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.