September 26 – “Surprise guests”

We had some surprise guests here at the Vaughan abode on Saturday evening.  I received a text early in the day from Corbin, the son of some of our dearest friends in Arlington, and a pretty good friend himself.  He’s been a fishing buddy of mine in the past.  Seems a few friends and himself had been camping at Matagorda Bay and the weather had made them essentially miserable.  Could have told him that.  Camping is just inherently evil as far as I’m concerned.  He wondered if he could bring three of his friends over to stay with us for the night and attend church with us the next morning.  One of the friends was Brittany (or however she spells it.  I’ve seen that name spelled about a hundred different ways, so sorry if I missed it).  She has been to our before, too.  In fact she was among those who came down after Hurricane Ike to help us rebuild.  As I recall, she nailed up some of the sheetrock that adorns our house today.  Of course we welcomed them.

They arrived shortly before we had to leave for that wedding at the museum.  We left them at the house so they could get cleaned up (did I mention that camping is evil?  It took them a while to get recuperated from immersing themselves in such nastiness).  When we got home they had ordered a pizza and were watching Jaws on Netflix.  They figured, “Hey. We’re on an island.  What better show to watch.”  The scene where the guy is chumming and the shark sticks his head out of the water came on.  Instinctively, I mumbled just loud enough for everyone to hear, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  Both of the girls turned to me and said, “You know, we’ve never seen this movie.”  Imagine.  Never seen such an iconic classic as Jaws.  What’s this younger generation coming to?  About that time the character on the screen said the line, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  They looked at me.  I raised my hand said, “What can I say?  I’ve seen it.” 

We spent well into the evening sitting around the table, munching on pizza and sharing fun stories.  Jaws and some urging from Corbin forced me to tell my two fishing stories that involve sharks (Well, one is more about a foolish tourist picking up a shark with his hand only centimeters from the shark’s business end.  The other I guess is more about the two dolphins who rescued me from certain doom at the hands of a rather large shark off the second sand bar).  They were very interested in our experiences during and after Hurricane Ike.  Either that or they were just overly tired from their brush with evil and were being nice to their overly enthusiastic hosts.  I showed them the Ike collage presentation and the two videos we have saved on the computer (Yes, we have had that request before).  We regaled them late into the evening with tales of mucking and food lines and rebuilding. 

They also roamed the house looking at our little treasures.  Things that fascinated them: The photo of my Dad with the huge grouper he caught, the catfish bones in the shape of a crucifix, my Louisville Slugger walking cane, the porthole off the Cavalier, the towel rack in the bathroom that is a handle bar from a ship.  Even our little shampoo bottle from our Disney vacation caught their attention (And why shouldn’t it?  It has Mickey Mouse ears on the cap).  I guess we do have some truly museum-quality stuff around here, don’t we?  Anybody want to do a wedding on our deck?

2 Corinthians 4:18 says, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Father, thank you for those four youngsters we hosted the other night.  Help them to have a heart for you.  Amen.