Weekend Notes

It is Friday night and there is a rain delay in the Reds/Cardinals baseball game. It's been a pretty good week. I had a wonderful Sunday that started with a visit to the youth group's Sunday School class at Hopedale. It was really just a kind of question and answer time that was sort of centered around the thought of what heaven is like. They had some great questions and were really interested in what the Bible has to say and are trying to figure out just why we believe what we believe.

I left Sunday School at Hopedale to drive the few miles to Shady Grove Baptist Church and fill in for a sick pastor/friend. The fellowship of believers at Shady Grove is a friendly group of believers and I can tell that they really love their new pastor. It was fun to preach there again.

Wednesday night I was at Victory Baptist for the closing program of their AWANA program. I'm looking forward to hearing what decisions were made that night. I always have a great time when I get to go to these kind of programs.

This weekend (the first weekend of May) is our annual Community Day event at Hopedale Baptist. This is one of the biggest community events on our church calendar. We will have many inflatables games for kids, some rides, some food, some music, and some guy doing a few magic effects and telling people that God loves them and Jesus died for them. There are some great prizes that are given away to our neighbors and a hope that they realize that we are here to help them face the struggles of day to day living and to give them some answers about spiritual matters and eternal things. It looks like the rain is forecast to be through the Ozarks by Sunday and we should have a very nice day.

May will be a very full month...Camp meetings, Christian Writer's meeting to elect officers for next year, a meeting in Jefferson City to talk about evangelism in Missouri Baptist life, Hannah's Graduation and Open House, Aaron will be travelling to Scotland for an international volleyball tournament representing Team USA with Athletes International, and Chris will travel for her annual sisters weekend with the girls.

At work, a supervisor job was filled from the controller workforce and that leaves a hole in the rotation. Not a big deal to management but it will make it difficult for the rest of us to get time off and we'll begin some shifts and staffing levels that are below what management is willing to go to in order for controllers to take leave. Nothing new there...just more of the same old stuff. We do have a few guys that are well into their training--one should be fully certified by mid-summer. However, we also have another supervisor that will likely retire this summer and two controllers that will retire before the end of the year. But don't worry, we're no where near the mandatory six day weeks that many facilities are at and the FAA continues to tell the flying public that there is no shortage of air traffic controllers. On the plus side of work life, I continue to pick up a second midnight shift each week and the new staffing level may allow me to work three each week. This keeps me away from most of the garbage and helps to keep my attitude from getting too soured by the everyday junk.

If you are in the Ozark area on Sunday afternoon, stop by and visit us at Hopedale. You'll have a great time.

John