Monday, April 25, 2011

Easter sunday

Easter Sunday was quite a day. I didn't get much sleep the night before, and I got up especially early on this day - mostly because I had to get the baptistry ready to do some baptizing.

I got out of bed at 4:54 am and was over to the church sometime after 6. I had to fill the baptistry the rest of the way, make the coffee, tune the guitar, and get things ready for the service. I was a little off, because my Saturday routine had been thrown off by the Easter Egg Hunt and some other issues.

To top things off, not only was I really tired, but I wasn't feeling very good at all either. I thought things might get better, but it ended up that... as the crowd grew and grew... I just got worse. I was strangely nervous, and wasn't all that confident I was even going to be able to make it through the morning. I actually worried about what we would do about the baptisms if I had to go to the hospital.

Anyway, we had breakfast at 9 am. There was a pretty good sized crowd, but we had a ton of stuff left over. Then, for the worship service, it was packed! We hadn't had a crowd like that for a long time. It helped that we were baptizing people - as there were a lot of family and friends who came for that. But there were also just a lot of random people that showed up too. Plus, for some odd reason we've just been having pretty decent sized crowds in general lately. I even had the air conditioning on, but it was still pretty hot because people were so crammed in.

I tried to minimize announcements, because there was a lot to do. I also had a short-than-usual sermon, so as to not interfere with the baptisms; plus we didn't have Junior Worship because the JW director was one of the ones getting baptized, and she requested that they all be able to witness that. So it was kinda cool having a bunch of little kids in the front few rows. Apparently we also had 11 in the nursery (not to mention the infants that weren't in the nursery).

Somehow I managed to get through the songs and the sermon - though I had to sit down for part of my sermon. I kinda sorta got a little weak in the knees. Then we had four people we were planning to baptize. They were all female. Two were adults, one is in high school, and one in elementary. I was pretty excited about all four. Then, while we were singing the closing song, a middle schooler sitting behind me asked if she could get baptized too. I spoke to her during 'Amazing Grace,' and when it was over, we did another dunking. So we baptized FIVE altogether! It was pretty awesome.

After the worship service we headed to Drew Carrie's for lunch. Isaac drove up after helping lead worship in Anderson and we all had a nice lunch of roast beast. We hung out there until about 2:30, then we showed Isaac the new house. After that Jane and I took supper to the ladies shelter in town. We just bought them pizzas and pop, and just dropped it off. It was my first time being there since they've moved into the new facility.

When we got done there we came home and chatted with Isaac for a few minutes before he had to head back home. When he was gone we loaded up the truck and took another two loads of garage/shed stuff to the new house. That should just about do it for stuff we need the truck for. Now it's just major furniture and boxed items.

I was major tired tonight, and just plum worn out; but of course when I went to bed I couldn't get to sleep. Too many things running around in my brain. What a day. Way too many emotions going on. This could be a long week.

Peace out, my friends; and in.

2 comments:

Tom said...

I know that people can simply consent to be baptized and not have it mean anything but baptisms always stirs the sense of God's transforming power at work. It is very inspiring.

dan said...

Yep. And I like it when people 'ask' to be baptized; which all of these did. It was a pretty darn nice day.