Vacation and Vegas

I like title alliteration...has anyone noticed yet? :)

Molly and I spent last week in St. George, Utah (about 100 miles from Las Vegas) for a vacation/family reunion with my mom's side of our family. There were 17 of us total and we had a wonderful time. Here are some of the things I really enjoyed about our trip, in no particular order:

1. Spending time with and getting to know my family better (okay, so maybe there is some order to this list :) Especially my cousin Daniel's three kids (two of which I had never met): Autumn, Alex, and Ava.

2. The red rock scenery (now, I don't enjoy this quite as much as my mother does...but I still liked it. Liking it and wanting to hike it are different levels of enjoyment in my opinion... :)

3. Meeting Pete Rose and getting his autograph.

4. Driving past the golf course where most of High School Musical 2 was filmed.

5. Watching from the ESPN gallery for part of the World Series of Poker. (Notice I said "watching"...not "playing". Don't start any rumors!)

6. Seeing the amazing hotels of Las Vegas up close and personal for the first time.

7. Playing lots of cards (Euchre and Rook) with my family. I always won.

Okay, I'm kidding. I didn't always win. But just in case some of my family's reading this, I thought I'd carry my competitive streak over a few days :)

Things I didn't like about our trip:
RED-EYE FLIGHTS. ENOUGH SAID.

:)

Anyway, I'm back now and keeping busy with three projects:

1. Getting Sunday's service ready.

2. Leading music for a Cedarville girls basketball camp Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

3. Tim Cary's Summer Spectacular.
Yes, it's this weekend!


See you Saturday and Sunday, I hope!

Tim

Sportsmanship, Sharing, Struggles, and Successes

I think the four words in the title sum up a lot of our experience at Cedarville's basketball team camp this week. Molly and I, along with the JV and Junior High coaches from Northwestern, took twenty girls (between 8th-12th grades) to Cedarville University to play basketball against other schools. In the process, we:

...watched our girls compete in over twenty games (both JV and varsity)

...didn't sleep all that much (Molly)

...lost most of a voice (Tim)

...ate pizza in the cafeteria a lot (Tim)

...had to keep control of high school girls in a college dorm for two nights (Molly)

...learned a lot about coaching, relationships, and basketball (Both of us)

Anyway, it was a neat time to be able to get to know our girls better and hopefully build into their lives. Molly really enjoyed the time she and the other coaches (minus me, since I was obviously not in their dorm) spent with the girls late at night (11 pm meetings anyone?). They talked about what it means to be good sports, using a positive and negative example from the last few months' news. They also had a question-and-answer time where the girls could ask anonymous questions about anything they wanted and have them answered by the coaches: "Who was your hero? If you could go back and change one thing in your life, what would it be?" etc.

Oh yeah, our teams won some games too.

Anyway, I hope our girls are better hoops players from going to camp at Cedarville. And I hope they learned about more than just basketball.

I know we did.

Tim

New Book

I started reading a new book this week called "Respectable Sins: confronting the sins we tolerate" by Jerry Bridges. I have enjoyed this book so far. I have read four chapters, and I am looking forward to reading more of it. Here are a couple of quotes that I thought were really good.

"The truth is, there is never a day in our lives when we are so 'good' we don't need the gospel."

In this book Bridges defines the gospel as
being two folded. "Christ, in His work for us and in us, saves us not only from the penalty of sin but also from its dominion or reigning power in our lives."

So the gospel is not only effective to save us from the consequences of sin, but also from sin's power that daily controls our lives. Therefore, it is vital (as Bridges and others have said) that we "preach the gospel to ourselves daily." We must always remember that the gospel is not only God's prescription for salvation, but also God's prescription for daily living out godliness. The gospel is God's message to provoke us to become who we already are in Christ.

Today's Reading

Here's what I read today in "A Gospel Primer for Christians" by Milton Vincent:

The gospel encourages me to rest in my righteous standing with God, a standing which Christ Himself has accomplished and always maintains for me. I never have to do a moment's labor to gain or maintain my justified status before God! Freed from the burden of such a task, I now can put my energies into enjoying God, pursuing holiness, and ministering God's amazing grace to others. The gospel also reminds me that my righteous standing with God always holds firm regardless of my performance, because my standing is based solely on the work of Jesus and not mine. On my worst days of sin and failure, the gospel encourages me with God's unrelenting grace toward me. On my best day of victory and usefulness, the gospel keeps me relating to God solely on the basis of Jesus' righteousness and not mine.

Storms

Warning, this is my random post of the week. :)

I'm watching Channel 7 last night during all the tornado/thunderstorm warnings, and the lady who was talking said something like this:

"If you're outside trying to watch the storms, you probably don't want to be doing that. You really need to be inside in a safe place right now."

I didn't have much of a problem with her giving this little speech...I mean, obviously, there are less-than intelligent people in the world, but taking time to tell them to seek safety is fine. They should know better, but anyway...

Then she followed up with the next sentence:

"Besides, the rain is coming down so hard you can't really see much anyway."

At that point, I lost it and started laughing. So basically, the only real reason to not stand outside in the middle of a tornado warning is because you won't see anything anyway? Not because the storm is dangerous? "Please don't put yourself in a dangerous situation...unless the view is great, then never mind." Which is more important, taking shelter or taking pictures?

Okay, I'm done.

Just another example of "dumbing down" television, I guess...

June is here!

It finally feels like summer outside...and on the calendar too! Must be June!

The month got off to a great start last night with the Triple-C program. It's always so neat to hear the children recite their verses and everything else they've memorized and worked on! Special thanks to the Hewitts and all the dedicated teachers for their hard work!

As I've probably noted on here before, June means basketball for Molly and I. Outside of the actual season, the only time we're allowed to coach our players is a limited number of days in June and July. Practices, team camps, and summer league are right around the corner!

My other big project, the Summer Spectacular, is coming along nicely. We've already had some donations starting to come in by mail, the music and multimedia is slowly progressing, and I can't believe it's less than four weeks away! Do you have any friends that would love a free night of music? Bring them along! (Sure beats spending $50 to see this kind of show in Branson, Missouri, right? :)

Back to our day at church yesterday: I thought "Mister Ed" gave a great sermon from Psalm 1. It reminded me of a song we taught a few weeks ago during the morning service. I'll leave you with these lyrics as we begin a new work week:

"I will delight in the law of the Lord,
I will meditate day and night.
Then like a tree firmly planted,
I'll be grounded in Your Word!

Blessed is the one who follows
the way of the Lord!"
ccli 184080


Delight in His Word this week!
Tim