MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-21-2005

Howdy! Our LORD's Day went well yesterday. Our meeting in Winfield, MO was in the evening, so we got to be in our home church. Yesterday was Heritage Sunday, where folks can wear old-fashioned clothes if they like (or jeans, if they like 😉 ). Afterwards, we had a pre-Thanksgiving meal, which was excellent as always. We sat and socialized with an Englishman who's been coming to our church for a bit, and it dawned on me as I asked about English holidays how unique America is in this respect: we celebrate everything! England has bank holidays, and Christmas and Easter, but with the exception of Remembrance Day (their version of Veteran's Day), they have no nationalistic holidays. We have multiple holidays that commemorate different aspects of being American. Thanksgiving reminds us of our ancestors and how they almost didn't make it through the first winter, but how, with some assistance from the Indians, and God's providence, they lived to have the first Thanksgiving, where they took the time to give thanks to God for His provision and care. We do likewise today, and have since Lincoln formally inaugurated the holiday back in 1863. We have the Fourth of July, where we put up patriotic decorations, have parades, barbecues (wouldn't be a holiday without food, right?), set off fireworks, and just generally glory in being an American. We have Veteran's Day to honor our soldiers. We have Father's and Mother's Day to honor our parents. We have President's Day, to honor our founding fathers. We have all these traditional, and uniquely American days of celebration, where we simply take pleasure in this great country in which God blessed us to let us be born, or become citizens. It really struck home to me how great we have it here, and how very thankful to God I am to be a citizen of the United States of America.

We drove about 45 minutes away to Winfield, MO to Mid-America Baptist Church with Pastor Rick Koonce. It's a young, but growing church, about 14 miles from Troy. It's always a blessing to have meetings in these young, church plants, and an encouragement to know that there are still Baptist churches being planted around America. If there's one thing America needs these days, it's New Testament churches where sound doctrine is preached. We had some more food after church (yeehaw), and got to spend some time with the folks at church. Great day, indeed.