Small Groups

 

Left work early Friday after having a Zaxbys salad at our lunch meeting. Doctor set me up for the home sleep study, which wore Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. Return the apparatus today and get the results back on Friday. Hard to sleep on Friday but better Sat and Sun.

 

When I got home from the doctor I turned on the Braves replay. Started raining so they went to the delay, so I got to see that comeback win from June you were talking about. Watched the Thursday, Friday, and Sunday games because I love those feather uniforms.

 

C and M cooked Mexican for Friday night dinner. A&C ate with us. Chicken, homemade refried beans, rice, homemade salsa, guacamole, corn. Having the leftovers for lunch today. Later A&C and M went to Target to mess around while I watched the Braves.

 

Saturday morning I cleaned upstairs. Took pictures of shoes to sell on eBay. Started some laundry. Deleted emails. Fixed quesadillas for lunch. Ceil went to a brunch. M worked the early shift. A&C read for a while then went to Avalon. Later they met friends at Chipotle, then went to a concert at the Roswell river park. Matthew joined them after work.

We went to a surprise birthday party for our friend Cindy Cho. Her husband Preston ordered the Korean catering from a place near Gwinnett Mall. A whole bunch of Korean food: blue crab, beef, pork, rice, wraps, seafood, sushi, etc. Both the Cho’s went first and explained what was what. Both got huge helpings and went back for seconds. I filled my plate with a variety of items, ate everything, but did not go back for seconds. Their French neighbors brought a special dessert.  Eight couples in all: Clapps, Chiles, Halls, Earharts, Sam, Rafael, Cho’s, and Murphys.

 

Woke up late Sunday morning with a huge mark on my head from the sleep device. Great, since I had to speak in Sunday School: five minutes on my small group experience. Saturday I had written up several paragraphs so my talk went okay for the most part, except two times went I went off script (below). Several others spoke as well, on small groups and recent mission trips.

 

Sunday was new JFBC church pastor Clay Smith’s first sermon. A very good preacher. I took notes and will send them separately. The vote to call him as pastor as unanimous. Lentels and rice for lunch. Watched the Braves and had nodded off when Acuna hit his game-tying home run in the ninth. Anna attended Grace Midtown then drove to Milledgeville to help Christian move to Athens.

 

Word of the day: ineffable. (1) too big or extreme for words to express (2) not to be spoken of due to its sacredness (3) indescribable.

 

My group talk: While Ceil and I have participated in several couples community groups, I really hadn’t been in a small group with other guys since I was in college. I knew this was a step I needed to take. With our kids basically all out of the house, making the time commitment would not be much of a sacrifice. For the most part I really wasn’t doing anything that great with the time.

 

Funny that when I first signed up for the small groups it asked what day and time would be best. I didn’t want weekday mornings but made myself available for most weekday evenings. Just before I hit send at the last second I said why not, and checked off Saturday morning as well. Of course, that’s what I got.

 

Our group was small, with only three guys. Make sharing and getting to know each other all the easier. Great to have Joe as the group leader, and Rob is a natural at asking questions and and adding to the discussion. Seemed like every week each of us were able to share something from the texts that the others hadn’t seen. Sometimes all three of us would hit on the same nugget of wisdom. This might’ve been the most enriching part of my small group experience, digging into the scriptures and discussing what God is teaching me with other guys, on a weekly basis. None of wanted to be like the disciples, who without our hindsight seemed to always be saying the wrong thing to Jesus.

 

The three of us were committed to making each meeting, which was a blessing. With travel and work and families sometimes we had to be schedule creatively, which was no problem. We were constantly sharing our personal lives, what was going on with family as well as struggles we were having at work. We have our own What’s App group to communicate during the week, and got to checking up on each other when something was going on.

 

Those of you who were in groups know that the first several meetings we went through the Jen Wilken book How to Study the Bible with both our Hearts and our Minds. Then throughout our study of the Gospel of Matthew we always tried to end up discussing what the God was teaching us about Himself, His story, and Jesus.

 

In our last meeting we agreed we’d be signing up for the next round of small groups. If any of you want to join us on Saturday mornings, we’d love to have you.