Visitors, horses, plans – sort of

Pastor Reed and his wife came over last night and we visited until after 9 p.m. He is the pastor of East Side Baptist Church in Bowie; the church we have been going to recently. I wanted to bring up the question of his divorce but was not sure how to go about it. It turned out that I did not have to, he openly told us about his marriage to a young woman – while he was still in the army and only 18 years old – who left him for another man after several years of marriage. She was the daughter of the pastor of the church he was attending in those early days; seemingly a good Christian woman. It sounded very much like June and Norman and what is going on with them right now.


I will still have to make it a matter of prayer whether or not we can continue there, but they are really delightful people who are doing a work for the Lord and the congregation has matured a lot under his ministry. He said he would understand if we chose not to continue going to his church. There would be no hard feelings. I appreciated that.

Grandma and Pastor Reed’s wife talked the entire time. The two of them wore Mama out and Victoria, who came in from work about and hour into the visit, stayed with the men for the better part of the evening. The pastor and Grandpa have a lot in common, farming, raising hogs, making do with what is available, etc. He even has an old square baler we may be able to repair and use for our first cutting of hay this year. We took him on a short tour of the farm to see the garden, the horses, the pigs and the chickens. It was a fun evening.

It began raining last night – as predicted – and hopefully we will get the ½ inch forecast for the area. We really need it. It could rain throughout the day today, clearing up tomorrow for the festivities at the Language Institute. Pastor Reed was telling us that there were over a dozen horses at the Institute that we could ride almost any time we wanted. We are excited to find out tomorrow. He even suggested we bring one of them to the farm and ride it there as often as we wanted to. We will probably make use of that invitation when the kids and grandkids are with us.

Grandpa diagnosed several problems with the little van yesterday. None of them are difficult or expensive to repair so we will coordinate the repairs for the next time we come to the farm in early June. That should put us in good shape for the trip to Florida for Mykenzie’s birthday; oh, and Brittany’s wedding. Until the repairs are made we will be praying for the little van to keep going. We have the little car now, but we still need the little van for many of our travels to and from the farm and when visiting our kids.

As usual, I have had a productive week in the Decatur office. I have gotten to meet with my boss several times and cleared up a lot of the little things we have been working together on, but I do miss my nice office in Borger and at this point it looks like I will be there for another year. We are probably too close to the lease expiration date to make the moves my boss has been looking for. I don’t mind too much. I am not relishing an office move to Dumas, TX and we are not ready to be on the farm full time yet since we have no place of our own to stay if we were to be here all the time.

At Mama’s and my age we are not ready to move back in with her parents.