07-31-04 Journal

July 31, 2004

An old slide of guess who...	We had a wonderfully restful day on Sunday. Bro. Gary Hege brought the message in the morning on "A New Creature in Christ". Came home and fixed BLT's for lunch then rested until the evening service. Jennifer Heatwole was in charge of some special singing then Mel Swaggart from the New Holland Congregation brought a message. He was quite an enthusiastic and interesting speaker. After church we went over to Patrick Heatwoles for a snack/supper. Patricks will soon be moving to Columbia to attend Columbia International University. They had all the couples from the church who had been married since them over for a last evening together.... A delicious snack and enjoyable time together!
Bamberg First Baptist Church	Carolina Sue woke me up around 5:30 Monday morning. In the process of getting her settled I noticed that our water pressure was down to almost zero. (We have town water) Since Ina Sue could hardly get started with the washing with no water, we slept in for a bit. When we did get up here we discovered that the problem must have already been fixed. The water was back. We both had successful days of work. In the evening after a supper of taco salad we took a walk together with the baby. Then I began playing with my new toy. I bought a slide scanner for my computer so that I could save some of the old family slides of my dad's. I was pretty happy with the job it did. It does take some work though to touch up the imperfections in the slides.
SCAT Park	We had a big rain on Tuesday. Almost 4 1/3 inches by the nighttime. I started off the day with a service call to the First Baptist church in Bamberg. The ladies there are always a pleasure to work with. The rest of the day was spent trying to work out some snags in our wireless networking out at the New SCAT (South Carolina Advanced Technology) Park. I basically came to the conclusion that I would need to climb our 300' radio tower Wednesday morning in order to upgrade the firmware in the router. I'm not really looking forward to that. :( The Barnwell People Sentinel came out today with their annual "Best of the Best" edition. We were honored to have our team featured there. After work and a supper of sausage pie I worked on getting our finances caught up on the computer while Ina Sue rested. John Beery from VA called about 8:00 and offered to stop in for the night. He had been working up above Florence, SC and didn't really want to drive the whole way back to VA. We were thrilled to have him here for the night and next morning.
Best of the Best, According to the Barnwell People Sentinel.	Wednesday morning I got up early and headed in for our tower job. John went along with me and we met William Brubaker in at the shop. I was ready to climb the tower by 7:30 but we ran into some snags with our ethernet hook-up. We spent the next hour diagnosing that and finally decided that the ethernet cable we had running the whole way down the tower must have gone bad. I really didn't feel like lugging a laptop the whole way to the top so we put it off until I could do some brainstorming. John hung around until about 12:00 then headed back to Virginia. In the afternoon I came up with one of them "light bulb" moments and figured out a way to get around the router upgrade and still do what we needed to do. Praise God! In the evening we went with our small group, (actually just the Daryl Brubaker family made it) to sing at the Bamberg Nursing home. After the singing, Ina Sue & I went out to the House of Pizza. We found out this morning that Bro. Carl Hartman (our mission superintendent in Puerto Rico) had a fall while trimming trees. It sounds like he broke 5 or 6 ribs and his collarbone. He also has a bruised lung which is causing some real concern. Please pray with us for Bro. Carl and the other worker there in Puerto Rico.
Aunt Marsha in her coat of many colors...	Thursday I got up to the smell of ponhaus frying. Yumm! I had another hectic day here and there while Ina Sue cleaned up the car, vacumned the house, went grocery shopping and made food for tonight (all while taking care of the little one) In the evening we met our small group again, this time to to our part of the annual church cleaning. Our portion was the vestibule and church restrooms. What a lovely job! Actually it didn't take that terribly long then we sat down and had a delicious snack/supper together.
Uncle Sherman milking or talking????	I was hoping to get left on our trip to VA in good time Friday but a number of service calls held me up. I finally got home around 4:00 and since Ina Sue already had things packed up we were able to get on the road quickly. We got to Harrisonburg around 11:30. We showed off Carolina Sue to her sleepy Grandmother then hit the sack.
Playing ball with Benjamin	Saturday was a fairly full day, after we got out of bed that is. :) We took Ina Sue's Lord's Prayer cross-stitch down to the framing place in Bridgewater. Then we went to the Dayton Farmer's Market to browse and see some of Ina Sue's old friends. I splurged and bought a chocolate malt Ice Rage from the Kaffee Klatch. Delicious! Then to Sharp Shopper to fill up on our commodities. Mother fixed lasagna for our dinner. We goofed off during the afternoon, swinging Carolina on the swings and playing ball with Benjamin and Andrew.
Picnic at Tidesprings	In the evening Mother planned a family picnic at a place called Tidesprings. It sounded really neat but it seemed like our tour guides (Papa & Mother) didn't quite know the way to get to it. We meandered around over the countryside until everyone felt completely lost in the boonies. We stopped and asked for directions from a local and even after that we went in a circle or two before we finally stumbled on it. It wasn't a whole lot to look at, merely a sort of pit out in the middle of a field (A field that housed a rather large bull by the way) When we got there the pit was almost completely dry. After about a half hour it started flowing and a small brook actually flowed for about 10 minutes. Then it almost seemed to suck the water back into itself and dried out again. It supposedly has gone through this cycle for many years.... We had a wonderful picnic there together with the whole family. When we got back home Papa & I took off our one front wheel to check the brakes which had just started screeching. We decided that it needed professional help. So it looks like we will probably be staying until Monday.