Year: 2009

Categories
God People

Celebration Community Beach Church At The Park

This past Sunday morning at 9:30 AM at Cambier Park ‘in the heart of Olde Naples’ I attended a church service. Here are my takeaways:

– It was the 2ND week of their 5-week message series entitled ‘Be The Church’.
– The service started with about 30 minutes of ‘Praise & Worship’.
– The music could best be described as Tropical SW Florida Christian Contemporary.
– The prayer between the song selections was powerful and amazing.
– Jesus loves me this I know – For the Bible tells me so.
– Senior Pastor Gene Scott brought the message.
– God is God – I am not !
– Moment # 1: God creates the family.
– It’s a divinely ordained idea.
– The blame game begins, as Adam blames Eve.
– Moment # 2: The family sins.
– Each and every one of us is a sinner, as we were born into it.
– Moment # 3: God creates the new family.
– It’s a new family of believers.
– We love God, we love people, and we serve the world.
– That’s solitude, community, and ministry.
– It’s the power of connection.
– It is better to eat Twinkies with good friends than to eat broccoli alone.
– It’s not about the steeple – it’s about the people.
– Your past can’t hurt you – unless you allow it.
– Do not judge or you too will be judged.
– God forgives, The Holy Spirit convicts, and we must just love.

This message was based on the following Scriptures out of the Good News: Ephesians 3:14-15, Genesis 3, John 15:12, Mark 3:21, Mark 3:33-34, Pslam 27:10, Revelation 22:17.

Celebration Community Beach Church – official web site / active WordPress blog

Categories
Animals Blogging Driving Food God Holidays Movies Music Radio Shopping Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Southwest Florida

1.  It’s Columbus Day, and it’s a day of relaxation for me after a lot of walking and a lot of driving. I drove 415.5 miles over 37 hours. That’s about 3 weeks of normal every day Homestead driving for me, and it’s just as I had planned out prior to embarking on the road trip. 201.3 miles of driving occurred on Saturday as I drove from Florida City to Lehigh Acres by way of Everglades City, Naples, and Estero. The remaining 214.2 miles of driving occurred on Sunday on the return trip back home to Homestead from Estero (where I spent the night) – via Naples and Plantation Key.

2.  On my Saturday morning drive over to the southwest coast of Florida I stopped for brief visits at the Big Cypress National Preserve Oasis Visitor Center as well as the Everglades National Park Gulf Coast Visitor Center just south of Everglades City. I don’t think that I have ever been to Everglades City before. (If I have then I don’t remember it.) It’s very small and very historic. About 500 people live there full-time. I plan to return back there during the cooler winter months to walk around the historic downtown area and check out the museum there.

3.  After a MASSIVE Lunch at Pinchers Crab Shack at Tin City on the waterfront in Naples, a walk to the end of the long city pier over the Gulf Of Mexico, and a nice scenic neighbourhood drive along the peaceful and quiet south coast of Naples I proceeded up to the big movie theatre north of Naples to get out of the mid-90s heat and sun – and to see the current box office smash “Zombieland“. It was campy and hilarious – perhaps a future cult classic ?

4.  It was so great to hear my radio station – The Call – over in southwest Florida. They just recently moved over from 107.5 FM to 107.7 FM in Naples. It’s an extremely weak translator station, and it was a bit ‘staticky’ all around the city – but a weak CALL-FM was definitely better than no CALL-FM. Up closer to Fort Myers I picked-up the much stronger 91.9 FM signal of The Call. It sounded great up and down I-75. On Saturday night I made my way over to Lehigh Acres (10 miles east of I-75 and Fort Myers) to attend a rock concert at a church featuring Jubilee, Horizons Fall, and Manic Drive. Rob from The Call was there. It was cool to hang out with him for a little while. All three bands rocked the joint hard and LOUD !

5.  On Sunday morning (after church in the park) I visited the Naples Zoo to check up on my animal friends. I then walked around the Coastland Center Mall to cool off a bit before making the return trip back to the southeast coast of Florida. This was my first visit over to the Naples area in about 20 months – way too long. My next visit will be much sooner than that – hopefully sometime during the upcoming cooler and dryer winter season. I think that it’s reasonable to state that it’s no longer ‘possible’ that I plan to eventually live in Naples, but that it’s ‘probable’. I fell in love with Naples all over again, and I wish to live there in the future. There is so much that I wish to see and do over there, so that will justify my more frequent visits to the area, and with each new visit I’ll be looking around for potential new neighbourhoods to call my future new home.

LATER TODAY – 2 MORE BLOG POSTS:
– ‘Celebration Community Beach Church At The Park’
– ‘Life Pointe Church Plantation Key Lime Pie’

Categories
History Home Life Music People Radio

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

Flashback to the Spring of 1977. I’m 9-years-old – getting ready to turn 10-years-old, and I’m hangin’ out with my friends down by the creek at the bottom end of Red Wing Lane in Lanham Maryland. One side of the creek I ruled. I was in charge. The territory was known as ‘Chris Day Valley’, and it stretched for as far as my imagination would allow. On the other side of the creek my friends ruled, and their territory was known as ‘Wolf Pack State’. Our two territories neighboured each other, and we were friendly nations. See – even back then I was mastering geographic boundaries !

As I was compiling the paragraph above (and wandering around on the web) I believe that I may have discovered two friends of mine (simultaneously) from that neighbourhood and that time period. I’m gonna try to connect with both of them. I see their pictures (avatars) online, and they look very much as I remember them from over 30 years ago. One of them lived in the last house on the street right before the creek and the two ‘territories’. The other lived in a house just behind mine, and he was one of my first good buddy friends.

Playing on the radio back in the old neighbourhood up and down Red Wing Lane was a lot of Disco music. ABBA (from Sweden) weren’t really a Disco act, but they got with the times when they had to. The result was their only # 1 smash stateside and perhaps their most memorable anthem of the era. It’s “Dancing Queen” !  RE-LIVE !

Categories
Blogging Driving Food Health History Holidays Music People Travel

Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s get ridiculous.
– This morning at 7:30 AM I already had The Big Cheese on my mind.
– I convinced 5 other coworker dudes to eat Lunch there 4 hours later.
– And so we came, we saw, and we conquered !
– We ordered 2 extra large (16-inch) pizzas for the 6 of us.
– One had pepperoni on it, and the other was full of sausages.
– One dude ate more pizza than all of the others.
– Guilty !
– There were 20 slices in all, and the other 5 dudes ate 3 slices apiece.
– That left 5 slices for moi.
– That was some tasty pizza there !
– I’m lookin’ forward to this upcoming holiday weekend.
– It all starts for me at 11 AM tomorrow (Friday) morning.
– But it starts off with a dental cleaning appointment.
– On Saturday and Sunday I’ll be on the road visiting places.
– It’s sort of like a dry run for a much longer road trip I’m taking in November.
– This blog will go dark for those two days.
– I mean you’ll still be able to access it, but there will be nothing new posted on it.
– Actually I’ll be tweeting, so you’ll be able to see those here on the blog.
– My antiquated cell phone is born again due to its ability to tweet.
– On Monday I’ll blog all about my road trip.
– But before then tomorrow night is Disco night here on the bell-bottom blog.
– I’ve got ABBA with their biggest worldwide smash ever !
– You can dance – You can jive – Having the time of your Life.
– You won’t regret it pal.
– Since there is no ‘Saturday Night Retro’ this weekend I’ve got a treat for you.
– I’ve got Mr. David Hasselhoff with a big hit that he had back in 1997.
– It’s a spirited remake of a very well-known early-1970s pop smash.
– Check out the low-budget production values of this music video: