View Out The Front Window 5/24/20

After way too many weeks in limbo, our view has changed! This is our view out the front window at Safe Haven Tabernacle in Romney, Virginia.

We turned the camera on for about 27 minutes last night as we were finishing soundcheck. This is a little Sound Check Church.

We are excited to begin revival this morning for Pastor Bob Jeff Jeffries and his congregation. Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Ali Elizabeth Boggs 33 Years Ago Today.

Where has the time gone? How does it fly so quickly?

33 years ago today, in the evening, our second daughter, Ali Elizabeth was born. Kelly Jo had spent most of six weeks in the hospital trying to prevent Ali from being born, but on May 23rd she could not be stopped any longer. We were blessed to hold her and love on her for a few hours and receive her love in return. In the early hours of the next day, as we were holding her, she slipped into eternity.

There are times, that I let my mind wander. What would Ali look like? What would her singing voice sound like? Would she sing the high part that we are always wishing for? What about her personality? Would she shine in a crowd or shy away? Would she be a "Daddy's girl" like Odie was? I can imagine her loving Odie so much and almost idolizing her Mom. Would she be a piano player like Kelly Jo?

My imagination would go on and on IF I would let it and soon the hurt would start pounding away at my heart. The questions are fun for a moment, but they are better off in small doses. It is better to stick with the things that I know.

I was holding Ali when her undeveloped lungs could sustain her no longer. I carried Ali in her little coffin to the grave myself. I let her down in the ground with my own hands and when the small service was over, I shoveled in the dirt myself. I know where her little body is, but I also know our Ali is in Heaven. For some reason, we are still here below. We can not bring her back to us, but we can go to her by the grace of God.

We are usually many miles from Ohio on Ali's birthday, but this year is different. KJo and I ordered some flowers, picked them up Friday morning and went to the cemetery for a while.

Ali was one of the first graves in this section, but it has many graves 33 years later. Some of them are family. I have two Uncles, two grandparents and a great Uncle buried within a few feet of Ali. My cousin Debbie and her husband Sonny mulched around the graves and they have everything looking so nice!

So we leave the flowers, walk away and I do not look back. One day, I will see her again and I will be amazed at how beautiful she is. That is why I look forward and not behind!

On this Memorial Day weekend, you may decorate the grave of a loved one and you may reminisce a little and she a tear or two. May God bless you, my dear friend! This is one of the very hard things in life.

Thank you for reading today.

Davy

Revival In Pictures Waynesville, OH 9.0

This week of revival has flown by like crazy. Yesterday was Sunday and tomorrow is Saturday. How does that happen? Was I asleep? I see we had church every night, I hope I sang and preached acceptably even though I snoozed through it!  

We have one more night of revival here this week and then we plan to drive to West Virginia for revival. The windows and doors are locked, the cameras are on, the alarm is set the rottweilers are already roaming the ranch and the alligators are swimming in the moat. I started to feed the alligators this morning, but I decided the hunger pains will keep them alert.

Today we are planning to do the work of the evangelist, crank the bus, load up some equipment, get the bus in position to roll and maybe even hook up the car to the bus. We hope to point east early tomorrow.

Today is Revival In Pictures so let us get to it.

The Kite Family and Friends- Shenandoah, Virginia

 

Theresa Osborn- Waynesville, Ohio 

Pastor EJ Lamb was listening while taking a walk!

Anna Beth from Louisiana was enjoying revival Thursday night.

Monday night 

Tuesday night 

Wednesday night 

I last mowed the grass last Wednesday. It had rained most all day of most every day since then. It is a delicate dance to find a window long enough for the ground to dry out so I do not destroy the yard with the tires of the mower. There was a short window without rain Thursday morning and I threw caution to the wind and got it mowed. 

It was not dry enough. I actually ran through some puddles in low places. The rain came back before I could even get the mower cleaned up.

You already know we had Mexican food a few times, right?

Thursday night 

Here is the video from last night's service, Mixing Faith and Fire.

That wraps up Revival In Pictures. Thank you for dropping by for a few minutes.

Davy

Traveling The World One Page At A Time

I appreciate my Dad and Mom putting great love for reading deep inside me when I was a small boy. I have traveled the world one page at a time.

When I was about six years old my parents bought a 1973 set of World Book Encyclopedias. It was a big deal in our house. I remember very clearly what Dad told me about the encyclopedias. He said, "Davy, if you read every word of these books, you will be a very smart man." I do not know if I read every word on every page, but I discovered an amazing world by spending many, many hours reading the encyclopedia.

Dad and I used to lay in the living room floor with a volume of the encyclopedias open pouring over maps or facts about amazing places. In the years since, I would be home and we would be talking about something and Dad would grab the encyclopedia and find out what it said about the subject or look at the map.

I know this for sure. I did look at every page in every volume and I looked at many of the pages multiple times. I can not tell you how much enjoyment I found in those books. Reading opened the world to me. I left home in 1985 and I was not the smartest young man in the world. However, I was a whole lot smarter than I would have been without those books.

Those books are still on the shelves at Dad and Moms.

Now we have more information at our fingertips in our phones than 1000 set of encyclopedias. I do not even know if they still sell them. (I just checked, Amazon has The World Book 2019 set for $800.) Do families buy them? I hope so and I hope kids still read them.

I never bought a new set, but I bought a set of Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedias at a thrift store for like $12.50 in the early 90s. They were old, but I traveled the world for many, many hours using those books as my transportation. I gave them away when we hit the road in 2003, but now I have another set of my own.

Steve and Karen bought a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica about 1990 ish and they gave them to me a few months ago. They have been sitting on the floor of my study, but now they are back on a bookcase and I enjoyed a few pages in one yesterday.

The World Book Encyclopedias were designed to be read and understood by young people or men and women of all educational levels. These may a bit more difficult to navigate, but by the time I read every page, I should be a pretty smart man.

Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Vintage View Vednesday NOT!

We had to skip Vintage View Vednesday last week because I could not get a group of pictures to load. I usually load 30-40 pictures as a time with no problem, but it would not do it at all last week. Google did a forced update of the Blogger dashboard last week and that seems to be the problem. I have had no problem loading four or five pictures from my phone in the days since then, so yesterday I tried loading the pictures I had planned for last week in bunches of four, but they still would not load.

I tried a different set of pictures, four at a time and they would not load. Ugh! Then I thought to check the size of the pictures and that may be the problem. I have loaded thousands of pictures of the same size I was trying to load last week, but now that size must be too big. Smaller pictures, like the quality I send from my phone load just fine.

If I can not load pictures over a certain size, it is going to severely limit the Vintage pictures I can put up. We will have to see how that plays out over the next few weeks and months.

This is the point where you are supposed to start seeing pictures, but even small pictures will not load in small batches. Ouch! Until I get to the bottom of this, we may be at the end of Vintage View Vednesday as we have known it. I will work more and ask more questions and see if I can come up with answers. Thank you for your patience.

We do have the video link from revival service last night. Maybe I can get that to work.

Thank you for dropping by for a while today. I hope you have a great day.

Davy

A Rainy Day

It feels like we have turned a corner as we prepare to pull out and leave for revival once again. We are only going for one revival plus a single service, but the same preparation goes into it like we are going to stay gone for weeks. Kelly worked diligently for hours getting the bus ready to ride inside. She says she has a bunch more to do, but it looks great already.

I worked a bit on a rainy day project that I have had in my back pocket the whole time we have been home. The panel in the barn has needed some attention and I determined I would use a morning working on it when I could not work outside.

It rained all day and all my other rainy day projects were completed so yesterday was the day. I needed to add a circuit into the panel and several others needed to be straightened up or combined with other circuits. At some point, a previous owner or tenant used machines in this barn that needed separate breakers for each machine. In five years, I have learned how I need things configured and I have been making the necessary changes. The work in the panel was the finishing of that.

Once that was finished I went to my study to prepare for preaching last night and the rest of the week. I am a slow learner and it takes me more time than average to be prepared. One of my greatest fears is not being prepared.

Monday afternoon, my brother Steve supplied me with another rainy day project. He gave me some nice shelving units for my study. Since it is supposed to rain most of the week, I should have pictures of the finished project soon.

Last night we kicked off our ninth week of revival and I think it was a great service. I felt the touch of the Lord and I was greatly encouraged. I tried to preach on The Promise of Revival and I hope to stick close to that theme all week long.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us today. May God bless you with a great day.

Davy

What's Up Weekend? 5/18/20

We have enjoyed another wonderful weekend of working around the ranch and lots of great church. We are praising God for His grace and help. He is good to us and we enjoy the privilege of living in His world.

The first picture I have to represent our weekend is Odie practicing a song before church Saturday night.

We worked on a little project in the barn this week and finished it Saturday. First I cleared out an area near one wall and mounted my first 2x12. I had a bunch of boards left from forming the concrete on the porches of the house and all the wood I used came from that.

I ordered flanges and two foot sections of threaded black pipe and after much trial and error, we assembled a system that seems to be holding the two hundred tent revival chairs.

I like to keep the scaffolding assembled and I rolled it in front of the chairs and stored the chop saw and table saw under it at least temporarily.

I think I mentioned that I built a couple more bookcases from scrap lumber for my upstairs study. This is one of them and I have it sitting next to my chair with a few books within reach.

This bookcase is on the other side of my chair. The books at the top and my beloved Pulpit Commentary. When I was pastoring in Kansas, I kept these 53 volumes close and enjoyed reading them for pleasure.

The bookcase in the above picture is one of five that I purchased on an online auction after we bought this property. Four of the five cases were about seven feet tall and they were all stained blond. They had spent their lives in the library at Princeton High School near Cincinnati. I bought them all for a very cheap price and Dad picked them up for me. We later cut them down to fit on the short wall and sanded them and stained them dark.  

I took this picture below on Sunday morning as I was settling in for several hours of listening to preaching. 

I started with Pastor Bennie Sutherland teaching Sunday School on Jonah. I think he preached us all under conviction. In fact, they had an altar service after the Sunday School lesson! I joined the altar in my study. 

Then I listened to Pastor Tim Webb, Pastor Scott Morris, Pastor Philip Hoskins, Pastor Kenny Morris, Pastor EJ Lamb, Pastor Jared Burris, Pastor Andy Stringfellow and I caught a little part of several more services. It was a good Sunday! Including my break for lunch and KJo coming up to check on me, I had 9 hours of church in my study yesterday!

Odie had a few pictures from the weekend.

We finished the day with Sunday Night Singalong.

That wraps up the weekend. Thank you for stopping in.

Davy

Our View Out The Front Window

Our view should be changing by next Sunday, but this is it for now.

This was the view during revival last night.

YouTube

Here is a bit of Sunday Morning Sanity.

I would try skinny jeans but I do not think I could pull it off.

Thank you for dropping in to sit a spell.

Davy

The Little Couch

Hey Friends,

This is Odie checking in today. How are you? I am glad that I can still visit here and we can all be safe! I miss seeing my friends. 

One of the perks of blogging is the collecting of memories. I enjoy scrolling through the archives and remembering the past. We have been posting here since 2009. The memories that we have collected are numerous. I also have a ton of life highlights that happened before blogging. I want to write about some of those memories and save them forever.

The Little Couch

Today's post goes way back to 1989. We were living in Franklin, Ohio at this time. I remember going to Toys-R-Us with my Dad. It was so fun to look at all the neat toys. I definitely did not need another toy, but my birthday was approaching. I remember looking at all the playhouses, I thought I needed.

Then I spotted a little couch. It was so cool! We did not purchase it, but that couch was forever stamped in my brain. Dad remembered it too. He drove our little blue Sprint car to the Dayton Toys-R-Us. and bought the popular couch. It was my fourth birthday gift from my parents.

Here is another, not so great, memory from that day. Dad was leaving the store and he was in a car wreck. I think someone else hit my Dad's car. Thank God that Dad was not injured!

My fourth birthday party was an awesome day! My grandparent, aunts and uncles came over to help us celebrate I wish I had pictures to share from that day. I know Mamaw had video footage.

During my party, Dad carried me into our living room and I was told to keep my eyes closed. Dad then sat me on my couch. I was elated to have my very own couch. It would be my favorite place to sit for years.

I wish I had a picture available to show you. My little couch was part of my life for years! Not only was it a comfortable place to sit, but it also folded out to a bed. I slept many nights on that thing.

In my playing, I used the couch as a church pew, a doctor's bed and many more things. I would fold it a certain way to make it into my car. I traveled lots of imaginary miles and visited several places. I would sit up on the back of the couch and wave and pretend to be in a parade. I wanted to be the Saurkraut Festival Queen!

I kept my precious couch until Mom convinced me that I no longer needed it. The couch went to live with my cousins. I was happy that I could visit it occasionally.

The little couch was not important in the grand scheme of life, but it brought me much joy. It played an important role in my childhood and imagination. I had no idea how much I would bond with the couch when I found it in the store. It is now a highlight in my life! Recently I realized the colors of my childhood couch would have matched my adult furniture. I had no idea, at four, that I was planning ahead.

Mom and Dad, thank you for my birthday gift when I was four! I do not remember if I ever thanked you. I know you probably sacrificed to have the money to buy it. Thanks for putting up with my couch and moving it a lot of times for me.

Thanks for reading my childhood memory! Do you have a favorite item from your childhood? I would love to read your memories in the comments.

God Bless,

Odie

What's Up Weekend? 5/15/20

Since it is Friday, it is time for Revival in Pictures. First, here is last night's service.

Revival In Pictures

This has been an eventful week. We have had revival each night and we have been social butterflies two days. Of course, that is social butterflies with social distance in between. We also worked in the barn, hauled off fence debris and mowed the yard. 

When we began this revival on March 23 it was completely dark when we started our first service at 8:00 PM. 53 nights later I took these pictures after service last night a few minutes past 9:00 PM.

The Lamb family has been resting AND watching revival. We love these pictures!

Jackson Daniels- Hillsboro, Ohio watching Uncle Davy preach. 

Jason and Brooklyn Eason watching service in Knoxville, Tennessee 

Revival Pics from Odie

 

Mom and Dad came over for lunch one day. It was too cold to sit on the driveway so we ate in Odie's garage.

I mentioned last week that I had trouble with the lawnmower the last time I mowed. Dad helped me get that straightened out while he was here and it did fine Wednesday when I mowed! Thank you, Dad!

Evidently, this mower needs voltage for the steering to work, for the blades to stay on and to keep the motor running. The battery was not being charged so everything was shutting down. Dad suggested a blown fuse and I knew where the fuse block was located. The first fuse I pulled was good, but dad noticed that one blade was going on top of the slot it goes in rather than inside.

We inserted the fuse correctly and the battery was charging like it is supposed to. Yay!

Bro. JR and Sis. Teresa Alexander came over for lunch Wednesday. It was great to see them and great to visit with them.

That wraps up the week of revival. Hopefully, by Monday I will have pictures of one of the little projects in the barn. Thank you for joining us today, friends.

Davy