Greetings to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Last Friday may have been the best day off I have had yet. I spent the day with one of our members who was a gunsmith his whole life. I took a couple of my antique guns out to him to look at. The one was in pretty bad shape, but he just called me today to tell me he test fired it and it worked fine. He was excited cause it was one he had never seen before, and we had to look it up in the book to see what it even was. I was excited cause I knew he would be able to actually fix it up and getting it working. Besides working on that gun, we also just sat around his shop talking and smoking cigars. It was a great way to spend a day off.
It was snowing most of the day Friday and then Saturday it got bitter cold. It has been in the negative teens all weekend, so I didn't get a chance to go snow shoeing or anything outside. I spent all day Saturday working on tax prep stuff and just having a nice lazy day. Then yesterday I was at the church all day. We had two really nice services with an awesome Bible study in between. We are still working through Romans and yesterday we covered Romans 6 and baptism. It was an amazing discussion, and not only did I enjoy it, but I think the people enjoyed it as well. We are getting a really good crowd of people every Sunday morning which makes it that much more fun.
Then after church, we had our new members dinner and orientation. Then I changed the church sign and almost lost a few fingers to frost bite. We still have the old fashion, change the letters type of sign. Pastor Ludwig gave me that duty after dealing with it for so long. Yesterday, in the negative twenties was a fun time to change the letters. You can't wear gloves either because the letters are flat plastic, so they are really hard to get a hold of with bare fingers.
Then last night we had Bible study with our Sunday night group. We are working through the book Spirituality of the Cross. It is a small group of people who have been Lutheran their whole life, so I wasn't sure how the discussion would go, but it actually went really well. Today has been very quite around the church. With the holiday, there was no preschool. So it was just Ruth, her daughter who did not have kindergarten, and myself holding down the fort. Tomorrow is our blood drive and we don't have as many people signed up as I would like. We will see how it goes tomorrow I guess.
I didn't realize how much I miss Bible studies during the Christmas season. It was nice to have the extra time, but now that we are getting back into them, I am realizing how much I missed them. Especially the Romans Bible study, we work through some awesome topics and discussions. I am always amazed at how much I learn one while I prepare for the study, but then two during the actually study itself. Even though I am the one teaching, the Spirit giving me the words to say and the analogies to work through always surprises even me. Just talking through these things out loud, with real life questions and examples, helps me grow in my own understanding and faith of God's Word. So my plug for today, if you are not currently attending any Bible studies, find one and start going. If you can't find any that are currently happening, start one yourself. Call up a few friends, invite them to your home some evening, and just start discussing. It doesn't matter if you don't have a pastor or church worker there to give you all the "correct" answers, The growing happens in the discussion, the wrestling with the text, the new questions you never had before. Then if need be, you can ask you pastor those questions at a later date. But the important thing is just to be in the Word and be in the Word with fellow believers. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them, says God. He is with you, He will guide you and give you new insights, new understandings, and you will give each other encouragement and strength as you work through His Word together. I am glad I am currently part of four Bible studies right now and hope that number only continues to increase. Blessings on your reading, studying, wrestling, and growing.
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