May Update

My mom went to heaven 4 years ago today.  I thought of her on Mothers’ Day this year and wondered what Mothers’ Day is like in heaven.

Our Mothers’ Day for the Moms in my family that are still on earth was fun.  A while ago, a family in our church gave us a dining room table and hutch that they were replacing.  They are both in excellent condition and have been in their family for two or three generations.  We were honored that they would pass them on to us.

Anyway, Krista was getting out things to put in the hutch and came across some plates she had from her parents.  She remembered a fuller set when she was younger, but some of the set must have gotten lost over the years.  She found a full set on line, so I got that for her for Mothers’ Day.  They are now all nicely displayed in our hutch.

All the local families went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries for Mothers’ Day lunch.  We like the low-key feeling there and the food is excellent.  Then we returned to our house for rhubarb custard pie Krista had made.

In church that morning a group of guys sang a “Heaven Medley” to honor the mothers in our church, and we gave each mother a book by John MacArthur (one of my favorite Christian authors) called “Twelve Extraordinary Women.”

The last weekend in April, Zach went with the Awana Journey teens from our church to the Summit competition.  This is the one Krista and I have been going to with the teens for the past several years when it’s been in Chicago.  This year Awana decided to have two Summits:  the one our group went to in Washington, DC, and one in Kansas City, MO.  Krista and I didn’t go this year because we had a pretty small group going, and they didn’t need us.  They all did very well in Bible Quizzing, Games, Volleyball, and Fine Arts competitions.  Zach participated in Bible Quizzing, Games, and Volleyball.  In Bible Quizzing, they ended up in sixth place in the championship round (out of about 35 teams).  In Games and Volleyball, since we had so few teens there, they teamed up with other churches to compete.  They made the silver round in Games.

Next year Awana is going back to one Summit for the whole nation at the Washington, DC, location.  We will (Lord willing) attend that one since both Amelia and Krista will have achieved their Citation Award for completing 10 years’ worth of Awana books.

On April 27, I went with Hannah and Kevin to see Kevin receive a Daisy award (http://daisyfoundation.org/) for excellence in Nursing.  He was nominated multiple times, and was the first “travel” nurse at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo to ever even be nominated, much less to have actually won the award.  We are all very proud of him!

We celebrated Cai’s birthday (5/5) with him after he got home from college.  Krista and I went and picked him up on 5/11.  We went out to eat that night with him and his girlfriend, Amy, and Carissa, her boyfriend Matt, and Caitlin.  It was so good to see all of them and to meet Amy!

Cai now is at training in Chicago for his summer Awana internship.  He is going to be travelling with and helping two of our local Awana missionaries, the Bennetts and Schoenheits.  Please pray for him as he does this work and raises his support for the summer.

I recently accepted a new job here at Xerox.  I’ll be working in the Interoperability Lab doing software testing and packaging for our Xerox customers.  I’ll be transitioning to that new job over the next two to four weeks.  Please pray for me in that transition.

This past weekend, we celebrated Kevin’s birthday (5/14).  We are so glad to have him as part of our family!

I think that is all of my news for May, so until June…