Lil' Smokies or Meatballs

The Straits Evangelical Free Church Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration Planning Committee (SEFC25ACPC) convened today to hammer out some of those pesky details. As it stands, there will be an open house on Saturday, May 26, from 5-8pm. This will be an opportunity for fun and fellowship and of course some sort of meat soaking in barbeque sauce. Then, on Sunday afternoon after the worship service, we shall have a tasty meal together at the church.

We will be sending out another mailing with all this information in the next week. Though I know we are still 5 weeks away, it would be nice to hear from folks who are fairly certain they are coming. Feel free to leave a comment on the site or email us.

I have received some more pictures and I encourage others to send some along. The above photo is of the groundbreaking for the church building. This brings me to this weeks trivia question:

Can you name all of the individuals in this photo? (click for larger)

Bonus points: When was this?

Making plans, planning

As the big weekend gets closer, the details for the reunion celebration are getting a tad more refined. This past week's congregational business confirmed one of the more "milestone-esque" things we plan to do - Burn the building mortgage! The board has also taken up deliberations on whether or not to notify the local lending institution on whether or not we will pay off said mortgage prior to burning it. It was a close vote, but conventional wisdom was that we should pay off the debt before we burn the paperwork...... at least I think thats the order. Details on the preach-off are a little sketchy, still.

We would enjoy hearing from folks who think they'll be able to make it here for the big weekend. If you would like to comment on the blog, or send an e-mail that would be encouraging, although we plan on having food --------, I mean fellowship at the church site anyway. More details about the weekend are going to be published here, and also another mailing is coming up. The efforts to bring in Luis Palau, Jars of Clay, Tommy Walker, Ron DiCianni, Steven Curtis Chapman, Rick Warren and Geraldo Rivera have met with rather immovable scheduling conflicts thus far, but we'll let you know if they get back to us.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Easter

April 8, 2007 was Easter Sunday. As is tradition at S.E.F.C., we had a wonderful sunrise breakfast at 8:00a.m. (O.K., sunrise was around 7, but it was very cloudy that day) After a delightful menu of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, fruit, rolls, potatoes,(somebody ask Dan Quayle about my spelling!) coffee and O.J., we settled in for a long winter's nap. No, wait. It had been snowing, and was about 17 that morning, but the thrill was celebrating with family the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus. This was a beautiful time of looking at the big picture of salvation, from broader perspective. An Easter message from....Exodus, of course!

From songs, prayers and reminiscences of how much we are blessed, to sharing communion and singing Rise Again, the family of God didn't talk of an Easter bunny, or how 'the world' has stolen the meaning of Easter. A dead man rose from the grave and spoke to his friends. He gave us marching orders, and promised the power of His Spirit. All in all, a pretty good day. A pretty good day indeed!

Hiking in '85

Twenty-five years means a lot of potlucks, camping trips, parties, Christmas programs, and just general get-togethers. This means there must be a lot of photographs floating around. Maybe nicely sorted in a cute little album or just floating around a shoe box with an old cassette tape and a candy wrapper. Either way, now would be a wonderful time to dig these treasures up to share with everyone at the open house.

How should I go about doing that? Funny you should ask. The easiest, though less exciting route, is to throw them in some kind of album and bring them along when you come Memorial Day weekend. Even better, though a tad more difficult, would be if you could digitize said photographs and email them to sefc25@gmail.com. We will be running a slide show of these photographs during the open house. Now won't that be nice?

Note: I'm not sure who that young man is, sitting on a lap on the lower right-hand side, but boy does he look sharp.