I ate Chinese Food for Lunch today, so you just know what that means !
‘Working with children has a miraculous effect on your spirits.’
OK now this particular fortune cookie message is not really intended for me per se. I think I picked-up Kelly‘s, or Anne‘s, or Harmony‘s fortune cookie by accident. One of you may have my fortune cookie message !
So I unintentionally went nearly 24 hours without eating food from Saturday night through Sunday night. During that time I drove a little over 200 miles from Homestead to Fort Myers and I also walked a couple of miles.
The hunger fest came to an abrupt end last night at the Applebee’s across the street from my hotel in Estero.
Here’s what was on my menu:
The meal was MASSIVE, and it was outrageously delicious !
You know we really need to get an Applebee’s down here in the Homestead / Florida City area. Hey, wait a minute !
Sky: Sunny & Clear
Temperature: 64°F
Relative Humidity: 100%
Winds: NNE 2 MPH
Barometric Pressure: 30.14 Rising
My thoughts:
1. I added a tenth of a mile to my walk around my neighbourhood this morning during the seven-o-clock hour. I walked about 1.4 miles total in about 27 minutes.
2. Ducks and chickens were in abundance during my walk. They were out and about eating breakfast. I steered away from them. I was once attacked by an angry duck. The unfortunate incident of a few years ago continues to haunt me to this day.
3. Not a single car passed me during my walk. In fact I only saw three people outside. I think everyone was inside eating bacon. I can effectively hypothesize that because the unmistakable aroma of fresh cooked bacon permeated all throughout the morning air of my neighbourhood.
4. A friend from afar recently asked me why I started this weekly walk. Besides the obvious health and fitness reasons this walk – inspired and encouraged by this fellow WordPress blogger – is symbolic of my walk with Jesus Christ. I’ve been walking with Him on His fantastic journey for about 18 months now. I was once a mannequin – plastic and rotting. Now I am alive. Since I am alive I am living Life (always capitalized) the way that I should have lived it during my previous 39 years on His great Earth. That includes throwing everything up in the air like ‘Tossed Salad’ (catch the symbolism there) and only catching the good stuff – the right stuff. A physical walk is now on my agenda to complement my spiritual walk with my Creator. No longer am I sitting still in neutral. I am now moving forward and going places with my Life. The Lord Almighty is driving me. I am merely His passenger.
5. I’m taking this walk on-the-road starting tomorrow. I’ll be walking all throughout the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers tomorrow afternoon. The walk continues on Monday (Presidents’ Day) at Estero’s Germain Arena for the Cross Reference Faith & Family Expo. Maybe I’ll even make a pit-stop at the Naples Zoo on my return trip back to Homestead.
1. Tom and Anne both beat me to the movie theatre bright and early this morning. But then again I was about 8 minutes late (arriving at 7:38 AM). According to Tom and Anne the theatre was unlocked and ready for us to roll as soon as we arrived. I think Pastor Travis got that ‘locked-out’ problem resolved within the new lease agreement.
2. Lisa has some cool ideas for the ‘Kid’s Life’ registration desk, so that makes us work even harder over at the ‘Visitor Center’. The think tank was at work again this morning. We decided that we want a red carpet that we can roll out straight from the ‘Visitor Center’ clear out to the front door. Anne stated that she would ‘look in’ to the ambitious idea.
3. I think that we may have set a new attendance record for the 9:00 service (approaching 90), and if you were at the 10:30 service and tried to find a seat at around 10:40 then you were probably searching hard for one. I think that we shattered the ‘400’ mark in overall attendance at Life Pointe Church this morning. We may have even come close to 450 !
4. We kicked-off a brand new message series this morning entitled ‘(un)christian’. Our church body collectively apologized for those times in which the name of Jesus was manipulated by unprincipled religious leaders, for those times in which we have been abused by church people, for those times in which we were judged without concern for who we are, for those times in which we were duped or taken advantage of by a Christian, for those times in which we were shown Scriptures selectively without concern for the whole counsel of the Bible, and for those times in which we were not loved by followers of Jesus. We apologized. We forgave.
5. About 100 of us met over at Homestead Bayfront Park this afternoon for a nice picnic and water baptism. I think we had about 250 pounds of delicious food available for consumption, so anyone that was on a diet probably took about a 3-hour hiatus from their diet so that they could join in on the MASSIVE feast. Don’t bother weighing yourselves tonight. You can resume your diet in the morning.
I’ll be on vacation next weekend over in the Fort Myers area, and I’m planning to attend a church service over there on Sunday morning. I’ll have a special edition of the ‘Tossed Salad’ next Sunday night regarding my experiences over there. I’ll be back at Life Pointe on the 24TH of February.
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