Reasons to Celebrate

As summer wraps up, I thought I’d share with you a couple of things that we’ve celebrated lately!

First and foremost, we are celebrating Elijah’s decision to put on Christ in baptism! A few weeks back, at the end of VBS, he shared with us that he thought he was ready to become a Christian. We studied and prayed with him and realized that he understood what he wanted to do and was, indeed, ready to make this choice in spite of his young age.

I spoke to our church about using the baptistery for a private baptism because Elijah was a bit freaked out at the idea of making a video testimony and having 600 strangers stare at him, which would be the norm for a Sunday morning baptism. (Alas, we have no swimming pool here, as we did for Charlotte’s baptism in France two years ago!) Our friend and Richwoods’ discipleship pastor Marty Hunt agreed to be involved and help set it up for us.

As it turns out, Marty’s family also witnessed Elijah’s baptism, at Elijah’s request. Jeff baptized Elijah, as he did with Charlotte, and it was indeed a wonderful Wednesday afternoon. Elijah told Jeff afterwards, “I feel good!” Jeff had to chuckle because he said something similar after his own baptism 19 years ago.

Here is the video I took on Jeff’s phone. The audio is not great when Jeff is speaking, but take a look!

After Elijah’s baptism, we went to watch a Peoria Chiefs baseball game. The Chiefs are a minor league feeder team for the Chicago Cubs, and their games are always entertaining. Of course, when we arrived, the thermometer was reading 94 degrees, with the heat index still over 100. The game started at 7:00 p.m., and it never dropped below 84 degrees! This heat is unreal. We hadn’t been there 10 minutes when I stripped the baby down to his diaper, something I had always privately told myself I would never do out in public! But his hair was curling from the humidity, and he had beads of sweat on his back…poor baby! But for all that, he never fussed until 9:00, when he got hungry.

It was Wacky Weiner Wednesday, which meant unlimited free hot dogs and peanuts. They weren’t very good, but we still had a great time! It was a nice way to celebrate Elijah’s special day.

Last Sunday, we drove to Michigan to visit our new niece and cousin for the very first time. We stayed until Tuesday morning. Little Elynne was just over two weeks old and is a precious, precious baby. It is so hard to believe that our baby was that tiny just a few months ago…he looked like a giant next to her! Charlotte was completely enchanted with her new girl cousin, the next best thing to having a baby sister!

Here are the cousins.

And here are my brother and I with our new babies. Elynne was getting a bit unhappy at this point!

It was so much fun to meet Elynne and to spend a bit of time with my brother and sister-in-law. Zech and Alyse have the new iPhones, as does my brother Thad in New Jersey, so we were able to video phone him on Monday evening and let him see the babies for the first time. The weekend ended up being a bit hectic, so we didn’t get any pictures of Alyse or my parents with the babies. Maybe next time.

And last night, Jeff and I lay outside on our driveway, watching the skies for the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Usually when we do this, we see absolutely nothing. But last night was clear and cloudless, and we actually saw seven or eight streaks before we went into bed. I think that we also scared a woman who was out jogging. But, hey, I figure that, if you are going to job at 10:30 at night, you’re probably going to get a few good scares before you’re done!

Good times!