August 1 – “Arrived”

After narrowly avoiding a major front of storms and yet another little altercation between Chris and Google Siri (Siri sent us to the totally wrong place.  Not even close.  I don’t what I’m going to do with those two), we finally made our way to the Arlington Convention Center for the Texas Baptist Convention (Formerly Baptist General Convention of Texas).  We tried to check in and get registered, but the booth didn’t open until 8:30, also the time of the first breakout session – the only one I really wanted to attend.  It was about training to deal with people in crisis situations.  The registration people told us to just come back after the session, so we didn’t miss anything.  It was a pretty good one, too.  Good enough that I will probably order the training manual when we get back home.  Oh, and we meandered through the booth area where they give away stuff like pens and weird, essentially unusable items (like the stress ball I picked up.  It’s in the shape of a bus). 

Josh finally arrived.  He drove through some of those nasty thunderstorms on his way up from Waco.  We spent some time with him, and then all of us went into the worship session.  On the way there we ran into some more folks who make their way to Seaside every time they are in town.  Mike and Linda introduced us to their pastor, who immediately responded, “Oh, so YOU’RE Pastor Kelley?”  Yep.  That’s me.  Whatever they told you, I’m probably guilty.  The sermon was preached by a guy who was born in Ethiopia and is now pastor of a rapidly growing church in Dallas.  He preached from Philippians chapter 1.  Sounded vaguely familiar, since I was just there in my teachings at Seaside a few weeks ago. 

Next we headed to lunch with Josh and the executive pastor from his church (and his wife).  Panchos.  Enough said.  That’s a win.  That’s a huge win.

We returned to the convention center and parted ways.  Josh had another meeting to attend.  We did some more roaming around.  We saw another old friend from our days living in Mansfield.  In fact Patti is technically the Mommy of our truck.  She and her husband Blair were the ones who graced us with it after Hurricane Ike.  She was amazed to hear her offspring was now a classic.  We finally decided to head back to the Winkles.  On our way out the door we lamented the fact that we had yet to see the one guy we most expected, the Galveston region state Baptist representative.  He’s a really nice guy.  Very bubbly.  And as I reached out to push open the door, who should come running over to greet us?  Yep.  That guy.  He gave us each a big hug and a huge grin.  Well, several hugs, actually.  And the grin never goes away.  See why we look forward to meeting up with him?

Psalms 89:5 says, “The heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones.”

Father, thank you for bus-shaped stress balls and pens and Seasiders everywhere and old friends.  Oh, and Panchos.  Thank you for Panchos.  Amen.