Snow, colds, and travel

There was another blast of winter through the middle and southern parts of Texas on Tuesday. Here in Ennis the total was around 1 1/2-2" but there was even more further south. Adam told me that they got around 3" in College Station. It was beautiful while it fell. The best thing was that it did not cause any troubles on the roadways and by noon Wednesday it was all gone. The weather reporter last night was saying that this is the coldest winter in the Dallas area for at least the past ten years. He said there is another chance for a winter mix of precipitation next Monday. That global warming is a real problem, isn't it?
I'm glad to report that my cold seems to be running its course. It started last Thursday, the worst days were Saturday-Sunday-Monday, and it is just about gone. It was a booger! That's the worst cold I've had in a long time. Last year I started using a Neti pot and sinus rinse device for nasal irrigation. During this cold, I used the sinus rinse twice a day. I'm convinced it is what helped me avoid a sinus infection by helping me keep the sinuses cleared out and open to drain. I went through a couple of boxes of Kleenex, but that's a small price to pay. One nice thing about the cold is that the ladies of the church made me some great homemade soups. One made chicken & rice, one made chicken vegetable and one made beef stew with cornbread. I may have to consider getting sick more often!
Today is my day to go back to Springdale for a visit with Merilyn and to be with my Bible study group. It is amazing to me when I consider that here I sit nearly 400 miles away in the morning and by late this afternoon I will be able to be there. If I went out to D/FW airport and hopped a jet this morning, I could be just about anywhere over North or South America by this evening. Just 3 or 4 generations back, our ancestors would have had to travel for days or weeks to make such a trip. Not only that, I can use my cell phone to talk to anyone I want while I drive along. I can tune my radio to listen to dozens of different programs. We live in an incredible age of mankind. But always remember...no matter how far mankind seems to be advancing, we always need to stay humble and keep God as the top priority of our lives. God bless!

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)

Caught by a cold!

I guess I haven't been running fast enough lately. A cold virus somehow caught up with me last week and I've been fighting a stuffy head, runny nose, cough and body aches for the past few days. Fortunately, it is easing up and I think it will run its course in the next few days. The worst thing about it is that I was feeling puny while Merilyn was here for a visit. But it did not slow us down too much. We still got to get out and about some. I was able to do all my preaching and teaching yesterday and we enjoyed a good time with the church folks. She stayed over until this morning and is on her way back to Springdale.
Since I'm still not feeling too spiffy, I'm going to have a short message for this entry. Hope all of you are well and can stay that way. It's no fun being sick! God bless!

All-Star Dallas

Did any of you watch the NBA All-Star game that was held in JerryWorld last Sunday night? JerryWorld is what the Dallas sports writers have been calling the new Cowboys Stadium since it opened last Fall. Jerry Jones has taken quite a bit of heat in the local media over the past six months or so for the money he and the city of Arlington spent to build the stadium and for the outrageous prices that are charged. For example, the cheapest seat for a Cowboys game was $85, a pizza was $60, a Coke or a beer was $10-12, and it cost $75 to park. Now it seems all is forgiven because of the huge success of the NBA All-Star event and the other special events that have come to the Stadium. According to the reports I've seen on the news and the articles in the paper, it was quite a spectacle. First of all, over 108,000 fans attended. They said that even the NBA players were awed by the size of the stadium and the size of the Jumbotron. One writer commented that it was kind of comical to see the basketball court on the floor dwarfed in size by the Jumbotron screen above it...a regulation basketball court is about 30 yards long and the Jumbotron is 60 yards long. There were all kinds of special events in the week leading up to the game and all kinds of celebrities were in town. The economic impact for the Dallas area was said to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So now Jerry Jones is a hero in the Dallas area media. The press has even been complimentary of Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, for his part in putting it on. They usually love to criticize him. It was all interesting to watch as it all played out, and the basketball game itself was pretty good.
After all the hype of the glitz and glamour of the All-Star game, it was ironic to see a front page article on Tuesday in the Dallas Morning News about the problem of pot-holes in the streets of the city. I guess no matter how glitzy you get, you still have to deal with some of the gritty realities of life.
I am looking forward to the weekend. Merilyn is set to come down to spend a few days with me in Ennis. She has been dealing with some illness the past few days so I hope she can still come. They've had a virus going through the school.
It has surely been great to see sunshine again! It seems we went about a month with gray, cold, dreary weather. That reminds me of an excellent Bible passage: For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
I hope everyone has a good weekend. God bless!

Topsy-turvy

This past weekend brought quite a switch in terms of the weather. This was my weekend to go back to Arkansas. The two previous times I had gone back, there was significant snow in Arkansas and Oklahoma. When I was preparing to go back last Thursday I was keeping a close eye on the weather because the forecast was for the possibility of snow in the Dallas area. One of the church members in Ennis was having lung cancer surgery at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas early Thursday morning so my plan was to go see his wife for a while and then drive up later. By 8 a.m. Thursday there was already 1-2" of snow on the ground and it was coming down hard. The freeway on the way to Baylor was very slushy but not frozen. I was with the family for a while and they urged me to go ahead to leave before it got too bad. When I left around 9:30-10:00, there was probably 4" on the ground in Dallas and there were HUGE snowflakes that were increasing the depth of the snow. I made it out of north Texas without too much trouble. The only real issues were people who were afraid of driving in the snow. The roads were just slushy but not slick yet. By the time I crossed the state line into Oklahoma, the accumulations tapered off and the roads were wet but clear. The forecasters really missed this one. While they were saying 2-3" of snow, Dallas got an all-time record of 12"! Up in northwest Arkansas, there was none. By the time I came back to Ennis on Saturday, most of the snow in the Dallas area was already gone.
It is always good to get to go back home, but this was an especially good visit. Merilyn and I got to be with our Bible study group on Thursday evening. A few folks were not able to make it so we missed them but it was good to be with all who were there. I got to spend some good time with Merilyn and Sarah. On Friday I got Merilyn some red roses for Valentine's Day and took them out to school for her. She seemed to like that pretty well. Merilyn and I had been thinking about looking for another automobile for her...one that was smaller and more economical. We went out just to look on Friday evening and ended up trading her GMC Acadia for a Chevrolet Equinox. Everything worked out well with it, particularly with a smaller payment and better fuel economy.
We enjoyed a good day at church yesterday. Attendance was up some even though we've got several folks out sick right now. We had several in-town visitors with us. That is always encouraging.
I'm needing to go up to Dallas to visit the gentleman in the hospital at Baylor so I'd better wrap this up for now. Have a good day!

Global Warming

How many of you believe Al Gore and the global warming extremists now? The folks here in Ennis tell me that this is the coldest winter that this area has had in some time. It is cold and rainy this morning with the forecast calling for the weather to be this way for most of the week. The highs are to be in the upper 30's and low 40's. I know that sounds fairly warm to some of you, but it's mighty cold for these Texans! Merilyn called this morning to say there is around 3" of snow on the ground in Springdale with 3-6" more predicted to accumulate in the next 24 hours. They are still in school for the time being but she did not know how much longer that would last. Since they have already used up their allotment of bad weather days, she is hoping that they won't have to be out too much more because they may have to add days onto the end of the year. I know for sure that this winter has brought colder temperatures and more snow than normal to northwest Arkansas. Whenever you hear the alarmists talk about the dangers of global warming, don't worry about it. While I agree that societies around the world need to diminish the amount of pollutants that we are dumping into the environment, the fact is that the earth has gone through periods of gradual warming and then gradual cooling over the centuries.

I had an interesting experience out exercising last Friday afternoon. I was at the Lion's Park and as I approached the far end of the lake, I noticed a few folks looking at something in the water. When I got up to them, I stopped to see what it was. There was a big brown critter swimming around just like it was putting on a show for us to see. The folks who were there said they thought it was a beaver and it looked like one to me, too. Another fellow who came along said it was probably a big nutria. The way you can tell, he said, is whether the animal has a big flat tail or a skinny round tail. After looking at it for a while, he said he saw a skinny round tail. At one point after everyone else went away, I was coming around the path again and the animal came right up on the bank about 15 feet away from me. I stopped and it just sat up and started grooming itself. It would wipe its face with its front paws kind of like a cat does and then rub its tummy and the sides of its head. It was fun to watch.

I reckon the "WHO DAT?" nation is still celebrating today. The Super Bowl was a good ball game right up to the interception thrown by Payton Manning toward the end of the fourth quarter. It was good to see the New Orleans Saints win since they have never won the Super Bowl before.

It seems as if lots of people are battling various ailments right now...sinus infections, colds, bronchitis, pneumonia. Stay warm. Drink lots of fluids. Eat a well-balanced diet with plenty of vegetables. Take your vitamins. Eat an apple a day. Keep moving so you can stay a step ahead of the bugs!

To all my family and friends in Arkansas: Enjoy the beauty of the snow, but be careful!

A Turning Tide?

There was an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News yesterday about the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education in the public school system. Then this morning there was another in the news section of AOL. Here is an excerpt from the AOL article.


What if abstinence-only programs actually work?
That's the question facing educators this week after a groundbreaking study found that students who take classes emphasizing abstinence are less likely to have sex than those who take classes teaching safe sex.
Although the effectiveness and virtues of sex-ed versus abstinence-only curricula have long been the subject of fierce debate in American schools, the federal study, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, is the first of its kind to suggest that programs encouraging students to abstain from having sex altogether are successful.
Just under half of the students in the study who received sex-education classes that included information about contraceptives went on to have sex in the next two years. But only one out of three students in the study who received abstinence-only education did.
Researchers say the long-term study, which followed 662 African-American public middle school students between 2001 and 2004, is significant. John Jemmott, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who headed the study, told The Washington Post, "I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence. Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."


I remember when the push began for an abstinence-only alternative to the so-called sex education curriculum in public schools. The ones on the liberal left ridiculed it as an archaic approach that had no place in modern day America. Maybe the tide is starting to turn a little bit with this solid scientific research that shows the effectiveness of encouraging abstinence. It's not a matter of teaching young folks that this is God's way, but it's more of a common sense approach that educates them about the risks and consequences of sexual activity outside of marriage. It seems that when young folks are educated about such matters, most of them are smart enough to choose wisely.
Of course, I believe God's way is the best way in this as well as in all other matters of life. It is amazing how much trouble and heartache people could avoid--and how much better their lives could be!--if they would seek to follow God's instructions for their lives. Thanks for reading while I've been up on my soapbox a bit. Follow God's instructions and have a great day today, a great life, and a great eternity!

"Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it." (Matthew 7:24-27)

These pictures are not from Ennis, Texas! This past weekend was my time to go back to Arkansas. With the winter forecast, I decided to leave Wednesday evening after Bible study and got home around 1:45 a.m. on Thursday. The winter weather hit around 4-5 p.m. with ice that changed to heavy snow. The first picture is on Friday morning with just about 2" on the ground. Sarah came over with Chloe. The dogs play in the snow just like kids. Merilyn and Sarah take pictures of them just like they are kids (me, too, I have to admit). In the fourth picture Mollie is looking like, "Do I have to go inside now?" She played some more and came up with the snow face in the next picture. On Saturday morning the snow had piled up to around 6-7". I went out to clear the front porch and steps of snow and then also had to chip away 1/4" of ice. There is a picture of a clear spot that shows the depth of the snow. The next picture is a wider view of the yard (at the lower left, that's the same bush as in the previous picture) and part of the road in front of our house. The next picture shows the spectator I had while I was outside doing the work on the front steps. The last two pictures I made while driving in Oklahoma somewhere between Sallisaw and Checotah as I was on my way back to Ennis on Saturday afternoon. As I drove south from northwest Arkansas on I-540, the snowfall diminished toward Ft. Smith, but then over into Oklahoma in this one area it looked to be as heavy or maybe even heavier than what we had in Springdale. There was an area with lots of big cedar trees and the snow was especially beautiful. By the way, you can click on any of the pictures to get a larger view then navigate back to the blog with the back button of your browser.
As always, it was a great blessing to be able to have a visit with Merilyn and to see Sarah and Blake. Because of the weather, we did not get to have our Bible study group but we will get back to that in two weeks. All the folks at the church in Ennis were glad to see me back safely and we enjoyed a good day yesterday. Merilyn said that they are out of school again today (Monday) and this begins the count of days they will have to make up as the allotment of bad weather days has been used up now. For all of you in the areas of snow and ice, be careful, stay warm, and enjoy this glory of God's creation. Have a good day!