Excitement and Apologies

First let me say that I am sorry for the delay in updating my little slice of the internet here. I actually have sat down on more than one occassion with the intention of writing but then something more important comes across my desk and demands my attention. I have however carved out this segment of time (until something else interferes) to let all my wonderful friends know the happenings of the days of my life. It is monday morning and I know have only two weeks until I pull out of Guymon with my family in tow and head back to the state of Missouri for my first lead pastor position. It is a little bitter-sweet as I will miss this land of pig air, sand and wonderful people. I will not miss the constant wind or the odd temperature extremes or the rancid smell of livestock in the air. I will miss the amazing church that I have grown to love and call family. My wife and I have many memories in this town; memories that will tie us here for the remainder of our lives. But it is time to leave and honestly with great excitement and anticipation we are preparing for our eventual move. We have a nice contract on our house and that eases our minds just a bit. We have gotten rid of some things that would be dead weight and that was a necessary task. We are nearing the end of saying our goodbyes which will not come soon enough. I dispise the goodbye process. Some folks only want to talk with you about that one thing. Persons that you seemed to never have a lack of converation theme with now can only think of one thing to bring up. It makes the process that much more difficult. But enough of that...on to a story...
This past weekend I actually began part of my responsibilities as the lead pastor of the Butler Church of the Nazarene. Brenda and I pulled out of Guymon at 9:30 pm on Wednesday and drove to Pratt, KS to stay the night. We then continued on to Butler via KC to pick up our niece Suzy so that she could see Butler and spend some time with the boys whom she loves. One small problem, Joshua got sick. Now am not talking about car sick, I mean he got SICK. He woke up from a nap as we pulled in to KC and where he was happy and jovial and well just two hours earlier, he now had a barking cough and was wheezing. Our son is generally a very happy kid but when he is sick he just wants to be held. Not conducive to a trip to the new church. But to our surprise, once we arrived he perked up a bit and played with everyone and had a good time. I took part in two board meetings (Church board and Sunday School board) which all told lasted about 3 hours. It was nice as I was able to do a bit of vision casting, encouraging, and planning the folks that I will be leading full time in a couple of weeks. We were given a place to stay with an elderly lady in the church who has a private basement. It was like a seperate house and had so much room. We were very grateful. Joshua lay down with Suzy to go to sleep. Somewhere around 4am though he woke up disoriented, stumbling around calling for us and burning up with a fever. We got to him, stripped him down so he could cool off and lay him in bed with Brenda as I ventured out to find somewhere that I could get him some tylenol to help with the fever (J-Dunn you have so many great things to look forward to). I returned about 5am with the meds and we got Joshua resting comfortably. Needless to say we did not get much rest that night. When we did drag ourselves out of bed--due to Benjamin's crying for a bottle--we heard that Joshua's breathing was pretty raspy and labored so I called around and we got him an appointment at a local clinic figuring he probably had an upper repiratory infection as has had in the past. We took him in, got him checked (he did a great job, better than he ever has at the doctors before) by a great nurse practitioner, and were on our way with prescriptions to be filled. We went about our day showing boys our new house which Joshua seemed to love due to it spaciousness. Benjamin is out go with the flow kid--give him a toy and some attention and he is happy wherever. We left Butler and went back to KC to take home Suzy and spend some time with the family. We left KC at 8pm on our way to Wichita. Joshua slept well until about Wichita where he woke up scared because he could not cough up the congestion in his lungs, unsure of where he was and just needing some TLC. We checked into a motel and got the boys to bed. Neither of us got much sleep due to Joshua's heavy breathing and our natural concerns as parents. There was a lot of prayer that went up on his behalf Friday night. Needless to say after two nights of little sleep Brenda and I were tired. Joshua woke feeling some better and we had a good ride home. The boys played hard and went to bed. Brenda is now sick and needs the TLC so she got to stay home Sunday and rest while I took the boys to church and had to preach. All in all things are good but we have an exhausting two weeks ahead of us. Lord help us to have the strength to make it each day and accomplish all that we have to get done in preparation for our move. Grace and Peace.