He is risen indeed!

Hello Everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Resurrection Celebration! We had a wonderful time worshiping in our town of Palouse.
It was a busy week- and weekend. I participated in the Tennabrae service at Garfield Methodist on Thursda. This is a quiet service of the Lord's Supper, Prayer, Singing and scripture reading. With each reading a candle is extinguished- there are seven candles. By the end of the service you are in the dark.
Tina, the kids and I went to a great reader's theatre at Garfield Christian Church on Good Friday. It was an excellent program. Danny was a little loud and active- as usual. But the youth and folks there did an awesome job.
Saturday, I started off the day with the monthly men's breakfast. We had some good eats! Thanks guys.
Following the breakfast a few folks from the church and many others from Palouse participated in tree planting. That was fun. Did I mention it was snowing on Saturday? From about 7am until noon, i think, it snowed. Crazy~ there is an old German proverb- "Green Christmas, White Easter." We had a Green Christmas and we almost had a white Easter.
Anyways after the tree planting we had a fun choir practice- getting ready for Sunday.
Oh- I forgot to mention that we discovered a gas leak on the church boiler on Friday. So for the rest of the weekend, including Sunday- we had only our fireplace in our fellowship hall to heat the whole church. The sanctuary was at 56 degrees when I came in on Sunday. But with a space heater, the fireplace, some body heat and solar heat- we warmed up to 65 degrees by the end of the Resurrection Sunday service.
148 people can make a lot of body heat. It was awesome to have 148 people there worshiping our Lord Jesus. That is 65 more people than Easter 2005.
Anyways the service was a bit long- we had the usual stuff- hymns, prayer, offering, give and take Bible Study- children's sermon- but we also had Lord's Supper and we had a mini-cantata. The mini-cantata included scripture readings and two "brief" sermons. Okay they weren't too brief.
Most folks stayed for the fellowship time afterwards and an egg hunt. Thanks for all those who did all the work on hosting the fellowship time and doing the egg hunt. Thanks also to Tecla for a job well done with directing the choir. Thanks also to Terry for playing piano so beautifully and Penny for doing likewise with the flute.
Thanks to Don for a job well done on the sound. We had lots of mics- and other stuff- and it was all very good.

The messages were this- we need the cross! And- the stone was rolled away THEN and NOW. And lastly the resurrection is a promise for NOW and LATER! I will be getting the sermon manuscript online on my sermon blog soon. Right now I am on a friend's computer- so I don't have access to my sermon file.
we are taking a brief post Holy Week break in chelan staying with our friends Ray and Christina. But we will be back to work by Thursday evening- or Friday morning and I'll be in the pulpit Sunday-- raring to go.
Thanks to all who pray for our ministry in Palouse. It is such a wonderful community. I am honored and blessed to serve in Palouse.
Christ is risen-