.....it's the moon and the stars.

Well.....here it is 3 weeks later. The Bimini trip was every bit as much fun as you'd expect it to be. We had a blast down there. Saw sharks and barracudas and eels and a zillion different fish. Caught some fish....mackerel, which we cooked on the days we caught them,...barracudas, which we threw back as quick as we could. I honestly believe we caught one barracuda twice. Gray caught it on the left side and threw it back and 15 seconds later I caught one that looked just like it, and although I confess they all look exactly alike, it just seemed like the exact same one.

All the reports I got from here said things went great and there was lots of help, which is great. I can't speak to specifics because I wasn't here but they had hot dogs the first week when a Sunday School class was helping and they cooked 3 turkeys last week and had turkey sandwiches.

This week was tough because I didn't really know what to cook and didn't have anything on hand pulling me one way or another. I was just wandering around Sam's looking for inspiration and had pretty much resigned myself to buying some chicken thighs and drumsticks but decided to wander around one more time when I saw the Bananas were 1.38 for a 3 lb. bag. I thought we could make peanut butter and banana sandwiches and then i thought and pb&j's and peanut butter and honey sandwiches would be good too. Plus, we wouldn't have to heat up the kitchen and it would be nice, non-hot food to serve them.So that's what we did.

MENU
PB&J's
Peanut Butter and Banana sandwiches
Peanut Butter and Honey sandwiches
Fruit Cocktail
Chips
Dessert
Sweet Tea/Water

Helpers
Steve Ledger
Bryce Ledger
Blake ledger
Liz
TJ
Danielle
Bailey
Tom
Eric
Candace
Bryan
Anna
Josh
Chris
Sarah
Pruden
Emily
Craig
me

It was good to be back tonight. I've been looking forward to tonight ever since we returned last Wednesday.

I know that God is with us all the time and His love surrounds us and all that stuff I have head knowledge of, but there comes a time every Tuesday when without warning or announcement I feel God's presence as physically as I feel rain or wind. It might come during a prayer or in someone's words or watching someone else serve someone in the food line, but it just about always hits me. I guess the trick is to connect and be ready for it all the time.
I get it at other times too. The past couple weeks down in Bimini is a perfect example. We always leave at night from Ft. Lauderdale and cross over to Bimini. Once we get out away from the coast, if it's a clear night (and it was this year) you get a gorgeous sky, full of stars on a dark backdrop with no other light to interfere. And I get off on it. I love looking at the nighttime sky. It fascinated me as a kid and still fascinates me to this day. I love looking at the Hubble pictures when they come in. All that outer space stuff does it for me.
So every night I would get somewhere and look up at the sky. Front of the boat, top of the boat,... it didn't matter. Just sit back and look up and around. And my mind would keep coming back to the verse that said, Be still and know that I am God. When I see it all laid out like that above me, that's pretty easy for me to do. I just need to find ways to be still back here and know it, too. The same stars I saw down there are still above me here, only not as easily, if ever seen....but they're still there and He is still God.
For some people it's sunsets or thunderstorms or maybe even flowers that they see that let's them know God is God and what he has done and can do.
Me?.......

Like the power during a Hurricane.....

...like a fat kid playing Dogeball.....I"M OUT!

Going to Bimini with the graduated Seniors until the 20th. Tuesday nights won't miss a beat,though. The New Life(?) Sunday School class has got it this week and are ready to go. Twig'll have next week covered.

I'll probably be off the grid until next Monday when we pull to the Marina in Miami for the night. We might have some wireless in the marina the night we're in Bimini, but I can't guarantee I'm going slow down on my chillin' to jump on the laptop.

If you need me ,I'll be in the Carribean.
g

New List for this week....

So it's down to McCain and Obama. That election is still months away. Here's the probably the only politically themed list I'll offer:

List 3 non-politicians you think would make a good President of the United States.

My List: Peter Gammons
Franklin Graham
Gen. Petraeus

Yours?

...we had the Italian/Chinese combo going tonight.

All right,...check this out:

Ellen -------Jennifer
Nelly -------Maggie Arnold
Maggie -----J. Boggs
Ryan -------Chamberlain
Connor -----Henry
Liz ----------Zack Allen
Danielle ----Twig
Pruden ------Craig
Tom --------Bob
Theresa -----Anna
John L.----- Odett
Jim Morgan ---me

24 people cookin' it up in the kitchen tonight, and 13 of them were youth.
It was great! It was also crowded and hectic, but great. Especially since it's exam week, but most of them said they were done with the hard ones.

I'll be gone the next 2 tuesdays on the Bimini trip (somebody's gotta do it ) so I wanted to cook something fun or new tonight. That sounds goofy, but... Anyway, when I talked to Twig this morning we sorta settled on a breakfast menu : Cheese grits, scrambled eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy, but all day long I kept trying to think of other stuff. I met Twig at Sam's Club at 5:00 and we started putting stuff in the basket when we switched gears and decided to do something we had talked about in the past but never cooked- Meatball Subs. And it just felt good the minute we started getting the stuff, and because I'm goofy, I started getting excited about it.
Then we get to the church and all the kids and adults start showing up and I get even more excited about it, because I like it when there's alot of people helping. there's more interaction and a little more electricity in the air and people are glad to see each other, more people to mess with, etc.

The kicker is, I doubt anybody knew how excited I was because I'm not a "gusher" when it comes to excitement. I was pretty much the same as always, but it was a little different tonight because I knew I'd be out for the next 2 weeks.

Jim Morgan was here tonight! Yay! Jim's been busy - he's Chairman of the Democrats here in New Hanover County. He's also still a fairly newly- married man ( which means he's the Vice-chairman of that party). When he walked up tonight, he said " Where've you been? I've been standing at the 5th St. entrance for 6 weeks." (That's the entrance we don't use.)
Jim is a very funny guy, you just have to know him for 8 or 9 years to realize it. Seriously.

Tonight's menu was eclectic, to say the least. We had Meatball Subs as well as Sweet'n Sour Chicken with Rice, and homemade macaroni and cheese along with dessert, Tea/Water and Popsicles/Ice cream sandwiches.

When I taught at Laney, Tammy Gore was across the hall and taught the Culinary Arts classes. I can't say enough good things about her or her program. Her classes cater most of the functions at Laney and do great jobs. Her classes put out the best spread of anybody during Sr. Projects. It's worth it to go judge at Laney just to see what they've got to eat. I used to tell her about Tuesday nights and she came to me one day and said she was going to cook for the Fall Athletic banquet and was pretty sure she would have extra and would I like to take it and feed the folks downtown. I said sure and got some of my students to meet me and we took it down and fed the guys. It was a great gesture because 1. Food didn't get wasted and she felt good about that 2. I got to take my kids out of the classroom and act out what we talked about in class and 3. because she has offered to do that every Athletic banquet since then and I still call up my old Laney kids and they come help if they can.
Last week was the Spring Athletic banquet and she called and I went. This year she cooked Sweet'n Sour Chicken with Rice. she gave me 2 huge pans of chicken and 2 huge pans of rice, salad, and desserts. I had enough left to use tonight, too.
That's why.....