Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

Friday morning it was time to say sad good-byes to all at the reunion. We took Mom and Christina to the Portland airport and then joined up with Deborah and Ian to carpool across Oregon and into Idaho.  For part of the time Sarah rode with us.  For part of the time we listened to a book on tape.  We spent the night in Bosie.  We'd booked he hotel at Expedia and it was pretty nice.

Saturday we got up early and headed for a long drive to Cheyenne, WY. Warren AFB is there and we'd tried to get reservations there, but to no avail.  Finally we called about 6pm to see if they had any cancellations.  They DID!  I love that place!  Living room, kitchen, bedroom, comfy bed. We stopped at the mini-mart on base and bought a sandwich and burritos for dinner and milk and cereal for breakfast.  The next morning we ate, started driving, and stopped for church in Ft. Collins (actually Loveland), CO.  They had a great Sunday School lesson.  Here were some of the things that impacted me.
1. Acts 6:2  As the church grows, things need to change and there is more delegation.  The apostles say: "We need to be preaching the word of God.  Call others to serve tables."  Both are necessary-- the spiritual and the temporal.  Yet, not all callings need to do both.  Bishops can and should delegate some things.
2.  Acts 7.  Steven gives a good history of the Israelites looking to past prophets and not accepting current ones. One class member said, "People today are like the Sanhedrin.  You give them a living prophet, and they want to get rid of him and focus on the old ones."
3. The story of Simon in Acts 8.  I always thought Simon was greedy and wanted to get the power of the priesthood for money.  But this reading, it occurred to me-- he was a new convert.  He'd gotten "power" of sorcery through money.  When people join the church, often they bring their own traditions into the church until they come to understand the traditions of God.  Then, if they are spiritual, they leave behind their own ways of doing things and do them the Lord's way.  Simon simply hadn't learned what the Lord's way of getting this power was. Peter then explains that you don't get priesthood power with money and that if Simon didn't repent--didn't change and leave behind the wrong thinking of the world-- he would perish.  It looks like Simon was humble and teachable as in verse 24, he asks for help in changing.
4.  In Acts 8 when Philip was told to go to the man of Ethiopia, in the past I'd focused on how the Lord sent someone to the Ethiopian when he needed it most.  But this time, I thought of the faith of Philip as a missionary.  The Ethiopian was rich and the socioeconomic difference between Philip and him was huge.  He had guards.  He might even have been traveling-- since Philip ran to him.  There were many excuses or reasons why a person might not follow through and do what the spirit said.  But Philip just went and did... and as unlikely as it might have seemed to Philip, the Ethiopian was ready and waiting to be taught.

We headed up the road after church. We decided to take the more southern route-70 as opposed to the way we'd come on 80.  That way we'd miss some of the detours from the flooding in Council Bluffs and we'd have a chance to see new scenery.  There was indeed, miles of scenery! I think the city folk who talk about over-population need to drive across country occasionally.   There are miles and miles and miles with no people in sight.  Sunday night we clipped a coupon to stay in an American Value Inn.  The plusses: locking door, out of the elements, wi-fi, and CHEAP.  The duck-taped ceiling tiles I could overlook.  But the minuses included a cement hard bed, and the temperature swings between Dante's Inferno and the ice age, made sleep a little difficult.

We were glad to finish up our trip on Monday and sleep in our own bed.  We did stop in Springfield for food at Aldes and I grazed through the 1/2 of 1/2 store.  There was a daffodil yellow purse there that called my name!  So I decided to cast off the boring bone colored one and go wild.

I think the chickens are happy to see us.  It rained while we were gone and the grass is green once again!  I love the green.  I'm not so in love with the scale.  It said the food was far too good at the reunion.   I'd been intending to go on a cleanse for a while. This seems like a great time to start.