Post-holiday debriefing

It's been a turbulent couple of weeks here, and it doesn't look like things are likely to slow down much over the next few. But hey, that's not just life in the ministry these days, I suspect -- that's life in these United States, likely the norm for life in the developed world these days, and quite possibly just plain old life. So here's a quick update.

We took a three-day trip up to my mom's just after Christmas. Though it felt odd to have Christmas there without Dad, it was still nice to have all the siblings together for a little bit. The trip went safely and well, and I think everyone had a good time. When we came back down, all but one of my siblings (and my sister's fiance) came with us for a few days. We'd planned to be in the new house by then, so we ended up having to split people up between our current house and the church.

The visit also went well; we ganged up on the church services on Sunday, with each of us three brothers preaching once, and everyone, including the fiance, pitching in for special music. That gave us some fun variety (various combinations of flute, guitar, piano, and vocals). We then went out to a watch night service at our cousin's church in Holly Ridge, where one brother preached, and the rest of us pitched in with music again.

At this point, all the siblings are gone, and things are back to more-or-less normal. We're still waiting on the mortgage company (apparently they wanted an updated title document from the lawyer -- the one he sent them originally is too old; I can't imagine how it got that way -- it's been sitting on their desks for the last month!) Our real estate agent is hopeful, though, that we'll be able to close the end of this week or early next week. We've heard this before, though.

I went out there today with a fellow from the church to replace the thermostat on the house -- temps here are abominally cold, for North Carolina, and we didn't want to risk having frozen pipes for lack of heat in the house. There's a little trouble getting the unit to cut out properly, but at least everything seems to function okay, which is a big relief.

And now, back to the work I should have been doing while I've been typing this quick update.