It doesn't matter whether your farming, teaching, selling, building, preaching, or accounting, we all need a little down time once in a while. On the farm there is some time in late February and early March when life is slower. The same is true for late July and early August.
Jan and I had the last week of July marked off for some time together somewhere. We just weren't sure where. We decided to drive to Missouri.
We stopped in Kansas City to check in on Justin and Denise. Justin grew up in our church. He had our son Mike for a Cadet Counselor and Mark and Stacy for Young Peoples. His father Marcus and I led 5th-8th Sunday School music for 10 years and served as elders together. Marcus passed away 8 years ago after a battle with cancer. Justin is taking chemo treatments. We were happy to learn that he was doing his best to be active in spite of his constant tiredness. Please pray for his continued progress.
I'm not sure what it is but for some reason the gals like to stop at IKEA when we are in the area and Jan was looking forward to following the arrows around the store.
Jan had mentioned her I-pad was needing charged. So I gladly offered to handle that. I found a plug in, a cup of coffee, and a couch, and told her to call me when she was finished shopping.
Rather than taking I 70 east across the state we headed through the country. Missouri's crops look as good as Iowa's.
We checked in at Tan Tara Resort in Osage Beach and enjoyed walking around, eating out, and swimming.
We headed northwest along the lake to Gravios Mills to visit and stay with Bob and Rita a couple of days. Bob and I had worked together earlier on keeping conservative values in our country.
Their home is right next to the lake. So we enjoyed long boat rides just relaxing and enjoying the scenery.
Bob and Rita have a family furniture business in Rapid City, SD. They had their grandson Sam staying with them. We enjoyed taking the boat to breakfast.
We also made some new friends. We would sit on Dick and Shirley Botts dock and visit and swim.
The Botts own over 100 Christian radio stations around the country. Shirley has a barn on their property a lot like Jan's cabin and uses it for gettogethers and family meals so her and Jan enjoyed visiting.
After supper one evening Dick asked what movie everyone would like to see. His daughter suggested we go on a boat ride instead. So Rich got out the houseboat.
We enjoyed a beautiful evening on a 60 ft. houseboat on the Lake of the Ozarks. Below is Shirley, Jan, and Rita, all new friends, visiting.
The lake was getting busy because of the weekend. However we saw this one guy just sitting dead in the water. So we turned around and asked him if he needed help. He said his jet ski had quit and of course you don't carry a cell phone in the water. We hooked him up to the back of our ride.
He wasn't for sure which cove he was staying in but he had a general direction so we headed the way he suggested and finally found his friends.
It doesn't matter whether your selling furniture, running radio stations, or farming, home always looks better when you get back. The corn crop in Iowa looks remarkable. Maybe even unbelievable. I am looking forward to harvest.
God also gives us the responsibility of helping Him harvest souls. Last week our church had a second morning service where we invited our neighbors. Thanks, Pastor Tom for helping out. We had 15 guests worship with us that did not have a church home. That's exciting. My prayer is that our church family will anticipate harvesting souls as much as we all anticipate harvesting crops.
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