Well I am in the Evangelist quarters of Bibleway Church in Linton, Indiana pastored by Donald Evans. It has been an incredible time back East but I am slowly hearing the sounds of home calling my name.
This week I have been able to see my family that lives back here and see where my grandparents used to live and where my great grandparents used to live. I remember coming here when I was about 12 years old and staying over the summers with my Grandparents and the fun we would have in the town of Merom, IN. All 600 people in the town seemed to be so close knit.
I had breakfast this morning at my Uncles Restaurant in Merom. You have to understand where I was at. It's like something out of the old West. You get your own coffee cups, pour your own coffee and choose from about 10 things on the menu.......it is so relaxing.
Saturday they are having a singing in the park for the Church here and its going to be great. About 4 different sections are going to be there and a majority of the town. There has been some outreach going on and things are going great.
After this Sunday I am headed out toward the Oklahoma Camp meeting and will be there for the week. I will post a little more after this weekend.
Bro. Guy Godwins Church in Broken Arrow, OK
Jared Marks and friends
Preaching
The Godwins youngest, Winston (right) and a friend
USS New York- It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center. It is the fifth in a new class of warships - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.
Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite , LA to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, 'those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,' recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there.
'It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.' Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the 'hair on my neck stood up.' 'It had a big meaning to it for all of us,' he said. 'They knocked us down. They can't keep us dow n. We're going to be back.'
The ship's motto? 'Never Forget'
I thought this was incredible when I read about it. America lives on.
Alot of you are going to laugh and possibly scoff at this post, but I turned 23 today. I am getting old. I am only 17 years away from 40!!!!!!! Only 27 years away from getting my AARP card!!! What a day this has been. I am in Broken Arrow, OK right now celebrating my birthday with the Godwin's who pastor here. We just got back from Texas Roadhouse and I am wiped out. Its the first time since I've had Internet access in awhile so I got to check my mail an check up on things.
It is pouring down rain here. I ran from the awning to my car and I was drenched from a mere 30 seconds in the rain. Everything is going good and Oklahoma is beautiful. I left Stilwell OK this afternoon where I was with Bro Achterberg, who pastors there. An incredible man and an awesome family and great church. Extremely funny. But we had a great time there. Wednesday night I preached in a town called Henryetta, OK where Bro Grissom pastors. Great church and his daughter can sing incredible. It's been quite an adventure so far. I don't have time to tell everything that has been going on, so I will post more later. Right now all I have time to do is post some pics.
Tonight, I got to see/talk to cousins that I have never met before. Gene and Tom Sullivan. Well third cousins anyway, obviously on my dads side. They live out here close to where I am at (Steelwell, OK) and they are both close to 70. Some of the stories that I heard tonight were pretty funny. It was really neat to talk to them and hear things that went on in my great great Grandpa's life. He was a UPC preacher who died from a stroke while preaching in Riverbank when he was older. My dad has some things in his office about him, but I never really did know much. Tonight I kind of learned some stuff while they talked. And they loved to talk.
The restaurant (Charlies BBQ) closed pretty quick after got in there but we did get to chat for a long while and it was cool to meet them. I didnt even know I had cousins out here!! It's a small world after all. The one in the green shirt is Gene, the other is Tom. I know they dont look like the happiest people in the world, but they were fun to talk to and get to know.
Hsppy 4th Everybody!!!
Here is the story behind the song "Let Freedom Ring" when Gloria Gaither wrote it... an excerpt from Gloria's book "Something Beautiful"
One morning on the national news, there was a story about a young African-American police officer whose associates at the department met him one morning on duty dressed in the hooded garb of the Ku Klux Klan. Even women on the office staff and other department employees joined to taunt and frighten him. The prank went on a long time before they told him it was a joke and had him pose for pictures with them all in their costumes of discrimination.On the news, this handsome young father was being interviewed by a reporter about the incident. "How did you react?" the reported asked."I was terrified on the inside, but all I could think to do was smile," he answered. "When I got home, I sobbed like a child."
Later the offenders, fearing reprisals and wanting to take back the photos they gave him, threatened the officer.As I watched this young man trying to process such a deep and ugly violation by those he thought he knew, by those who served with him day by day under an oath to uphold justice, I felt powerful emotions rise up within me. I felt anger at the indignity and at the violation of so many of the codes that hold any decent society together. I felt deep sadness at the breaking of the human spirit and the robbery of the self-respect of a fellow human being. I felt brokenness in my soul as I saw his pain and realized that all of us are capable of hurting each other deeply.I left my house to go to the village for breakfast.
As I sipped hot coffee, I watched a toddler across the room struggle to escape his mother's arms. He wanted to explore the cafe' and then, perhaps, get close enough to slip through the screen door into the morning sunshine.Every person innately longs to be free. This toddler knew it even in the womb. The time clock kicked in one day and the same little body that had been content to grow in the security of that liquid environment began to make its way - force its way - through the narrow confines of the birth canal to a place where it could be free. The passion to be free is built into the very fiber of creation: the seedling pushing against and bursting from the protective casing that carried it to its resting place; the gazelle racing from a predator; the squirrel, high above the ground, leaping to a distant limb to escape the competition.
Since the fall of mankind, people have used others to achieve their objectives. From the building of the kingdoms of Egypt and Rome to the conflict between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the strong have taken advantage of the weak. But the dream of freedom cannot be snuffed out by force or manipulation. Sooner or later, people will have their freedom - sometimes at any cost."What happens to a dream deferred?" asked Langston Hughes in his powerful poem.Does is dry upLike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore-And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over-Like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load Or does it explode?
In our times, perhaps the greatest example of the irrepressible passion for freedom is the people's reaction after the post-World War II communist takeover of what became known as East Germany.Because so much land was taken out of private hands and forced into collective control and because of the repression of private trade in the German Democratic Republic (as East Germany was called in 1958), thousands of refugees fled to the West. In 1959, 144,000 fled. The number of refugees rose to 199,000 in 1960 as conditions worsened. In the first seven months of 1961, 207,000 left, including a huge number of the nation's brightest minds - doctors, dentists, engineers, and teachers. It is estimated that by 1961, 2.7 million people had left since the German Democratic Republic was established in 1949.On August 13, 1961 - a Sunday morning - under the communist leadership of Erich Honecker, the GDR began to block off East Berlin with paving stones, barricades, and barbed wire. Railway and subway services to West Berlin were halted, cutting off the sixty thousand or so commuters who worked in West Berlin. A few days later, the GDR began building a wall.
One year after the first barricades went up, an eighteen-year-old man named Peter Fechter was the first of more than a hundred to be shot and killed while trying to escape. But as the wall grew higher, as more and more guards kept watch, as the death area behind the wall widened, and as the trench to stop vehicles deepened, the number of escape attempts only increased.In Berlin, the wall stretched sixty-six miles, but people escaped by tunneling under it or by leaping over it from the windows of houses nearby into nets or onto the pavement. Soon the government ordered that the houses be evacuated and the windows bricked shut. Eventually, the buildings were demolished. Patrol trucks, watchdogs, watchtowers, bunkers, and trenches were added to the border area. Then, behind the wall, a second wall was constructed.Yet people continued to escape.In one of the more dramatic escapes, two families secretly bought small amounts of nylon cloth - eventually enough to sew a hot air balloon. They waited until midnight and then drove to a deserted field and launched their craft. Twenty-three minutes it remained aloft before the burner died, long enough to carry four adults and four children to their freedom. Back in East Germany, the sale of nylon was restricted and there was a ban on the sale of rope and twine.No one knows exactly how many people escaped in the twenty-eight years the Berlin Wall stood. The wall became a symbol of all obstructions to freedom.
Instead of stopping the free flow of people and ideas, it provided a tangible object that epitomized the barriers which the human spirit felt challenged to conquer.It was a sentence from President Kennedy's speech during his visit to Berlin in June of 1965 that lent words to the struggle for freedom. Throwing out the speech given him by speechwriters, Kennedy wrote a new one while riding through the streets of West Berlin, where between one and two million Germans roared and cheered for four hours. At Checkpoint Charlie, he climbed alone up to the viewing stand. Suddenly, in a far-off window of an East Berlin apartment, three women appeared waving handkerchiefs - a dangerous and risky gesture. Kennedy, realizing their risk, stood in silence facing the women in a tribute to them. Then he squared his shoulders and began the speech that let the world know how universal the spirit of freedom is. He concluded the speech with the historic words, "Ich bin ein Berliner! [I am a Berliner!]"We all are Berliners at heart because we all long to be free. The world knew in its gut that the wall would never work.
It stood from 1961 until 1989, yet Kennedy's empathetic sentence and that simple gesture from those women in the gray East Berlin window predicted that it would crumble.Down through history, dictators and philosophies have attempted to enslave the human spirit. Blood has flowed like rivers in the fight to regain human dignity. The Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation have taken their places with other great instruments of liberation to testify to the human passion for freedom. The official seals of governments were burned onto these documents that have deeply affected our own way of life.But never has a document of freedom had the power to alter the course of history and change human lives like the declaration bearing the bloodstained brand of the Cross. And this seal is burned not on a piece of paper but on the very souls of all who were enslaved by sin.
The document is a simple invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Prison bars, heavy chains, dungeons, concentration camps, and shackles: none of these can hold a candle to the bondage of the human soul devised by the father of lies. But no release, no emancipation, no pardon can bring freedom like that bought at Calvary. That is freedom indeed! Let freedom ring!
New Mexico!! I always thought it was blazing hot here. Actually it rained so hard here today, cars had to pull off the road. After 9 hours and 600 miles I'm feeling kind of tired. I am about 1 hour away from the Texas panhandle. The Super 8 I am staying in is scaring me. Mine and one other car are the only ones in the parking lot. I went and looked and all the other hotels are full........should i be worried...? lol Goin to bed, will post more tomorow
OK I'm in the middle of Arizona on my way to Oklahoma for the weekend and it is hot. I left about 8 this morning and have been on the road ever since. The hotel bed feels like Heaven right now. It is about 90 outside right now and it is 10:19. INSANELY HOT! I hate when it gets hot because that means I get sweaty. And when I get sweaty I start burning fat and smell like bacon and get hungry and usually have to pull over.
I drove on historic route 66 today on the way. Honestly even though it is just a bumpy road, it was kind of a really cool feeling getting to drive on the road that so many people sang about. I know, I know your thinking okkkkkkkk, but really when you think about it, it is neat. Loving music the way I do, I just had to drive on it for awhile. There you are driving on the same road that movies were made about, songs were sung about, and stories were wrote about. I even cranked up the song by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters, "Route 66". It's neat they keep it intact as a landmark. All the way from Chicago to LA.
If I were to have flown, and rented a car, it would have cost me my life savings, so I just decided to drive. Its a lot more fun and I get to stay in my own car. Insurance is outrageous if you are under the age of 25 when you rent a car.So after 12 hours of driving I stopped in a Denny's and one of the "not so greatest" dinners I have had. Never order a steak at Denny's. It's like the equivalent of eating a bag of beef jerky.
I am now in a town called Kingston, AZ at a 'Travelodge" and am getting up pretty early to hit the road so I am going to bed. I will post more pics tomorrow.
Me and my cousin Connor
Kadee and Jonathan
Me and my cousin Josh
Eli my 2 year old cousin
My cousin Jonathan
All the guys
