Catching up

Thursday was to be a bike ride day, but we learned that we had a kitchen band engagement. We rode our bikes to the John Knox to perform.  It was too windy to continue to so we just returned home.  Armand and I played golf at 12:30 in the wind.  We had a horrible round but saved Roger.  He had gone earlier but locked his keys in his van and hitched a ride home with us.  It was John Hamel’s birthday and they took us out to the Outback for dinner as a repayment for our allowing them to use our house for their relatives while we were in Israel.  From there we went to a concert featuring 2 men’s groups, 1 women’s group and a Valley wide band.  On the way home we barely missed an object that had fallen in a lane of the expressway.  We were blessed to have been able to swerve around it.  It was a busy day and we were very tired.

Friday morning we went to Hamel’s to help them display items for a patio sale to be held Saturday morning.  We were surprised about how little they had to sell as compared with the huge amounts they had last year.  We were able to make it to our exercise class before going home to eat and dress for our afternoon at the hospital.  We enjoyed our service and were surprised that we knew 3 people who were patients and they were all in the same corridor on the 2nd floor.  I was able to visit with each of them.  I brought home our catfish/shrimp dinner and enjoyed relaxing in the evening.

Saturday morning I led the driver safety class for people in our park.  I had been concerned that the new DVD player would not be connected for me to use during the class, but it was there.  The man in charge of that job is unreliable, but his wife pushed him into completing his job.  We had lunched and rested until 3:00 when we took our neighbor lady to Mercedes for a handbell concert.  It was 1 woman playing 37 handbells.  She was entertaining and played some hymns.  We were especially moved by her playing “Go to Dark Gethsemane” from her Holy Week CD.  I even bought one.  We returned and had Judy come for pizza.  She was the widow who had attended with us.  We are trying to do something nice for someone each day during Lent.  She was today’s recipient.  I worked on practicing for Sunday’s message in the early evening.

We had 39 in attendance with us in worship despite at least 4 regulars being ill.  One was in the hospital having his gall bladder removed.  We caught Rose and Armand at home and invited them to have lunch with us.  Evelyn had slow cooked a whole chicken and had cleaned much Swiss chard from our garden.  We enjoyed what will likely be our last gathering with them until next season.  They left and I watched Purdue get beat by IU.  They just couldn’t hit some easy shots but did play hard.  They will continue play in the Big 10 tournament.  We both took bike rides around the park because it was such a beautiful day. 

Monday was Armand and my final golf for the season.  It was a slightly windy day protecting us from too many mosquito bites.  We were both blessed with our best rounds of the season.  Evelyn went off to exercise and run errands while we played.  After lunch I took Evelyn to her eye appointment to check her retinal occlusion.  We thank God that the injury seems to be healing better.  We were sad, however, that no one thinks that she will ever see out of the eye again.  I ran 3 errands while she was being examined.  One errand was to see if one of Joe’s employees could show me how to reduce the size of pictures I send via email.  One of them did show me how, but I couldn’t do it when I came home.  Evelyn had spent some time today making tortilla soup of the left over chicken, and we enjoyed it for 2 meals. 

We are grieving for the victims of the tornadoes in Indiana and Kentucky.  We will be able to contribute some money when our church leaders organize workers to go and help with the clean up.  We even learned that part of the system went right over Roswell, GA where Stacy lives.  We thank God for their safety.