Day Thirteen: Worship and Rest

Today was an important day. It was the first Sunday of worship for Hill Country Bible Church Dripping Springs. This is a church plant that has been in process for the past nine months. Andrew is on the elder board. They are meeting at a local elementary school until the church grows out of it. So there is a lot of set-up involved, and many families signed up to be part of that. Grandpa Jones and I were commissioned to be the photographers for the entire morning!

Jackson and Andrew left home very early this morning to pick up the trailer which holds everything for set-up for the service ... I'm talking the sound equipment, the stuff for children's church, the chairs, the partitions ... everything. See Jackson's green boots? They are supposed to be rain boots (see the bulging frog eyes?), but he was wearing them today as work boots because he was a worker.

When Sabrina was in high school, she learned how to run sound equipment for concerts. The technical term would be an audio engineer. She did this at Calvin College at the Field House all four years she was in college ... only there, she mostly did the lighting.

About 25 people were part of the core team that helped to set up this elementary school cafeteria and turn it into a place of worship. They were really organized and it was interesting to see it all come together. Now and then Grandpa Jones and I put down our cameras and pitched in wherever we were needed.

Olivia is being trained in this world of audio engineering because she is really interested in it and she has a good trainer in her mom. So Olivia did a lot of the wiring of speakers this morning and a lot of "gophering" for her mom.

The children's area was set up in the gymnasium. Karis was in with the preschoolers ... she had a lot of fun this morning.

Once the service started, my camera batteries died and my spare ones had lost their charge as well. So I was able to just settle in and join in worship. The theme was "Life Between Sundays". Their worship pastor actually wrote a song last week that he and the band sang this morning. I won't give you all of the words, but just parts of the verses:

"What good is it to believe
If it's only in your head
If it doesn't change the way you live
Faith apart from works is dead."

and part of the chorus says, "He deserves more than one day, faith is more than what we say ~ it's LIFE BETWEEN SUNDAYS."

I really appreciated the worship this morning. There were about 100 people in attendance. God was honored in every part of the service.

Sabrina ran the sound board without a single hitch. Andrew greeted people at the doors. The children's church was well organized. It was a good day!

After the service was over, everyone stayed around and talked for quite awhile. Then we helped to tear down and repack the truck ... and then a whole bunch of folk went out to eat lunch together. We were pretty exhausted by the time we got home to Sabrina's ... so we rested for the remainder of our day.

We took a quiet walk at sunset tonight and gave thanks for such a wonderful day.

And all during our walk, I kept trying to snap a picture of Olivia who kept covering her face ... so Sabrina finally wrestled her into submission ... and voila! I like this picture, and Olivia isn't too terribly mad at us about it!