May 3 – “Missing Toilets”

Sunday morning.  I arrived at church early to make sure the floor was swept and the pews were set up – stuff Chris and I usually do when we get here.  But I just had a hunch I should go earlier.  I left the house at 6:30.  Guess what greeted me when I arrived?  Right there on the front porch was a bag of trash, two old toilets and two vanity tops.  Now that's what someone would want to see when they arrive for worship.  I took the trash bag to the can.  I couldn't lift the toilets or vanity tops by myself, so I went on in to wait for someone else to get there to help me.  And when I walked in I was hit with surprise number two. The two new toilets we bought were both still in their boxes.  I rushed to bathroom number one.  I don't know what I expected to see.  No toilet.  I walked over to the nursery bathroom.  No toilet there either.  I wasn't sure what to do.  I never set up a toilet before, and I couldn't lift it anyway.  I called our youth pastor, who is really good with construction-type problems, but he didn't answer.  I started cleaning up the nursery, then the kitchen, then the office, bouncing from room to room and not really finishing anything I started.  I knew we would be fine if we didn't have any toilets facilities.  After all, we met after the storm with no water or electricity.  I was rapidly going through the sermon and paring it down so we could get out in a much shorter time frame.  Finally I decided to drive over and see if Ned was home.  He was a great help at workday, and I knew he would know how to do what we needed done.    Ned was home, and he came back with me.  It took awhile, and a trip or two to the hardware store, but we got one installed by around 9:30.  The other one we found out was broken when we started to lift it out of the box.  No way to fix that.  We'd have to take it back to Home Depot later.  It was a whole lot easier to share one bathroom than to not have any at all.   An exciting thing happened when people started arriving.  One of the great ladies in our body who has Bay City connections talked to me before worship.  She wants to be baptized.  We'll set up a time after she talks to her family.   It was great to see Chris again.  They got back with no problem other than a little weather in Dickinson.    Psalms 20:7 says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."   Father, thank you for another baptism.  It shows you are at work.  Amen.