breakfast in as well.














I got my morning reports done. Had a couple of conference calls...one of which focused on the Tropical storm activity headed our way. Fun fun fun...

Had lunch with my son at Chen's..bought some stuff for the church at Sound Tech, cashed my check and went back to the place that pays my bills.

Got some work done and did some auto insurance shopping as well.

Wrapped up the day and did a couple of quick look arounds at Lowe's and Home Depot for some potential weekend project work then headed home to spend the evening with my son Austin celebrating..












Where we watched




















12 wasn't on the list but we watched it anyway because it was in sequence..











I also made some facebook flair for Emily Grimes that looks like this..










I really didn't finish 12.. I was tired and went to bed after checking LDN.com to make sure the panthers had won...

It was a good day..spent some real quality time with my son, we laughed and enjoyed the movies.. we made food and ate together..we laughed at Italian when we saw and remembered that spiderman was on the sidewalk when the they blew the street and dropped the armored car in to the subway tunnel..

It was a very good Friday.

God is good.

Getting the screws put to us by gas companies..

This was gas in Riverside Texas yesterday.. (8/28/08)

Why is it 3.68 in Lufkin today?

Why will it be whatever it will be tomorrow?

I heard on the news yesterday that the price of oil had actually gone down $2/barrell because of US reserves being released on the market and demand was down...

Not in Lufkin I guess...

Why is it always higher in Lufkin???

I guess Riverside is a major oil manufacturing and distribution hub..

I'm not happy...

A comment about Wii Pray.

Cory posted this on his blog..take a look at it...









My comment was regarding what follow up gaming could come...










Next is Wii Worship..you work your way up from a background singer to the worship leader of the church..





Next is Wii Worship Leader..tour edition. Offers multi-player options such as drummer, lead guitarist and evangelist.





After that..Wii Worship…Megachurch edition: allows you to bring in tech personnel, support staff, and has a syms component along with Worship Leader tour version components.





Any other ideas?

____________________________________________________




Funny thing about this is.. I typed this up a couple of weeks ago and saved it as a draft.. then yesterday Todd sends this out on Twitter...

Sometimes I amaze myself..

Now..please tell me what you think about this..not my expertise in prophesy.. this game called Guitar Praise..

Beer Tasting...

When I was in college.. well by my senior year.. I had begun to explore the world of imported beer. My friend Warren and I would venture over to the Deluxe Burger Bar across from my dorm at A&M and try a different beer each week. We would treat it like it was a fine wine, slurping it back to the back of our pallet, swishing it around in our mouth to get the full flavor and also testing if it was a "bottle" beer or a "glass" beer.



Some beers are made.. in fact all are probably are made this way.. to release certain chemicals when it is poured in to the glass and it changes the flavor of the beer. Hopefully to make it taste better. I prefer some beers poured in to a glass .. others I find to be more tasty straight from the bottle. We usually just stuck to one type of beer each time. Wasn't one to mix my beers.



Well last Friday night.. we performed beer tasting a la Cory Glover.. I'd link his blog but it hasn't changed since the last time you looked at it so don't worry about that...



We would each select a beer..then pour a little of our beer in to a friends glass and taste it.. then share with another and perform the same type of tasting again... finally we would finish our selection. It was a fun time. Jeff had cooked some kind of awesome grilled chicken breasts and Polly had supplied some great potatoes and this sinful dessert.



We laughed and ate and talked and watched Olympics and talked and had a great night... take a look at the selection..
Nice huh?

My Friday...

Today I unplugged.... I have been feeling a little apart from my creator as of late and I needed to get back in rhythm with God.

Cory Glover and I started out kinda early.. well real early for him but not so early for me... I met him at his house at 8 this morning and we loaded up a couple of kayaks, some food and shared some awesome coffee that he made in his French press and headed out to Ratcliff. My blackberry was sitting on my dresser at home.. Now that doesn't happen very often.



















I spent most of my morning in prayer. A lot of "The Jesus Prayer".. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner. I used some Mardi Gras beads we got when we went on a mission trip to New Orleans last summer to aid in this prayer.

Also prayed over my Emmaus team and the pilgrims. I then had some free and open discussion with my creator.

Read some new testament..Matthew and Mark. Ate some lunch then read some more.

Picked up my guitar and sang some praises to my God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Then we took a little trip around the lake in the kayaks.

First time in a kayak for me. Wasn't sure how my svelte build was going to handle that little piece of plastic with the hole in it. Except for some understandable awkwardness in handling at first, it was really cool. We did that for a while and then back to the truck and headed home.

Got cleaned up and rested a little then went to Jeff Goodier's house for a little beer tasting. Cory had brought back some local beers from Colorado when he went on vacation and some that were from the Pac NW. We enjoyed some good food, good beer and good conversation as we sampled the different offerings Mr. Glover brought.

Now I'm back home and ready to hit the sack.. a beautiful day with God today. God is good!

A comment on Perfectly Timing your Communion Walk

I posted this comment here.. read it...it's funny...his blog that is..



The silver spaceship comment had me rolling... Loved this one. We don't have to time our walk in our church though. But we do offer about all the ways you can do it without a common cup.

Early (casual..our code name for contemporary) everyone comes up by rows. They can 1. receive communion by intiction.. pull off a hunk of bread.. dip it in the juice and eat the elements at that time.

OR

at the same time option 2 is available..you can come forward eat a piece of bread and pick up a shot glass out of the silver space ship and drink.

OR

at the same time option 3 is available.. you can come forward, eat a bread chiclet and pick up a shot glass out of the silver space ship and drink.

OR

at 11:00 traditional service you can sit a la drive through and wait on the silver space ship to arrive in your lap along with it's smaller satelite sister ship carrying the bread/chiclets.
Option 1 here is eat a bread chiclet and take a shot glass out of the silver space ship...hold the glass..

OR

break off a piece of bread and take out a shot glass from the silver space ship..hold the glass.

We then say aloud our affirmation of faith and we partake of the cup (the little shot glasses) at one time.

I heard this part (the unison cup) is somewhat new from some older parishioners just last night as little shot glass holders had to be made and affixed to the back of the pews so everyone would have a place to put them once they have received the cup.

I think this is a wise choice as I think I might get confused at times with all those little cups in that big space ship and accidentally pick one up that maybe someone else just didn't do a good job of finishing off properly.

I think we do a very nice job of offering a wide variety of options for communion in our church..we're not little but we're not huge. Actually pretty amazing now that I think about it...how many options we offer.

My Friday...

...had to be deleted because I do not have permission to utilize the brand, emblem, name or image of the company I work with in postings to the internet.

Sorry about that.

Pretty amazing though. I post the video on Friday night on Youtube and on Monday morning I'm getting a call from my boss as to why I'm posting stuff about our company on Youtube. Wow.

1984

Commets for posts..

You know.. from time to time I believe my best thinking is done on OPB's.. that's other people's blogs.



I have no idea how many of you are out there in my segment of the blogosphere and I know many of you circle around the same set of blogs I do so this might become redundant for some of you at times but I am going to re-post some of my comments from other blogs on to my blog here at acts215.



Two reasons. 1. I know some people just hit my blog because they are my friends or co-workers and they don't normally read that many blogs.

2. If I have some really good thoughts.. or funny thoughts.. or just long thoughts that deserve the attention and adornments that only a blog post can bring like pictures....











then I'm going to turn my comments in to blog posts.. I will link back to the original blog but I will re post it here.. and you will know that it is a comment by the title..like my "a comment about Neapolitan ice cream"..it says it's a comment.. the next one you will likely see is .. a comment about "Wii Pray". I will link it back to Glover's blog and then I will share my profound comment along with some artwork/pics/adornments.



Have a great day!



This salutation is in no way intended to be an infringement or a re-representation of Chris' blog by a similar name "It is a great day". Although I do enjoy his blog the few times he posts I do not wish to confuse or confound the blog reading public by utilizing the "great day" phraseology. It is only being used here as an endearing phrase of departure and for no other reason.

David Crowder Band.. I just love em....

They take everyones Youtube videos and make one of their own. Cool!!

Called.. "You shot this video".

Enjoy..

A comment about Neapolitan Ice Cream..

The following was actually my comment regarding Todd's blog post about Neapolitan Ice Cream...his post was in response to my request on his skribit widget.. After posting it I realized I should have blogged this topic myself.. so here it is.


OK, when I was a kid..we didn't buy real ice cream. We didn't make enough money to buy that stuff. We bought mellorine. From wikipedia... Mellorine is a lower cost alternative to ice cream, wherein other fats are used instead of butterfat. It can be made out of both animal fat and vegetable fat.

Mellorine is produced by freezing, while stirring a pasteurized mix of milk-derived nonfat solids and animal or vegetable fat (or both). Afterwards, it is sweetened with a carbohydrate sweetener and the addition of flavouring ingredients.

MMMmmmmm..... anyway.

Every once in a while we would get Neapolitan mellorine..that's a mouth full.. and I have to say, that because I didn't know any better, I enjoyed this frozen delight. (Mellorine that is) In a way I do not get real excited about Neapolitan because when I was young I didn't like anything but chocolate but it always seemed to me that the chocolate in the neapolitan was very intense. It seemed super chocolaty and super sweet..it was almost like special dark candy kind of chocolate...so with that I was excited when I saw it in the freezer...it was way better than the chocolate in the chocolate mellorine container.

Negative regarding this?.. Dad insisted that we eat all three flavors.. can't eat all the choc and leave the other two flavors. Must dip across the colors and keep it even.

So.. I would eat the strawberry first.. my least favorite.. then the vanilla.. then the awesome chocolaty feast of neapolitan mellorine chocolate.

Yeah baby!!

As for strawberry now?? I love Blue Bell strawberry for the same reason Todd does NOT like strawberry. I mean it's like they dump a tub of strawberries in there and mix em up. Love it.

I feel the same way Todd does about Blue Bell's "Great Divide" as I do enjoy a mix of vanilla and choc but then my wife does not have the same philosophy as to why the product was made. She feels it was created for options. I can have chocolate or I can have vanilla... NOOO it's for the purposeful combination of the two flavors ... and should be dipped across the flavors (a la my dad) and not dug out of one side...taking all the chocolate leaving some poor unexpecting fool with a pile of vanilla on one side of the bucket. You have to love family dynamics..

I think we have bought 3 containers of Neapolitan ice cream in the near 25 years we have been married. Not something we think about much but for some reason this thing popped in my head when the Skribit was up..kinda like the stay puft marshmallow man in Ghostbusters..