New piano!!!!

Through the generosity of a couple of donors, we were able to get a new piano at church recently. It's awesome!

Pics of the kids

Here's a couple of new pics of the kids:

Rachel with the lady that organizes the worship dance studio.

Walk for the World

River of Grace participated in the Walk for the World this year! We walked at the beautiful Historic Arkansas RiverWalk in downtown Pueblo. Our family participated along with Briannah.

Part of the RiverWalk includes a tribute to Zebulon Pike, who is credited with finding Pike's Peak.

We're done!

It's the Great Pumpkin (almost)

I recently had the privilege of helping our neighbor move his prize pumpkin onto a trailer to go to the weigh-in! As you can see it's a pretty big pumpkin! It took 6 of us to get it up there. (I'm in the navy blue.)

Guess how much it weighed? (Answer at the bottom!)

It weighed 606 pounds! And that wasn't even his big one. He grew another one in a different garden that weighed 823 pounds, which took second place. The winner was over 1,100 pounds!!! Now that's a huge pumpkin!

Pictures from our baptismal service

We had three people that were baptized at church yesterday!

I had the privilege of baptizing Chad.

(See his story below.)

Tim got to baptize his son:

And Bonner got to baptize his daughter:

One of the highest honors of being a pastor...

...is getting to baptize someone you led to the Lord! That happened to me today. I met Chad earlier this year when he attended our children's program at Easter. A couple of months later he called and wanted to talk about some issues in his life. I shared with him that by inviting Jesus into his life, he would have Someone to guide him through these issues. He placed his trust in Christ that night. We've been meeting nearly every week since, studying the Bible together, praying together and talking about what's going on in each of our lives. He has worked every Sunday since we met, until today! I asked him if he wanted to make his faith in Christ public by being baptized. He immediately agreed! It was an awesome feeling to be able to present him to the church today and baptize him in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Lovin' my new job!

I am loving my new job as part-time music teacher. I'm still leading worship at church & involved in various study groups, including leading a one-on-one discipleship study and a small group study. But my job at the school has opened up new opportunities to develop relationships with a whole new set of people. I knew all of the returning teachers through my past involvement at the school volunteering and attending various functions. But we doubled the enrollment of the middle school and added a high school. With that, the faculty almost doubled & I have a new set of colleagues. I have loved the fact that I'm able to help influence the students for the better. It warms my heart when the students see me outside of class and wave really big and say, "Hi, Mr. Burns!" It's awesome! I also have the privilege of having both of our kids in class. It's been a joy to be able to teach them!

Helping coach soccer

I'm helping coach soccer again this fall. I'm assisting the middle school coach. Josh has moved up to that team. It's great to be able to spend some time with him in this capacity. I originally planned to coach the U10 team again, because I already knew most of those players and the middle school coach had another assistant. But I found out several weeks ago that the other assistant was not going to help this year and the opportunity was presented to me!

We had our first games yesterday. We have two teams. But we don't have enough to fill two teams completely, several students are playing both teams. Well, they scheduled three games yesterday, two of them were back-to-back. The students were worn out during the second game. Overall yesterday, we won 1, tied 1 & lost 1. Even in the game that we lost, we were proud of the way they played. They only lost by 1! It's been a great oppotunity to get to know these students. I pray that my influence that I have in their lives for the little time that I'm around them will help them. And I pray that they can see Jesus in my life.

Children need encouragement

We recently went to Arkansas for a week for a visit with Janna's sister & family who were in from Virginia. Part of our trip included a camping outing to Roaring River State Park in Missouri. The kids loved swimming in the pool. The pool has this concrete slab that sticks up in the middle where a fountain used to be. The boys were playing Kid of the Mountain with 3 other boys. Josh got hurt. He jammed his thumb. As I was looking at it, I made mention that we adults were watching him and the other boys play & we were impressed at his tenacity. He kept trying even though there was no way he was going to bring down the two older boys that were 14 & 16 years old. (I didn't mention that last part to him.) He teared up. I asked him if something was wrong. He said, "It's just that I'm happy that you were pulling for me."

It reminded me that we need to encourage our children. We live in a hostile world with people pulling at us from all sides. Our children are growing up facing issues we never faced, at least not in the overt nature that seems to persist today. I've been guilty way too often of being hard on my children for small things. The Lord has taught me to let the little things go & when big things happen, handle them with grace. I don't always do that, but I've come a long way.

Only in Kansas...

... can you go South, East & West at the same time!

(Sorry the picture is a little blurry. I took it with my cell phone lit only by the headlights on the van!)

Thanks to High Point Ministries

A big THANK YOU to High Point College Ministries from College View Baptist Church in Magnolia, AR. (very close to my home town!!!) This group of college students took a week from their summer to come help our church. They began the week by helping in our youth car wash, which was a fund-raiser for their trip to SOAR.

They spent every morning learning about church planting from Pastor Richard. I also shared a session about my role in our church. After lunch the group would teach our students about missions. They shared about their experiences on short-term mission trips.

They had activities for our group to help prepare them for their mission trip:

After their sessions with our youth they helped with various service projects. This was also to help raise money for the youth trip. A big contribution they made was helping clean up the grounds around our building.

Before

During


After!!!! WOW!!!

They also enjoyed an afternoon in Colorado Springs:

To wrap-up the week, they helped us lead a youth worship service:

Our youth group prepared a powerful drama.

John shared a message from God's Word with the students.

This group were excellent ambassadors for Christ on their trip. We expect great things from them as they fulfill God's calling on their lives to serve Him wherever He places them.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to worship!

So there I was leading our congregation in worship. I had a bug buzzing around me & I swatted at it. A few seconds later as I took a breath between phrases... Yep! The bug got so close to my mouth that it couldn't fly against the tremendous flow of air & it ended up in my throat! My first thought was "Did I just really swallow a bug?!" I pressed on, unhindered (almost) by the invader. I tried to keep singing. I did cough a couple of times and every time I took a breath my throat tickled. I guess it's wings were vibrating from the flow of air through my windpipe! My friend Dave was gracious enough to go get me a bottle of water. Nobody realized what happened until I told them after the service. I still felt it the next day! (although I'm thinking it was psychosomatic)

I can honestly say that is a first while leading worship!

I'm a slacker!

WOW! It's been so long since I've posted anything here! I've been a slacker in a bad way. We've had a wedding at our church, Easter, several baptisms, spring break, soccer season, the national meeting, Mother's Day and the activities that go with the end of the school year! Whew! I'm tired just writing about it.

Easter was an awesome time at our church. We had a special service for Good Friday. Our choir prepared several songs from the musical "He Chose the Nails." The songs were based on narration written by Max Lucado. We had a drama that acted out one of the songs. We had a media presentation. Pastor Richard gave a great sermon. We ended the evening with communion. It was AWESOME! Several said that we need to do that again.

Easter Sunday morning we woke up to a light dusting of snow!

The Sunday after Easter we had the blessing of observing two believers make their profession of faith public by the ordinance of baptism:

I volunteered to coach the U10 soccer team for our school. It was an awesome experience! One family that is involved in soccer visited our worship service and another family visited a youth movie night! I plan to coach the same team next year. I've been learning some more drills & skills to teach the team. Josh just got done with soccer camp today. I stayed today to watch & got some pointers!

It was a joy to attend the national meeting at Waco. I traveled with Buddy & Taffy Johnson and Jake Norman from Fountain, CO. It was a blessing to spend time with these servants of God to get to know them better and to fellowship! At the meeting I met several young men that were feeling led to come plant a church in CO! That was extremely encouraging to know that God is leading others to come help us labor in CO. It's a big state & there's plenty of people that need to hear the Gospel!

At the meeting, the messengers voted to put two new missionaries on the field - Bro. Eric Johnson is going to Mexico and Bro. Michael Barton is starting another church in Quebec! It was a blessing to commission these laborers to reach souls in these two areas.

After returning from the meeting, I began a Bible study on worship. We're studying the Biblical Foundations of Worship. It's a brief survey through the Bible to see how different characters worshiped God. So far we've studied creation, Adam, Moses, Abraham, David and covenants. Next we'll cover Jesus and end with the scene in Heaven as described in Revelation 4 & 5. It's been an awesome class.

Both Josh & Rachel got on the B honor role this year! That was a special treat! Josh also got the music award for his grade. Josh also graduated from 5th grade. They had a special day at the park. I can't believe he'll be in middle school next year!

I attended the Hombre a Hombre (Man to Man) Hispanic Men's Conference at Gary, TX in May. I took Sergio & his brother, Frank. Although I didn't understand as much as I would've liked, the fellowship was sweet. The three of us had an awesome time together getting to know one another better on the road trip & talking about what the Lord has done & is still doing in our lives!

We just got back from Arkansas where we attended the wedding of Jared & Amy, who were members of the youth group when we were at Temple, Rogers. It was a blessing to see these two unite their lives together to serve the Lord. We're grateful for the part God allowed us to play in their formative teenage years. It was also great to see family. We stayed with Janna's parents the weekend of the wedding, then traveling south to see my parents for a few days. It was also a joy to worship with these churches - Temple, Rogers, AR; First, Cave Springs, AR; First, Springhill, LA. I appreciate the opportunity each of them gave us to be a part of their services.

Well that catches you up to where we are! I hope to get back into the swing of things & keep posting more regularly. (I would have more pictures, but most the pictures that I've taken lately are on my phone & the adapter that I bought to put the pics on the computer isn't working! Technology - It's a wonderful thing... when it works!)