Saturday, April 18, 2015

Weekends like this

God made us for relationships. For relationship with him, and relationships with each other. Love God and love others.

That is one of the wonderful things about the short-term mission trips I have been blessed to be a part of. Not only have I seen the Lord do wonderful things in the lives of people all over the world, but every time I go I make the best friends. God has put some amazing people in my life.

Some of those people live in the Harrisburg, PA area. I never would have met any of them without going to Ethiopia. But I'm so glad I did. Last weekend, I visited one such family after a long absence from seeing them. The Swanks of Lebanon, PA.

It was so much fun hanging out with Scott, Lori, Sarah, and Rachel. And another friend from past trips, Sarah's friend Emily. I wish Jesse had been there too. The focus of the weekend was Rachel's performance in The Music Man as Mrs. Paroo. She did an outstanding job in the role, and I was very proud of her. But we also had a blast with great dinners, a monstrous breakfast, and a very cool coal mine tour.

However, the weekend did not get off to a great start.

I landed a little before 5:00 on Friday afternoon, ahead of schedule. When I landed Scott texted me and we decided I should just get my rental car and drive to their house before we decided what to do for dinner. Well, I got to the rental car and was putting my bags in the trunk when I thought, Hmmm. Is my Kindle in this bag?

It wasn't.

Of course it wasn't. It was in a seat pocket on the plane where I had left it. That's me - always forgetting things. I'd forget my head if it weren't attached to me. So I drove back around, parked, and went to the Delta counter. Yep, they found it. Unfortunately, everyone was about an hour late going to dinner because they had to wait on my boneheaded mistake.

And that's not all. I drove to dinner because, hey, I have a rental car. Well, we got to the restaurant... Wait - gotta point this out: It was the first restaurant we tried. It had a one-hour wait so we gave up on it. If I hadn't forgotten the Kindle.......

So anyway, I parked there and opened my door to get out of the car. It beeped. And beeped. And beeped. Beep beep-beep-beep-beep........

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS CAR?

Well, there was the little matter of the fact that I had opened the car door and started to get out while it was still in drive!

Why did I do this? Here is the only explanation I have:


This picture is the gearshift panel on my car. MY car. There is no stick, only a bunch of buttons. And if I open the car door, it automatically shifts back to Park. So I guess I have gotten so used to this feature that I stopped shifting to Park myself.

How embarrassing. Fortunately, however, I stopped the car before we hit anything.
________________________

Notwithstanding this wonderful start, we had a great time. Weekends like this are what life is made of.

And I did see Rachel's show. One and half times. That's right...but that's a story for another time.

Finally, the director's take on a show I've known for a long time was very interesting. So much so that it deserves its own post. So next time, let's talk about that.

Okay....shifting into Park......and DONE.

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