It's Good to have Good Friends

Part of my lack of blogging as of late can be "blamed" on the time we've been spending with friends who are now scattered about the country.  Just over a week ago we got to spend time with Jen and Jay who are church planting in St. Louis.  It was great to hear how God is at work in their city and how they are being used for the Kingdom.  Should you be reading this, and should you have the gift of giving large sums of money to urban church planters, then you should contact them.  Shameless, unsolicited plug.  Here's their website so you can check out what they are doing.  Cool stuff.  It was such an encouragement to spend time with them.  Great to talk to church planting practicioners--not just theory, but real life missional living. 

This past weekend brought the arrival of 4 (nickname who's real name shall not be revealed) and his wife Jen who is carrying their first child.  I wish I could tell you the name of the kid, but 4 and Jen are sworn to secrecy.  I'm sure they just want the name "Jamie" to be a surprise.  We'll have to wait until the end of May to find out.  Anyway, we had a great time with them and our back-in-Orlando friends Nate and Jess.  So good to hangout.  Probaby bored the wives to death with our incessant strolls down college-memory lane.  Oh well.  You can check out pics of the weekend under "4 and Jen Visit" to your right.  We lobbied hard for them to move down to Orlando.  4 loves Mickey and he would be right at home.  Not exactly, but Orlando has more to offer than Disney...right? 

All in all it has been great to reconnect with old friends.  It's really cool to see what God is doing in all of their lives.  It's great to have those moments when the conversation isn't forced, the honesty is present and we can laugh together.  Good stuff. 

And the fun continues...this upcoming Monday our friends Nate and Kara and thier two little girls come to stay for the week.  Nate is on sabbattical (I'm jealous).  We are looking forward to spending time with them and showing them our stomping grounds.  Look for more pictures coming soon. 

There's the summation of recent days.  I got some thoughts on Tony Campolo (he spoke at RTS today) that I will try and blog about later.