One Night With The King

Hi,

Sorry it's been so long again since we've written. No too much has been happening. We went to see Dess' friend from college in Houston the other weekend. Well, seeing her friend was half the reason we went to Houston. The other half was that there was a free concert which included Kirk Franklin, Dess' favorite musician. So we packed up our car and made the trek to Houston. It was a pretty cool concert and it was nice for me to meet Dess' friend, Lindsay, and her friends fiance, Brad. We first went to Lindsay and Brad's apartment to meet up and to figure out the plan. Lindsay was working until later in the evening, so we decided to go to the concert without them and would meet them there.

Dess and i navigated our way through downtown traffic and chaos without much difficulty. We got to the concert and found our way around. They had events going on from around noon until 5:30, when the bands began playing. The events included BMX and dirt bike stunts, sports challenges, kids jumping castles and more. There was a large street closed off for the event and the activities were either in the street or in a small ravine on the side of the street. By the time we got there one of the opening bands were playing. We saw a Canadian group, Hawk Nelson, who were interesting. Their music didn't seem exactly "Christian" in nature and their style seemed to be more towards self-glorification, not towards God. But we got in close and were going to wait it out for Kirk Franklin. We got a call from Lindsay and realized we wouldn't be able to talk on the phone to let them know where we were. We had to leave from our prime position and get somewhere quieter and more accessible for them to find us. While we were waiting, Kirk Franklin took the stage. Fortuneately we could see him on one of the huge screens which they had up in the ravine. But Dess wished we could be closer to the action. Lindsay and Brad turned up so we finally could get in closer to where Kirk was at. It was kinda disappointing because the area in front of the stage had completely filled and there was no way for us to see Kirk. The good point was that the people had lots of energy where we ended up.

We finished the evening off at Lindsay and Brad's, catching up and getting to know each other better. The next day we went to church. Grace Bible Church is where Lindsay and Brad go. We had a good time as the Pastor had a great message. Not long after that Dess and i returned to Lake Charles.

This weekend was a duty weekend. Dess cooked and i cleaned. It was pretty relaxed which was nice. With so few people on the crew, i think that breakfast is the highest attended meal. Dess made up her own barbecue sauce for Saturday dinner. It was interesting. I don't know how to describe it, so i won't. Then she made her signature dish on Sunday, the manicotti. Wow is it ever good. I got to put out the Sunday breakfast items and made sure we always had enough coffee. It was a good weekend and we got today, Monday, off.

We figured it'd be worthwhile to check out the movie "One Night With the King", the story of Esther. We had some free movie passes which Dess had won as an instant win prize. We checked out the movie and didn't really like it that much. In fact Dess was quite frustrated with it and was getting a little bit loud and rambuncious in her seat. I tried to shush her because i didn't want her to bug anyone else who might actually be enjoying the movie. See, the thing is that we read the book of Esther before going to the movie. When we watched the movie we saw lots of things which didn't coincide with the scriptures. It was frustrating because they took way too much poetic licence and they didn't really do a good job of portraying the culture. They almost made it into and "Americanized" version of the story and tried to overemphasize the romance in the movie. It's hard to know, solely from scripture, exactly what would've happened, but it didn't feel like they did the book of Esther justice.

Besides that, Dess and i are dreading being back at work. We're ready for our 7 week vacation now!!! Man it's just taking too long to get here. Although we are at the 2 month mark, which is a bit encouraging because Dess started counting down from 80 days away. Work just doesn't hold any excitement or passion for us right now.

That's a quick update for today. We've been experiencing huge rains over the past few days and although no one has said anything i wouldn't be surprised if there were localized flash floods. Please pray for our friends Chuck and Janet as Chuck has gone in for surgery on his leg. He's got bad veins and this is the second time they've tried to fix the problem.

Take care.