Three Day Grand Opening

This Easter weekend you're invited to join us at Genesis Church for three days of worship, celebration, and prayer. We are celebrating both the resurrection of our Lord and the amazing gift of our new church facility. It's a "Grand Opening" and so many ways. Here is the schedule:

Good Friday, April 2nd @ 7:07 PM featuring Jerad Collier and the GC.TV Band.

Saturday, April 3rd @ 7:07 PM featuring national recording artist Jonny Diaz.

Sunday, April 4th @ 9:29 or 11:01 AM featuring Julian Drive.

So for something different this Easter, come and join us. Be a part of this amazing three day event!

4070 Mission Road, Tallahassee, Florida at the corner of Fred George and Mission Road.

Church Swap

This is truly amazing. Our church, Genesis Church, has been through a lot of hardship, growth, changes, gains and loss. At one time we were one of the largest Church of God congregations in Florida and we had slipped down to just a few hundred regular attenders. We sold our old building, went portable, started a three year building campaign, tried the multi-site model and ended up at a place about like where we left. At the end of 2009 our pastor (Brian Hunter) got a word from God that he should answer, "Yes" when a call came to him. He didn't know what it would be about or who it might be, but he should answer, "Yes". He pondered this in his heart and finally after a few weeks told his wife about what he felt God had spoken to him. The next day Pastor Brian received a phone call from another COG pastor in town and it basically was, "You have a big congregation in a small building. We have a small congregation in a big building. Want to swap?" Pastor Brian just about jumped out of his skin about the call. He said that he would pray about it, but God had already told him what to say.

After short time, the denominational leadership gave their approval and so did our church staff and leadership team. Pastor Brian announced the move at the end of January with a target date of February 28, 2010! We would completely relocate from Blountstown Highway to Mission Road in just four weeks.

So, on the 28th of February, I invite you to visit Genesis Church at its new location, 4070 North Mission Road, Tallahassee, Florida. That's the intersection of North Mission Road and Fred George. Service time is at 11:01 AM. Just look for this building:

New home of Genesis Church
4070 North Mission Road
Tallahassee, Florida

Turkey or Ham?

Neither, thank you. This past Thanksgiving we gathered at Barbara's sister's home in Georgia and enjoyed something different for our main meal item. No, it was not Tofu. We enjoyed Cornish Game Hens roasted on the grill. Everybody pitched in and did their part and we had an amazing time together.

So here's how these were cooked. We thawed out the hens, cleaned them up of excess fat and skin and patted them dry. Next, we rubbed them all over with a little olive oil and then lightly salted and peppered them. We lined the bottom of the tall disposable aluminum cooking pans with thick slices of white onions. This keeps the birds from directly touching the pans and sticking. We cut up several navel oranges into quarters and placed both onion and oranges into the cavity of the hens. Finally, we put enough orange juice and water (50-50 mix) to just cover the onions so they won't burn when cooking. We put two birds into each pan so they did not touch the sides or each other and placed on to a heated gas grill set on medium (showed 350-370 degrees).

We cooked the birds breast side up for 20 minutes and then flipped them up-side down. We cooked for 20 minutes more to get the bottoms nice and brown and then flipped them back right-side up. I kept adding the orange juice and water mixture to the pans to make sure things did not dry out. Now cook for 20 minutes more and start checking for doneness. I used a meat thermometer to check the thickest part of the thighs and breast. Cook until you get to 180(F). Remove the pans and then take out the hens on a serving platter to rest. You can also get some of those awesome cooked onions to enjoy. They are tender, sweet and yummo!

Here is our buffet with the stuffing, sweet potato souffle, pea salad and the orange-onion grilled Cornish hens.

Our wonderful table setting for Thanksgiving. Thanks to Trisha, Connie, Barbara (my wonderful wife) and me for my small part. We had a great time together.

Quiet Sunday

Just a short update. I have been a busy fellow these past weeks. Too much going on at work and life in general. Anyway, we took today off. It's my birthday! My wife and I went out to eat breakfast and did some shopping. Hung around the house and generally laid low. Sometimes it's nice to just "veg".

I went to a funeral last Friday for one of my coworkers. The gentleman was just 57 years old but had suffered with cancer for the past several years. He finally past on last Monday. The funeral was packed with family, friends and coworkers. It was standing room only at the funeral home. The priest said a short message which really struck home. He said that he looked at the death notice and saw, Born and a date, died and a date. In between was a hyphen (-). A person's whole life represented by a hyphen! This man had a great and full life and will be greatly missed. The priest challenged us to make our time here on earth full and rich to help those around us as this man did. Amen.

Eight Years

Today has been different for me. I have been thinking of that day eight years ago when America was attacked. I was driving into work and listening to the radio when they announced that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. Comparisons were being made to the time when an airplane flew into the Empire State Building back in the 1940s. Suddenly the announce said that another plane had struck the WTC! I had arrived at work and walked into the building when one of the computer operators said, "They just bombed the Pentagon!". I rushed to my office and we all began to listen to the radios as the day unfolded.

The next big news was of the collapse of the first tower and then the second. We gathered around a TV and the images were awful. People running, smoke and dust hanging in the air. There were no words to describe how many of us felt.

In the next few days co-workers were working around the clock to help law enforcement officials with identification of the hijackers. They had obtained driver licenses with false IDs and members of our division gathered all the records together. This helped in the hunt for any accomplices or locations.

In the aftermath, I remember stories of people volunteering to travel to New York City to assist in the recovery and cleanup. People lined up to give blood. Others lined up to enlist into the military. Our country came together to help one another and make some kind of sense out of these horrible events. The events at the WTC, the Pentagon and the story of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania became calls to action.

Since then, we have fought on many fronts in many different places at home and around the world. We continue to pray for our military and civilians who are in harms way to protect us at home. God protect and keep them safe and return them to us quickly!

Here is an amazing video tribute using Michael W. Smith's, "There She Stands."

Follow this link to a photo tribute set to Enya's, "Only Time":

New For Old

The old Pioneer

It is sadness I have to leave an old friend behind. My poor old (about 12 years old) Pioneer receiver/amplifier has decided it no longer wanted to receive or amplify. This unit gave our family many hours of quality entertainment from the radio to cassettes and now Cds and DVDs. All good things had to come to and end. Sigh! The amp would run a for about three to four minutes and then cut off. Click -- and you were watching a silent movie. Power it back on and then just a minute later, click again. (Kind of like the instructions on the shampoo bottle: Wash, rinse repeat). Power on, wait a few and click, silence.

After pulling the old girl (if amps have a gender, I would call this one a she) out of the shelf, I opened up the classy chassis and did a complete cleaning, vacuum, blowout and wipe down. She seemed to enjoy that and started working again, but it was not to last. About three weeks later, click!

I am sure an old-fashioned repair place (which doesn't exist anymore) would have the schematic diagram for the girl and quickly locate the offending part. A touch of the soldering iron and all would be well again. Like I wrote, those places don't exist anymore. I could probably do it myself being as I am somewhat of an electronics type. I just lack the schematic, oscilloscope, signal injector and parts.

The new Sony

So, onto the Internet(s) I went. Didn't need the 5.1 surround sound. I just like a clean stereo mix. Funding was limited so that kind of set the ceiling as to what I could search for. I finally found a Sony receiver/amplifier that fit the bill. Off to Best Buy and about two hours later we were back home (after minor side trips for other shopping and lunch).

The new unit sat on the floor for two days and so finally tonight, I made the change out. Power, speakers, inputs, outputs, antennas, oh my! About an hour later I pressed the power on button, did a reset and cranked up the volume. My old unit had a six set EQ and this only has Bass and Treble but that's OK. It's very clean and crisp sound. I can really make things shake if I want to but I would rather have great sound than just loud sound. The amp has .05% thd and that's not to shabby. While they say it's at 1 kHz they don't list the power output for the measurement. I figure it's about 5 or 10 watts, not the max of 200 watts this thing can put out.

I hope this one lasts as long as the first!

New Camera

So how do you take a picture of your new camera with your new camera? You don't. Just go to the web and grab an ad photo off of the vendor's site. So, here is the new camera. It's a refurbished Nikon Coolpix-L18. Magnolia Fly pointed us to the site where they were selling these at a great price so we placed our order for the red model. They were sold out and after about three weeks or so they offered us the blue one for the same price. We nailed it and a 4 GB memory card for less than $70.00! Now we have to learn how to use it. It takes good pix and videos. Mostly have been practicing on the cats. We will be uploading to the Flickr Pro account our daughter got for us as soon as we get some shots that need uploading...

Lookout world - we will taking some cool pix!