Prayer for Dummies

I'm preaching at River's Edge Community Church on Sunday morning. Looking at Jesus' words to his disciples about prayer in Luke 11. I'm working from some notes for a sermon I gave last year at City of Peace in London, though I think I have a slightly different perspective this time around. In the middle of support raising, I'm finding it very difficult to pray, even as I have a great need to be connecting to God in prayer. I'm also feeling a bit like the shameless guy who bangs on his neighbor's door in the middle of the night...I've become rather shameless in my requests to God these days. Also feeling like I need to hear the truth that God is not in the business of giving his children scorpions and rocks; he gives good things like his Spirit to be with us.
So yeah, Prayer for Dummies...that's where I'm at.

The Empire Strikes Back

I promise, this will be the last post about Settlers for a while. But I felt compelled to share that the setback suffered at Mark's hands last week was merely temorary. I returned to top conquering form on Thursday evening, soundly defeating our friends Dave and Erika, who are both seasoned players. That's it, I promise...on to something else.

A setback in the empire

Yes, it's true, last night I was defeated by my brother Mark at Settlers. The string of 6 consecutive wins has been broken.

Settlement

I just won Settlers of Catan for the fifth time in a row. Settlers is our favorite game, by far. You normally need 3-6 people to play, but in London we played with our imaginary friend Joe (that shows how much we love the game, not how insane we are). Sometimes Joe won.
But for the past two weeks, I've been on a role. My friend Tim can't touch me...Somer just sits and knits between turns, and my brother Mark had a bad case of malaria strike his settlements.

Crabbing on the Wye

Visited some long-time family friends who live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland on Saturday. The crabbing exploits of Wye River Web are legendary, so my brothers and I thought we'd try our hand at it and see if his skills would rub off on us.

Here I am on the dock, helping the Legend himself load the boat for our final run of the day. As we pulled in the last traps, we were caught in a heavy downpour. As the rain splashed on the surface of the river, the sun came out and caused a rainbow to appear on top of the water. It was beautiful, and almost the perfect ending to the day.


The perfect ending came a few minutes later, once we had arrived back on shore, put some dry clothes on, and started to steam the crabs. They were huge! Somer bravely holds this example - unfortunately the camera angle fails to show how close the crab is to me! The Legend had indeed come through for us.


The girls also got in on the boating action. Here we are flying back to shore. My brother Andrew is piloting the boat.





Somer also has a couple good pictures, including a nice close-up of a crab, over on dailyofferings .