Weekend Woundup and Weview #16

It has been a super great Easter weekend! We have so many pictures from the weekend, we may save the pictures from Easter Sunday for a second post. We will see how it goes.

Friday in Central City was great from the start because it included Mexican food! I think we only ate Mexican food five days while in Central City so we will have to do better next time.😀

Friday afternoon, I unhooked the utilities, started the BoggsMobile and turned it around in order to hook up the car. I had everything ready to go before church started.

Friday night we had another good service to finish up revival. We sure enjoyed being with Pastor Alan Harris and all of his fine folks. They have been so good to us through the years and we cherish their friendship.

Friday night pictures from Sis. Brenti.

Pictures from Pastor Alan Harris

After church we loaded up the BoggsMobile, bid our dear friends a sad goodbye and pointed northeast toward the Lazy OD Ranch. It was only 272 miles and mostly interstate but I was a little tired starting out this time.

The last several times I have driven at night I have not been sleepy at all. I did not really struggle to stay a wake Friday but I was wishing every single mile away. We had to make a detour from our regular route through Cincinnati due to construction but we had no trouble at all going through and very little traffic.

4 hours and 26 minutes after we started, we pulled in next to the barn. We did not take time to take the tent trailer out of its place inside. We pulled in next to the barn, hooked up to the outside plug and called it a night. 

I climbed into bed for a few hours about 4:00 AM. It sure felt good!

Saturday morning David Bulter and my Dad came and officially staked out the perimeter of the house we are building for Odie to live in. 



David Butler is doing the excavating. He plans to be here this morning to begin. We officially "Broke ground" this weekend with Odie turning over the first shovel of dirt. I will have pictures of that later.

While we were working on the layout, the Dodds church was having their Egg Hunt next door. Some of the folks walked over to visit and we enjoyed that. Paul Smith and his wife and children were in from Chicago and walked over for a few minutes. I do not get to see Paul very often so that was really special.

Paul is a first cousin on the Boggs side of our family and is about a year and a half younger than me. We lived close when we were growing up and we spent a lot of time together. He is a very talented artist and that was evident even when we were very young. Who needed coloring books when he could draw all the pictures we needed to color?

It was great to see him.

Then we moved the tent trailer out of the barn and flip the BoggsMobile around and backed it in. Kelly Jo is quite a driver!

At 5:00 PM it was time for a break and a nice meal with some of my family at Dad's barn. They had smoked ham, brisket, green beans, grilled vegetables and a bunch more things that I am not allowed to partake in. 

We enjoyed the short visit with family. We did not stay long since we had work to do and we were hoping we might go to bed early to make up for missing a night's sleep. Fat chance of that!

One of the things I did Saturday before dark was give the Green Machine a good bath. It was way overdue and it cleaned up nicely. It is so nice to have water on the Ranch now!

We did have a super great Sunday at our home church. Pastor Gary Lee preached Sunday morning and Pastor Bennie Sutherland preached Sunday night. They both reeled in a couple of souls a piece and that is awesome. What a great way to begin revival. 

I think this post is long enough so I will post the pictures from Sunday later. I do have a couple more pictures to post before I close. Pastor Alan Harris and the church in Central City are beginning a sanctuary remodel today. They had already sold some the their pews and were using a few of their fellowship hall chairs in the sanctuary.



Sunday night after there service, Bro. Harris and his folks moved everything out to prepare for the contractors arriving this morning! It looks huge!

They are going to remove the paneling and replace it with drywall, extend the platform and replace the carpet. They have new chairs coming soon as well. It is going to look so nice.

The First Church of the Fellowship Hall is set up and ready to go!

That wraps up most of the weekend. I will try to post pictures from Easter tomorrow. I hope you had a great weekend.

Davy

He Wouldn’t Stay Dead - Easter 2017

Easter 2016 we were in Quartzsite, Arizona. 







Easter 2015 we were in Evansville, Indiana. 







Easter 2014 was the last Easter we were home. 







We were home unexpectedly that Easter because Odie had gone completely blind in her left eye. We had canceled revivals to come home in order for Odie to seek medical help. Easter Sunday was the eighth day of her blindness. 

It was a dark and difficult week for us. We were never more aware of the biblical fact that "fear hath torment." What did we do? We went to church and celebrated the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in spite of the darkness. He rose from the dead and conquered death, hell and the grave and our personal circumstances will never change that fact!

By Monday night, God began to turn the situation around and the resurrected Savior brought victory once again! We praised Him for the resurrection even though we felt more like cowering in fear. He turned our mourning to dancing and we are still rejoicing. Thanks be unto God for our resurrected Lord! 

Odie told about all of that from her perspective yesterday.

Today we bring you our Easter tradition on Boggsblogs.com. I am posting our annual Easter poem on this beautiful Resurrection Sunday. I hope you enjoy it!

I have quoted this poem in my preaching for many, many years and it thrills me yet today. It was written by a Baptist preacher named Willard G. Thomas from Georgia. I heard him quote it in person long years ago. It spoke to me then and it speaks to me every time I think of it. I love this poem. I added the last stanza when I started quoting it myself.

May God bless you on this Easter. 

If you are not a Christian, may you be moved by the fact that Jesus Christ died for you and then got up out of the grave for you as well. Thank God! He arose! Take a moment to think about it all.

Davy

He Wouldn’t Stay Dead

by:Willard G. Thomas

They laid His body in Joseph’s new tomb

And filled His disciples with sorrow and gloom

They did not remember what He had said

That He would die, but He wouldn’t stay dead

Mary came at the break of day

And found the stone was rolled away

She saw an angel and in terror fled

And told His disciples that He didn’t stay dead

In that cold dark tomb He would not stay

He conquered death and walked away

And now that old grave has lost it’s fear and dread

He lives again! He wouldn’t stay dead

Full atonement and pardon were made

And forever the sin debt was marked fully paid

The price was His blood as it flowed crimson red

And I’m thankful today that He didn’t stay dead!

Let’s go to our churches and cry aloud

Let’s go to the marketplace and talk to the crowd

Let’s go to the mission fields that lie up ahead

And tell the whole world that He didn’t stay dead!

Because if Jesus Christ had only died

Then the gulf between us and God would still be wide

But thank God He did what He said

He got up out of the ground, He couldn’t stay dead!

Last Stanza by Davy Boggs

Three Years Of Thanking God

Hello Friends, This is Odie reporting in from Ohio. We are excited to be home. Our home church, Dryden Road Pentecotsal Church, is celebrating 60 years on Dryden Road and 70 years as a church this week. I am glad Dad was able to work our schedule where we could be home for this special week of celebration!

 I want to wish you a Happy Easter!  I am so thankful we serve a Risen Savior! He is definitely alive and still working for His children in 2017! If you are not a Christian, today is a good day for you to get to know my Jesus. He is amazing and He died for us. On the 3rd day He Arose from the grave!

We had a fantastic week in Central City, Kentucky!  It is always wonderful to be with Pastor Alan and Sister Tammy Harris and all our great friends at Trinity Pentecostal Church! I am so thankful God placed these friends in our lives. The services during revival were so good. The presence of the Lord is so sweet and precious!

Thursday morning, April 13th, marked 3 years since I woke up to a blind left eye. For any new readers let me testify to you. April 13th 2014, I woke up blind in my left eye. It came on without warning and I was terrified that my new normal would be both blind and crippled. 

We also worried the blindness would spread to both eyes. Over the next 9 days it was a roller coaster of emotions. I can not put it all into one post. We were trying to figure out what exactly was happening. Click here to read a synopsis of those days and beyond.

Doctors concluded it was most likely Optic Neuritis, the optic nerve was inflamed. The doctor began treating it the best they could but could not promise that my vision would return. If it did return, they could not give time estimation or how much sight I would regain. 

Throughout the 9 days we prayed and believed God for a miracle. On the evening of the 9th we received a word we felt like was from God. We prayed again and began rebuking the devil and pleading the blood of Jesus over me. 

From that very moment, my vision began returning. Three hours later I was able to see the E on top of the eye chart. My vision was completely restored over the next several days but I immediately began praising God for a miracle. Now three years later my vision is 20/20!!  My vision is better than it ever was! God gave me the miracle we prayed for. 

The last few days I have re-read several of our blog posts from that scary 9 days of zero vision in my left eye. I can still remember the feelings of fear and uncertainty that plagued me during that period of time. But I will NEVER FORGET the peace of God that carried me through that valley of the unknown. 

I know God is good no matter what the outcome could have been!  I thank God daily for healing me! There is not a way possible for me to thank Him enough. I have shared my testimony from Coast to Coast and I am thankful to be able to share it today.

Today I am reminiscing of the Lord's faithfulness. Also I want to encourage you and me to believe God for a miracle in the impossible situations. No matter how long we have to wait remember God is still concerned about us and He is an "On Time God". He will bring us "Through It All". 

We survived that awful trial because number one, God is good and number two, because the people of God helped us fight the battle through prayer!  I am still overwhelmed when I think of all our amazing family and friends who helped us and encourage us, when the light at the end was nowhere in sight. Thank you again to each of you for being our support team. 

We were preaching that week at Faith Church in Salem, Kentucky for Pastor Phillip Sanders. Bro. Sanders and his church rallied around us and loved on us during that difficult time. They prayed for me fervently and allowed us to close revival early in order to deal with my blindness at home. They were great to us.

Bro. Larry and Sis. Rosemary Landress came to us in Salem. They prayed and cried with us and distracted me when I needed to be distracted. It was an encouragement to have them by our side for a couple days. Thank you, Bro. Larry and Sis. Rosemary! We love you!

 

My friend Brentni Hrapeck was a God send. She got me in to see the Retnal specialist she works for in Paducah, Kentucky. She answer many questions and helped me so much! I will forever be grateful for your help, Brentni!

 

Thanks for stopping by and reading today. I pray you have a fabulous weekend. 

Odie