Monday, July 19, 2004

8:39 PM My favorite sight of the day: Near the main entrance to the bookstore, someone arranged several of my books in a very prominent display. The sign underneath says, “Books by our speaker this week.” Above it there is a large cut-out of President Bush with a Word of Life sweatshirt draped over the cut-out. It looks so real that everyone stops and does a double-take when they see it. I laughed when I saw it because that’s about as close to the President as I’m likely to come. 8:23 PM I preached twice today—I doing a series based on my book The God You Can Trust. I especially love preaching at the Word of Life Campground in Pottersville. To me, it’s almost the ideal preaching environment—hundreds of people gathered in a huge metal barnlike structure with the folks sitting on folding chairs very near the platform. It’s a country fair and a tent revival rolled together. We’ve seen lots of old friends today, including Dan Darling, Wayne and Ruthie Lewis, Phil and Blossom Woodrow, Barb King, Keith and Bev Hazelhorst, George and Joan Theis, Larry and Cindi Bollback. Paul Bubar gave us at tour through The Wells House, which is currently undergoing huge renovations. As Paul said, it looks like someone through a grenade on the inside of the old building. It will take some doing to get it ready to open by November 1. We also went to “The Higher Ground,” a delightful coffee shop run by Burt Britt who worked as a singer for Word of Life for quite a few years. Note for Oak Park readers: The “Higher Ground” is the “Brown Cow” of Schroon Lake, only with gourmet coffee instead of ice cream. We’re spending lots of time with people—both last week and this week. Doesn’t happen nearly so much when I’m by myself. It seems like every time we go out, God arranges a interesting meeting that just “happens” to take place. So we’re glad to be here and feel like we’re gaining as much personally as we’re giving to others. 8:17 PM We’re in our room at the Word of Life Inn waiting for the big event of the day—the “missionary golf” competition, a carpet golf game featuring four-player teams. At supper tonight Harry Bollback told me he wanted me on his team. Harry’s a good carpet golfer so we’ll probably do pretty well. Earlier this evening I got a glimpse of the future—I was working on the computer and Marlene was sitting on the couch knitting. This is a new venture (perhaps I should say adventure) for her. In the past she’s done cross-stitch and crocheting, which I thought was the same as knitting, but was soon set straight by my better who told me that crocheting involves one needle with a hook on the end, and knitting uses two needles and no hooks. This is her first time to do any knitting and she told me she knows two stitches—knit and purl. I guess there are many other stitches, and a lot of knitting details that I don’t know about. But she’s making a scarf with multicolored yarn and every few minutes she holds it up for me to see. I smile and say how good it looks—and it does look good—she smiles and goes back to her knitting. And I go back to my computer work. I’m nodding to myself as I type these words—this is the shape of the future and it looks good to me.