Passin' Through

Merry Christmas! I was passing through the neighborhood, and I decided to drop in and leave a quick message here. My sincere apologies for the prolongued absence in blogging here. Really, I have all sort of brilliantly scintillating things to say...well, okay, mildly entertaining perhaps, or at least moderately interesting. It's just a matter of getting the time to sit down and write it out in a way that makes sense (which is, of course, far more work than most non-writers know!).

We had a pleasant and relaxed Christmas here, which is sometimes exactly what a fellow needs. We're off tomorrow to go visit my mom for a few days, along with the rest of my siblings -- Christmas is usually the only time all year when we're all in the same place at the same time, since we scattered to the four winds, following the Lord's leading in our individual lives. This year, when we return, most of the siblings will be coming down here to Burgaw with us for a visit. We're really looking forward to having them around. My brothers will do a little teaching/preaching for me (and one is preaching for our cousin's church's watch-night service on Monday), and the sisters will do some musical things for the church, and it will be nice to visit with them some, too.

We had planned to have everyone stay at our new house. But at this point, we're still in mortgage-lending-company limbo. I've become pretty annoyed by the ineptitude of someone -- the problem is, it's just about impossible for me to tell whose. We get lots of excuses about the company being behind, it being the end of the month, and so on -- but this is the end of the SECOND month in what should be about a 48-hour process (and it's not like the real estate market has exactly been booming lately to push them behind). We didn't even get a second batch of stipulations until an entire month after we submitted everything they asked for (and pleaded with them for the entire month to let us know if there were possibly anything else they might conceivably want from them). Anyhow, as it turns out, the lawyer we signed with has been on vacation for the better part of a week, and won't be back until next week, either. So we're stuck filing extensions with HUD and living out of boxes. Ah, well. It's honestly not something I'm stressing over, and my wife is taking it as well as can be expected (given that she's the one who has to spend most of her time in the house with the boxes heaped everywhere). There's no reason why the deal should fall through, it's still an excellent deal, and we can wait for a good thing.

Still house-less

We're not homeless, exactly -- we still have a place to live, since we've not been kicked out of the house we're renting. But sadly, we haven't been able to close on the house we're trying to buy yet. We've done all we can, and as far as anyone knows, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to close -- it just hasn't happened yet. Right now, we're waiting on the lender. In theory, we should hear something definite from them early next week, and then it should only be a two-day wait on HUD before we can close. We'll see -- there's no realistic reason on our end why this shouldn't have closed three or four weeks ago.

In the meantime, another older lady in our church passed away this week. We had her funeral yesterday afternoon. It seemed to go very well, and although not all the family was terribly thrilled by the gospel emphasis in the service, the family who was closest to her (they attend this church, as did she) was thrilled by it and are emphatic that it is exactly what this lady wanted.

In other news, my wife managed to locate a hole in the back yard with her foot this morning. Unfortunately, her foot apparently decided it wanted to stay with the hole when the rest of her tried to leave, so she's down with a sprained ankle -- we're hoping it's not serious.

In a move suggested by Evangelist Kwame Selver when he was here, we've started a Bible study, run by my brother, in a nearby apartment complex. It seems to be going well -- in its first week, three showed up, and a boy made a profession of faith. This week, in its second week, there were eight, of whom two said they decided to ask Christ to save them. Perhaps I'll post some more about the Bible study and the reasoning behind it down the road, maybe when I come back to comment on pastors and age.

Popping in

Just a quick update to say we're all still alive here. It's been a crazy week or two; a man in our church's brother passed away last week, former head pastor Gibbs' wife had a series of minor strokes and is in the hospital, and we had a guest speaker, among other things. I'll try to post an observation or anecdote or three one of these days, if things quiet down here a bit.

I guess the big news (and the reason I ain't makin' no promises about when I'll be posting those updates and anecdotes) is that we have a tentative closing date on the house we're looking to purchase. We hope to close this Friday, and if not that day, then early next week. Of course, this means that we've been chasing paperwork around the area, and it means that we've got to pack -- and the new place needs a little work before we can actually move in. Nothing major, just lots of time-consuming details. I'm also working to finish scheduling our missions conference this February, arranging summer camp for the teens, and finishing the detail work for our church's Christmas banquet this Saturday. So, we're alive, but we're living on the run.