pat loughery

I haven’t been blogging much lately because we’ve had a ton of stuff happening and at the end (or the beginning, I guess) of the day I haven’t made the time. Frankly I’m just trying to keep my head on straight and am struggling to spend a few minutes with my friend Jesus first.

Today’s the funeral service for our friend Ed. It will be short, as it’s at the national cemetary for military vets. I didn’t know Ed was a military vet, but .. there ya go. He has a sister who is a minister who will be leading the service. I’m bringing my daughter and another person from our church, and meeting a few others there. I get to meet Ed’s wife for the first time today, and I’m really looking forward to that. But I’m – well, I don’t think it’s going to be a festive, joyous occasion. How can it be? I really loved Ed, and I feel a lot of guilt that I didn’t pursue him more aggressively during the time that he was not in contact with us regularly.

Tomorrow we go visit a member of the church who’s been dealing with addiction. She’s spending a 7-10 day stint in the county jail. I saw her last week (last visiting day; Tues and Thurs only), the day after she went in. We’ll have several more people go to visit her tomorrow. We’re praying hard for her, visiting her becauase we’re concerned and because we want her to know it.

More directly on the church planting front, we ran a 101 class yesterday and had two more families attend. One of them had just come for the first time yesterday, so that’s a good sign. When you’re at church from 10-3, and not running away screaming, maybe that’s a good thing. We also had two families of guests visit. Actually, three total – one couple, friends from the Yakima vineyard, and two couples who’d been to a Vineyard before and wanted to check this one out.

We did a servant evangelism project last Saturday. The neighboring town has their town festival, and we gave away 4 cases of water bottles with little touch cards. Simple things, really – in fact Shannon and I just set it up and two other families did it. They had a great time from all accounts. They had two little girls with them – a 4 and 3 year old. The girls really got into it. Somehow when a 3-year-old asks you if you want a bottle of water, it’s far less threatening than when a 50-year-old does.

I guess that’s about it for now. I’m feeling pretty blah today. I’m going to cry a lot at the funeral, that much is clear already.