Odds and Ends

So it has been a pretty busy week and a half. We have not had much time to write anything. I (Jon) finished painting that lady's house I talked about in an earlier post. We went to Jacksonville, Fl. to meet a man from a Church in Redding, Ca. to help us with our strategic planning for our church. We are going out of town on Friday to Atlanta to attend a conference. We will be back very late Saturday night. I (Jon) am preaching Sunday so it will be a whirlwind of a weekend, but an extremely fun weekend. We promise to write more when we get back.

Sunday's Service

Our church service Sunday was amazing. We always have some type of opening before worship where we pray and prepare our hearts for worship. This Sunday there was a sense that we as a church were going to another level in the Lord. Then right before Joanna started worship we heard a transformer explode and all the power went out. The minute it happened I (Jon) had a sense that this wasn't just some accident, but that God was trying to tell us something. During preservice prayer (our prayer time before church starts) I heard the phrase in my head "the air is charged" as in electric charge. When the power went out I felt like the Lord said that what was going on in the spiritual, manifested itself in the natural. The air was charged in the spiritual so it manifested in the natural. So I shared that with the congregation, and then we went on with our service. After the pastor spoke, He said lets stand and pray, and the minute he said that the power came back on. It was really awesome. I believe there is more that the Lord is wanting to tell our church through that encounter, but I don't know what it is yet. It will be fun to search Him out and find all what He is trying to say. Needless to say the whole service was awesome. I absolutely love it when God does new things. He moves from Glory to Glory and to be able to see glimpses of that is such an honor to me. I can't wait to see more!!!

Ikea

Well, we had a great time at Ikea. We spent about 3 hours there which is about average for us. The trip started off with a bang literally. I (Jon) was unloading the seats from the mini van when I dropped the chair on my toe. While that was happening Mike hit his head on the van, and a little later Joanna hit her head getting into the van. It actually was very funny, it was typical start to a Talley/Gurr outing.

After Ikea, we went to Centennial Park and let the Talley kids play in the Olympic water rings. We had never seen so many kids in one place. It was extremely hot outside so the kids loved it. The rings are in the ground and have tons of holes that shoot out fountains of water. Mike and Jenn's oldest son Nathan( he is 7 years old) was looking over one of the holes when it shot out a stream of water and hit him right in the face. It was awesome, you could tell he was not expecting it to happen. Because the water hit him mostly in the eyes it took him a second to be able see clearly. After the water park, we ate dinner at the CNN building and then headed home. About 40 miles from our home we drove through a big lightning storm. We were driving through mostly farm country so you could see the lightning everywhere. At one point, lightning seemed to strike only a few feet from our cars. Mike and Jenn who were ahead of us called us jokingly and asked if lightning had struck their car because all they saw was orange. It was pretty wild.

Leaving for Atlanta

We are headed to Atlanta... which is not as big a deal as it seems seeing as we live in South Georgia. We are going to Ikea with Mike and Jennifer (My sister and brother in-law) to shop for office furniture for Mike. He is changing jobs from working for our local city as a civil engineer, to working from his home for a private company. What makes this trip fun for me and Joanna is the only thing better than spending your own money at a store, is spending other people's money. Honestly, we are going because we have so much fun with Mike and Jenn, and it will yield a great story when we get back guaranteed.

Painting and a Movie

I (Jon) paint on the side sometimes for extra income. I am painting three rooms of a lady's house in our church. I started the first room on Monday and it was very obvious that it was going to take two coats of paint for that room. Doing all this painting, got me thinking about the proffesion. I think that all professional painters must be perfectionist at heart. Painting is extremely tedious so anyone that would want to do it full time must have a bit of perfectionism in them. The problem with this is that I am not a perfectionist and there would never be a definition of my name with the word tedious in it. I fall under the category of "why make your bed if you are just going to sleep in it again that night" or " use paper plates so that you don't have to do the dishes later, or better yet lets just go out to eat". Now don't get me wrong, I do a good job painting, but becasue I lack the criteria to be a proffesional, I must put all my energy into concentrating to do the job right. I must say though, it is good money and can be done pretty quickly when you get into a good rythym.

We also went to go see the Bourne Ultimatum this afternoon. It was a great movie, definitely in my top 20 of movies ever seen. The movie has come under fire a little bit from the conservative side because of its portrayal of some of the CIA agents their training tactics as evil. They did make the CIA agents bad in the movie, but it was just a movie and it was great story line. I tend to not get bent out of shape if movies make an under handed political statement it just doesn't bother me. I just want the movie to be good. As long as it entertains me, I'm happy. I will say that I personally do believe that the CIA does alot of things that we don't know about and probably don't want to know about. And I am okay with not knowing, just keep my country protected. My grade for the Bourne Ultimatum is an "A".

Day off

Today is our day off. I know...its Tuesday, but since we work for a church most of our weekends are booked up. So we make every Tuesday our day off. The day has been pretty uneventful just relaxing, but tonight we are celebrating our brother in laws birthday. His name is Mike and he and his wife (Jon's sister) are our best friends. He has his own blog which by the way is ten times better than this one. You can check it out at www.wunderkraut.com . Anyway, we have lots of fun with them so we are looking forward to this evening.