and jumping in the waves!
We walked around at Barefoot Landing...
and grabbed a sweet snack at Krispy Kreme!
Our days were filled with digging in the sand...
bowling...
and chillin' out on the couch watching a little TV.
We couldn't have asked for a better family vacation... except maybe that Grandma and Grandpa could have joined us!
Five weeks ago today I wrote about the fact that Amy and I had decided to leave our former church in pursuit of a location for worship and service in our hometown of Harrisburg. Those have been an eventful five weeks for us, filled with excitement and enjoyment. Where do I begin?
On the first of those Sundays, we visited Southbrook:Monroe, and had a very interesting experience with God there. But that was more of a show of support for our friends Geoffrey and Nancy Janes than a maybe-this-is-our-new-church type of visit. After all, Monroe is quite a bit farther away from Harrisburg than even our previous church.
On subsequent Sundays, though, we've attended Providence Baptist Church in Harrisburg. That has been a truly rewarding thing for us. The Young Couples class there is a great group of folks who actively share their lives together. We've been extremely blessed to find friendship with the youth pastor and his family. Senior pastor John Cashwell is a down-to-earth guy with a clear vision for the church, and I've had the pleasure of talking at length with him about some aspects of that.
Providence is, like many others, a church in transition. The church is over forty years old, and like most other Baptist churches, fell behind the curve in adjusting the methods it uses to take its message to the surrounding community in a culturally relevant way. Those familiar with our previous church might be wondering why in the world we would be drawn to yet another church in transition. The answer is pretty straightforward: the folks at Providence, young and old, seem to genuinely be aligned with the transition vision, and that was not the case in our previous situation. At all.
As a church in transition, there are of course still parts of the methodology that remain behind the curve. But that's okay. Amy and I agreed long ago that we'd rather find an imperfect church where we can make a positive difference than a seemingly perfect one where we'd be of no service to anyone. We don't want to be mere consumers of the church experience — we want to be on mission with a church in serving the community.
So yesterday, Amy and I walked the aisle of Providence Baptist Church in Harrisburg, NC, to say to that congregation, "We want to be on mission with you. May God use us in whatever capacity He so desires."
This past Sunday marked the end of a chapter in the life of the Pilato family. After attending and serving in various capacities at Plaza Baptist Church (which is a thirty-minute drive from our home) since we relocated back to North Carolina in 2005, Amy and I both feel God is leading us to local worship and service in our hometown of Harrisburg. For reasons that we can't humanly explain, we've both been picking up vibes of yearning for service in our immediate community. This has been a sort of ongoing thing for some time now — almost like a spiritual nagging, if you will. And over the recent Christmas holiday, Amy and I independently came to the conclusion that "it was time" — we simply must be obedient to what we feel is a Divine nudge.
This wasn't a particularly easy decision to make. My parents have been members of Plaza for almost twenty years, and even while in Chicagoland, I continued to think of Plaza as my "home church". Though Amy has only attended there for a few years, she very quickly made some close friends at the church. And our young boys don't fully appreciate why they have to leave the teachers and friends they love so much. Amy and I were both very active in the music ministry of the church, and were involved in several other committees and areas of service as well. Yes, it's no secret that the church has experienced a serious decline of membership in recent years, and a non-trivial amount of leadership churn. But to call our leaving an "exodus" belies the semantics of this life change: it's more that we are "moving toward" whatever God has for us next than that we are "moving from" the place we were.
We let Plaza's leadership know of our decision a couple of Sundays ago. Pastor Stephen Bounds and his wife, Juli, expressed personal sadness but rejoiced with us nonetheless. Amy and I had been contemplating how to let the church membership know of our decision — simply disappearing seemed like a stunningly awful approach, likely to leave others with unanswered questions and encourage gossip and misinformation. Fortunately, the Boundses believed similarly. And so yesterday morning — after an amazing and uplifting time of corporate worship — Amy and I explained to the congregation from the stage about our decision and the reasons for it. Then the church members present gathered around us to pray for us and release us for service in Harrisburg. It was a wonderful time of celebration with sadness, and another in a series of ways in which God has affirmed this decision.
And so we now begin a season of searching for a new place of service in Harrisburg. We don't know what the future holds for us, but we know Who holds it.
Our church put on a Christmas dinner comedy production this year. Amy has said for some time now that she'd like to try acting just for kicks. So she auditioned for the production, and was awarded the role of Beth, one of four silly servants in the Bethlehem Inn. The cast performed their show this past Saturday and Sunday evenings, to a combined audience of around 100 folks, I'd guess. It was a fun show, and I think the attendees enjoyed themselves. And in my completely unbiased opinion, Amy did a great job in her role.
The boys also played a part in the show, as part of a troupe of child Bethlehemian(?) dancers. Take seven energetic kids, add one tambourine and two colored streamers apiece — instant cuteness!
I'm proud of my wife and kids, of the rest of the cast and crew, and of Pastor Stephen Bounds and his wife who really drove the thing from concept to completion.
Last night, while salmon steaks were baking in one oven, battered fish portions in the other, and the spinach was awaiting its trip through the microwave, it happened. I was upstairs at the time, reading the latest edition of WORLD magazine, when Gavin ran into the room and announced somewhat calmly: "Dad, as soon you get finished, could you come downstairs? Aidan hit his head on the fireplace."
On a list of things I least want to hear, that's gotta be somewhere near the top.
I came downstairs to find Amy holding Aidan in the kitchen floor, trying to apply an ice pack to his bleeding and swelling nose. Seems the boys were running around playing "rocket cars" (which unfortunately seems to require great bursts of speed best experienced outdoors), and Aidan-the-Rocket-Car crashed bridge-of-the-nose-first into the front edge of our very hard, stone fireplace. Fortunately, the cuts on his nose weren't bad at all — in fact, they appeared to be no more than abrasions. But out of concern that he might have broken his nose and that his injuries could impair his breathing, we packed the family up and headed out to an urgent care facility a few miles away.
Aidan was pretty upset (understandably) as we tried to get into the car, and dozed off a couple of times during our trip to the facility. Once there, he quieted down, but mostly out of fear of this new place. Fortunately, the nurses present were able to assure him that he would be treated well. They took a pair of X-rays of his head that didn't reveal anything alarming, and as expected he wasn't in need of any stitches. We were sent away with a recommendation of some Children's Motrin (for the pain and swelling), the promise of a follow-up call from the radiologist, Tootsie Pops for the kids, and a smiling little boy with a busted up nose.
So, after this, our first trip to an urgent care facility, we say, "Thanks", to the fine ladies at Expressmed's Concord Mills location, and to God for protecting our little guy from what could have easily been a much more serious situation.
The Pilatos never get tired of the beach. So for the second year in a row, we've claimed the week before the Columbus Day holiday as our beach-trip week. As we did last year, we returned to the Avista Resort in North Myrtle Beach, SC, and did the overlapping visit thing with my parents. (We were in the three-bedroom suite from Monday to Saturday; my parents were there from Wednesday thru the next Monday.)
We had wonderful weather—not too hot or cold, and dry for the most part. We scored that three-bedroom resort suite by accident, even. I thought I was driving hard for a bargain on a two-bedroom place, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the deal I got was not only a great rate for two bedrooms, but was being applied to three! We all had plenty of room to spread out in that oceanfront suite, and my and Amy's bedroom was waterfront with a balcony to boot!
Of course, we didn't spend all our time in the suite. We did some mini-golf. We bowled. We shopped. Amy and I even caught a Medieval Times show. The boys were in good spirits most of the time, but tended to be a little preoccupied with hanging out in the various pools at the resort. Have water wings, will cooperate, it seemed. (Admittedly, Amy and I loved the water wings, too—it can be quite tiring to hold a forty-pound kid for an hour, even in the water.)
Our vacation week was a full one, but a good one. But don't assume that we returned to find more peace and relaxation. Oh, no. I'm hovered over a new laptop (which was shipped to Amy's parents' place in my absence) trying desperately to get Ubuntu Linux installed, and to get all my data off my previous work laptop, which has an ailing fan and only boots about 20% of the time as a result. Why the rush? Because tomorrow I leave for Germany and SubConf 2008! Busy times, busy times….
Today, Amy and I began the day by doing something I never imagined five years ago I'd be doing — marching into our own back yard and picking apples from our own apple trees.
We picked about eight plastic grocery bags full of good apples, plus another six or seven bags of apples that were rotten or soon-to-be rotten. Our neighbor Hilda even came over to join the fun. She grew up on a farm, so was seasoned in the skills of harvesting. We were somewhat embarrassed, though, when she used those skills — or maybe just her eyes and brain — to inform us that a second tree which we'd come to think of as a particularly bad pear tree was, in fact, another apple tree. (In our defense, we had been told the tree bore pears).
Amy even used a few of our apples to make some homemade applesauce the other day. I am not exaggerating a bit when I say hers was better than the brand-name applesauces we routinely purchase at the grocery store. Yum!
