Call me Ramses.

Well - This week is Vacation Bible School. The entire church has been transformed into a rather impressive Egyptian landscape. The theme of the week is the story of Joseph - subtitle: "From Prison to Palace." Catchy, I know. The people here are super intense about VBS. I'm playing the part of Ramses, the pagan prison/palace guard, and one of the priests are playing the part of Joseph. It's been pretty hilarious so far. I'm basically the bad guy. The younger kids pee their pants at the mere sight of me, and the older ones expend an annoying amount of effort trying to steel my plastic, yet impressive looking sword. "That's not even a real sword," they say, "Your shield is totally plastic, You won't do anything to me... Naa Naa Naaa." Those little devils should be thankful I'm a pacifist.

The nice kids on the other hand just try to convert me to Christianity.

Truly though, it's sad to see real, concrete evidence of the devastating affects technology and television have had on killing the imagination of children. It seems that any kid older than like 2nd grade who isn't homeschooled has such a hard time entering into this world we've created for them. I think this is why I don't want my kids to watch TV. Anyway, VBS has provided a nice reprieve for me from what has become the daily grind of this pretty intense experience. I've been able to open up a few books that I want to read - I finished David Taylor's For the Beauty of the Church (yes Nate, let's talk about this - lots of very interesting thoughts) and now I've halfway through After You Believe which has proven, as could be expected, refreshingly simple.


On another note - my Sunday sermon is now behind me and it really feels like the end of this whole field ed thing is in sight. I preached at all 3 services on July 4th - and made it through successfully without once mentioning the great celebration of the demise of the British. I've delayed posting about it, because I've hoped to have a video of it for you all to see - but we've had some technical difficulties, which at this point I'm not sure when they'll be resolved, and so I'll point y'all in the direction of the video once I myself get a handle on it. The audio of it is up on the St. Peter's website. I've gotten a lot of encouragement and positive feedback about it. So I'll be anxious to hear anything y'all have to offer. My sermon is on Galatians 6, and is provocatively titled: "What Do I Do When Someone Sins?"

So that's all, just an update for y'all. I'm getting more and more anxious to get back to Durham. Elizabeth, I hope you're ok. We had a missions team from St. Peter's that was literally in transit to Uganda when the terrorist attacks happened - and they've decided to come back home.

STRENGTH!