It Was One Of Those Weekends

The weekend started out great. We had a teen activity at our house on Friday night. There were 13 people all total - a fabulous turnout for a small church! We even were able to lead one of the teen girls to the Lord - even better!

Saturday rolls around and we were getting the house ready for company on Sunday. Walter and I paid bills and we actually had some money left over. We had been wanting to go to the Youth Conference at Pacific Baptist Church which starts tonight but weren't sure we could go until we paid bills. I'm telling ya it was a miracle! Walter asked me how we had extra money and I told him I didn't know other than the Lord was providing the way. So we made arrangements to go.

We knew our neighbor kid was having a party Saturday night. He told us and even asked us if he could face his stereo speakers away from our house (huh? I don't quite understand that one but...). I'm not sure if he thought he was pulling the wool over our eyes or not with that question. So the party got started and it was loud but we could handle it. 11:00 p.m. rolls around and we decided to call the police and have them get the kid to turn down the music (in this day and age we the citizens can't say anything - it'll only egg them on :( ). We called again at about 11:45 p.m. I didn't even try to go to bed until after midnight. We see 1:00 a.m. on the clock and the music went from loud to window rattling and we could hear every.single.word that was being sung or screamed or whatever. We called the police again - this time the police were on their way. The music was shut off - but only for 30 minutes. It started all.over.again! I moved out to the couch and couldn't quite hear it as loud. Walter ended up calling the police 2 more times. They showed up at 3:00 a.m. and made them take their sound system inside. It wasn't any little sound system, either. The speakers alone were each 5 feet tall! Not only was the music loud but there was underage drinking going on - the kids put at least 1 beer can on our fence. When I got up at 6:00 a.m. the kids were still on the patio continuing their party - only quietly.

Usually, I just get mad at the lack of consideration this neighbor kid has for everyone else (he's had parties many times before). But the Lord reminded me that the unsaved only think about themselves. These days, kids aren't being raised to have character. That's what Jose is missing - character. It's so sad! We've invited him many times to church and even tried to tell him about the saving grace of Jesus Christ. To which he laughs and scorns at. So sad!!!!

So we got all of 2 solid hours of sleep before we needed to get up and get ready for church. I so badly needed toothpicks to hold my eyes open! Thankfully, we were teaching in Jr. Church so the kids kept me awake! After church, we had a couple over for dinner - again I tried another new recipe - Calico Squash Casserole (which is a total no no - one of these times it's going to fail - yikes!). The food turned out really good (I was surprised because we had a terrible storm go thru yesterday and power was flickering and I was totally depending on my oven to have everything ready when we got home).

We went to church for the evening service. For those of you that don't know, I make the financial deposits for our church each week. We went to the bank last night. I made the night drop, got back in the car, and it DIED. Nope. Nadda. Nothing. It's an electrical problem. No lights. No fan. No air conditioning. Great - at least we were somewhere where there were lots of lights. Thankfully, I had my phone with me AND it was fully charged! We were across the street from a major hotel - another plus. We were only a couple miles away from the airport for a rental car - another plus. My husband was with me - again another plus! It happened at night so no scorching heat beating on us - another plus! As we looked back on all of this we realized the Lord was really looking out for us and we are sooooooo thankful!

We got a tow truck and had the van (aka "the beast") towed and dropped off at a repair shop. Walter got me and the boys a taxi to a rental place and I got a car (really a quad cab full-size truck). I've never driven a truck before - it's pretty nice. Another amazing thing is the rental company didn't take debit cards - only credit cards. Typically, we don't carry credit cards anymore. For some reason, I had one in my wallet. Hmmmmmm, I think the Lord worked that one out for us, too. I picked up Walter and Lyndsey and we headed home. We had a really nice ride home - we didn't feel all the bumps in the road like we do in our van - another plus.

We're not sure if we're going to the youth conference or not now. All depends on the repair bill. But if the Lord perfectly orchestrated everything that happened last night, He can perfectly orchestrate a miracle for us to go to the youth conference, too! My confidence is in Him only! We'll wait and see.

Long, I know. But it WAS one of those weekends! Ta ta for now!