A Practice Day

The real story of the day in Waynesville, Ohio, is cold weather. Are you tired of hearing about the weather? Kidnap me and take me some place warm and I will shut up about the weather. I promise! It is entirely too COLD here.

If you are familiar with history, then you know that people came from east of here and took this Ohio valley from the people that had lived here for centuries. On days like this I wonder, why? Why all the bloodshed? Why all the broken families and ruined lives? Why did people have to suffer and die?

It would have been much easier if the folks that floated down the Ohio River had just kept floating a few more days and went a little farther south. Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton and thousands of others came across the mountains and though Kentucky and latched onto Ohio in the process. They could have easily loaded up the wagons and rode south a few days and settled in Tennessee.

Tennessee is fairly nice in the winter. 

But no, they had to live in Ohio. And this is the result! I showed you this yesterday but it deserves the repeat. 7 degrees and feels like minus 9 degrees before daylight Thursday morning.

And it was 13 during the heat of the day but felt like a big fat ZERO!

Okay, on to other things. With permission from Pastor Kelly Rogers, we set up some of our sound equipment in the church so we could practice our Christmas music. Kelly Jo had practiced the piano all week and we had worked on vocals a little. Yesterday we threw it all together. It was a long but very productive day.

We ended the practice day with a great trip to Acapulco with Steve and Karen. it was terrific. Maybe we should have started the day like that as well. Man, I love that place.

When we got back to the bus, I could not help but look at the weather again.

Ain't nobody got time for that!

All this cold weather sure makes me thankful for the barn. The barn was below freezing this morning and hovered around 24-26 degrees all day. But it was not 7 inside!!! 

The bus can handle mid 20's fine, especially since it is shielded from the wind. If we were outside, keeping the bus from freezing would be a full time job in these temperatures. Thank God for the big red bus barn!

Thanks for reading, friends. I hope you have a great weekend.

Davy

A Winter Wonderland?

The week so far has pretty much been all about getting ready for the Christmas services that will be going on between now and Tuesday. I posted information about those services yesterday. We are looking forward to singing Christmas songs and preaching a little Christmas sermon.

Tuesday we met our dear friends, Bro. EJ and Sis. Lacey Lamb for a great lunch and wonderful fellowship. We love these folks and before we knew it we had talked and eaten for over two hours. Even after all that, you can see below that it was still smiles all around.

We will get to see them again Sunday night at Anchor of Hope where they serve as Associate Pastor and worship leader. This will be a special Christmas service so come be with us.

This is what it looked like on way home Tuesday afternoon.

And this is what it looked like as we turned into the ranch. That is the barn and tent trailer way back there but where is the lane?

I was up early Wednesday morning and went outside to check things out. I think we definitely beat the 1-3 inches estimate. In fact, that estimate spun off in a ditch some where! Then in a tragic road rage incident, a driver got out and beat that 1-3 inches estimate to death right there beside the road.

 

I shoveled some of the areas around the car and barn door because I knew if the cold came as they were predicting, the snow would be frozen solid.

We were going south for a lunch meeting so I was checking the roads. Our road looked good but I text my brother to check the conditions in Cincinnati. He said there was no snow there. I thought he was joking but there was literally NO snow there. In fact, I would say there was no more than one inch of snow ten miles south of us. That is crazy!

Although it did not get above freezing Wednesday, the cloudy day still brought us a little melting. Here is Kelly Jo styling and profiling in her warm, dry and fashionable snow boots. (Thank you Sis. G!)

This is the temperature now, Thursday morning. 7 degrees and feels like minus 9! For our readers overseas, that is minus 13 and minus 22 Celsius!

Please explain to me again why anyone one wants to live north of the Ohio river or even north of Interstate 40? This is ridiculous! I know that some of you love cold weather and I can sympathize with that. I get it. 

I may not be completely right in the head but THAT is not my particular kind of illness. This is too cold for human consumption!

Today we hope to set up the sound system and go through our Christmas program about 394 times. We should have it down pat by then.

Thanks for reading today. I do hope you are some place very warm, I am, if only in my dreams!

Davy

Schedule - Christmas Services

Update: Tomorrow morning's Christmas service has been rescheduled. The weather guessers are predicting a wintry mix early tomorrow morning in West Harrison so Pastor Wade Hicks decided to reschedule the service in an abundance of caution. We now plan to be there Wednesday December 21st at 7:00 PM.

Wow! Winter has arrived in grand fashion! This was how it looked yesterday afternoon and it snowed for a few more hours after this!

At one point yesterday the snow was falling in beautiful little star shaped flakes!

This was the temperature at 4:41 this morning. Look at the low of 7 for tonight. Thursday the high is forecast at 14 degrees!

Folks, that is too cold! Ouch!

Schedule - Christmas Services

Ok, I have finally whipped the calendar back into shape. I think I have every thing listed up through the third week of April. You can see the schedule HERE. As always, dates are completely subject to change and are likely to change before I finish this post!

I also added the dates for our Christmas services. We have done a few of these in the past and Pastor Brian Hisle has been asking us to come to New Castle, Indiana for a Christmas service the last few years. Bro. Brian is a great long time friend and we are happy to be able to go this year.

Things kind of snowballed from there. We have been asked to do others but there are only so many service nights between now and Christmas. Plus a Christmas service after December 25 is just...LATE!

December 16, Friday, - Sharonville, Ohio, Free Holiness Church of God, Pastor Randy Brown, 7:00 PM

Rescheduled Due to Weather 
December 18, Sunday Morning - West Harrison Pentecostal, West Harrison, IN, 10:00 AM
New Date: December 21, Wednesday Evening 7:00 PM

December 18, Sunday Evening - Lebanon, OH, Anchor of Hope, Pastor Bill Lamb, 6:00 PM

December 20, Tuesday - New Castle, IN, Trinity Full Gospel Tabernacle, Pastor Brian Hisle, 7:00 PM

We also changed up the first of the year schedule the last month or so. We knew we would not be home until now (Mid-December), so we had initially planned to begin revivals in Alabama the third Sunday in January. We wanted a little more time at home to prepare for the next sprint across the country.

Pastor John DiZazzo called and asked us to preach the dedication service for their Hope For The Hurting residential program on January 1st and we were thrilled to be asked to do it. We love what Bethany Revival Center is doing to change people's lives and we want to support it in every way we can.

I immediately accepted the invitation knowing full well we were not going to be any where near there at that time. No problem, right? We thought about driving the Green Machine out and back home but that is a 1600 mile round trip. We looked at flying but that was not appealing either.

After thinking it over and hashing it out, we decided to leave December 30th and make a big loop out of it. That gives us a chance to visit several friends that have been asking us to come. Most of those new dates have now been added to the calendar.

Come see us if you can. God bless you all.

Davy

Getting Back Into the Routine

When we hit the ground in the USA Saturday this was our view from the Newark, New Jersey airport. That is the World Trade Center Freedom Tower in the center. Kelly Jo saw the Statue of Liberty on the flight in but I missed it completely.

It was great to turn my phone off of airplane mode for the first time in 25 days.

My Dad and my brother Steve took care of everything at the barn and bus while we were gone as they always do. I appreciate them tending to things. Having the bus in the barn relieves a lot of worry about it freezing up but it still needs a watchful eye when things get really cold. Thanks Dad and Bubba!

Kelly Jo and I had to run to town Monday so we stopped in at Acapulco at 11:00 for a little Mexican food fix. Plus, I needed to see my friends!

Wow! It was delicious! We had not had any Mexican food the whole time we were gone until take out Sunday and dine-in on Monday. We were long overdue! We did see a Mexican restaurant in some country we were in but it was too far from Mexico to lure me in. I tried that in Canada once; bad, bad mistake!

I stopped at my Dad and Mom's Monday afternoon and Odie came back to the bus with me. We are trying to get ready for our Christmas services that begin Friday. We are only doing four and all of them are close to home. I will post those dates here tomorrow.

This is what practice looks like in the BoggsMobile. Kelly Jo is standing by the bed playing her Yamaha and Odie is in the floor. We have spent a few hours like this through the years!

Kelly Jo's parents came by and visited a while Monday afternoon and we enjoyed that very much. We will be able to see them more before the holidays are over but it was very nice to have them here for the afternoon.

Today should be more of the same. We have plans to meet some friends for lunch, but besides that, the day should look a lot like Monday. We are getting back into the routine. Of course by the time we are settled, it will be time to hit the road for a different routine. There is no time to get bored.

Thanks for stopping in today.

Davy

Howdy, Dear Friends

As Odie already told you yesterday, we are back at the barn and the BoggsMobile and glad to have it so. Kelly Jo and I sometimes have a difficult time adjusting to large time changes but so far we have been sleeping at night and able to function during the day. I was awake in the middle of the night for a few hours the first night but it is definitely better than other times.

I sure appreciate Odie taking care of the blog while we were gone. I have not went back and looked at all the posts she wrote, but I will in the next few days. Hopefully she does not follow my grammatically errant ways, but unfortunately for her, she is my daughter and the nut usually does not fall far from the tree.

While I was awake Saturday night, I did take an hour or so to go through my posts from oversees and straighten them up a bit. When posting from my phone or iPad it is not easy to format fonts or paragraphs so they tend toward sloppiness. 

I wish Google and Apple would play nice together but they seem to thrive on making it hard on each other. When I use the iPhone app for Blogger (A Google Product) I can not control any of these things. If I go to the actual Blogger website on my phone or iPad the features will not work there.

The posts look great in the app on my iPhone but they end up very messy in real life. The lines and paragraphs are either jammed together or have three or four spaces separating them with no rhyme or reason. The last three paragraphs end up looking something like this.

While I was awake Saturday night, I did take an hour or so to go through my posts from oversees and straighten them up a bit. When posting from my phone or iPad it is not easy to format fonts or paragraphs so they tend toward sloppiness. 

I wish Google and Apple would play nice together but they seem to thrive on making it hard on each other. When I use the iPhone app for Blogger (A Google Product) I can not control any of these things. If I go to the actual Blogger website on my phone or iPad the features are unavailable there.

The posts look great in the app on my iPhone but they end up very messy in real life. The lines and paragraphs are either jammed together or have three or four spaces separating them with no rhyme or reason. The last three paragraphs end up looking something like this.

Can you see the difference? That drives me crazy. Anyway, I straightened my posts out and added labels as well. I like for the posts to be labeled so it is easier to find something in a post later.

We did wake up enough to walk next door to church last night and today we should be full steam ahead. We have lots to do before we hit the road on the 30th and we have lots of family and friends to hug and enjoy as well. Oh, and I need to drink some salsa!

Odie did send in some pictures from last night including her trip with Lisa and Debbie to drink some salsa after church.

Thank you for praying for us while we were away. I tried to keep you up to date on the good things happening while we were in Nigeria but I will try to write a wrap up post from the trip soon. We also probably have a few pictures yet to be posted. Stay tuned.

God bless you all.

Davy

Dad and Mom are Home

Odie here again.

I enjoyed the last part of the Dodds Christmas dinner last night AFTER I went with my grandparents to pick up Dad and Mom at the Dayton airport. Yes, they are home safe and secure in the BoggsMobile! Hopefully they are able to rest from the trip home. Dad says he should be back to blogging tomorrow. It is great to have them back!

Here are three pictures from the dinner last night.

Have a great Sunday.

Odie