Minutes to Memories

I received a startling text message yesterday afternoon from my friend, Alison. It said “Fire @ chevron, cole & I are ok! Pray for others.”

Chevron is big business down here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The oil refinery employs 1300 folks and is one of the top ten refineries in the United States. Our friend, Cole and Alison, are engineers there, and we love them very much. A fire at a place that produces gasoline is a scary thought, and I’m glad that the first word I heard about it was from Alison saying they were okay. (The picture above came from Cole during the fire.)

It turned out that none of Chevron’s employees were injured; however, Alison worked in the area where the fire occurred, but she had taken yesterday afternoon off. She felt blessed not to have been there, but quite shaken to think about her co-workers, and at the same time, to realize what could have been.

Thank God everyone was okay.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, it’s official now. After last evening, I have been officially sworn in as a CASA volunteer. I now await being assigned my first case.

The ceremony was really neat, and Jody and Hillary were able to attend with me. There are six current CASA’s in our area, and our class of thirteen helped that number significantly. My wife has already volunteered to be the first member of the next training class, and we are very much looking forward to doing this together.

There are so many children that are in need in our county. One of the current volunteers (who was named Male Volunteer of the Year by the United Way last year) said we could use a hundred volunteers.

Check out CASA if you have a heart for abused and neglected children to see what you can do to help.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My friend, Troy, is the most creative pastor in the world I think! His recent teaching series, ivescrewedup.com and its cyber-confessional resulted in his being interviewed on CNN’s Anderson Cooper Show. You’ll have to check out his latest idea, called mynakedpastor.com. You can bet he’ll field some interesting interviews with this one!

Mynakedpastor.com isn’t about anyone taking clothes off. Instead, it deals with our fear of being vulnerable. As part of the series, cameras will follow his family around 24/7 for five weeks. He’ll be able to preach from experience when all is said and done.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the sports world, two happy events for me:

#1: The Cardinals are suddenly 2 ½ games out of first place, and they’re beginning an important four-game series with the Cubs today!

#2: I received my Sports Illustrated yesterday, and who was on the cover but Arkansas running back, Darren McFadden, with the title: “The Year of the Running Back / Arkansas / The No. 1 Back in the Land”


Have a great Friday!