A Happy Sunday, Indeed

It was another wonderful Sunday with a good deal of the morning spent at the rehab center where Carol Coppi continues to improve from her brain hemorrhage stroke 5 weeks ago. What dear, dear friends she and Quint have been to us (and many more!) over these last decades. Quint’s family has already relocated him in a beautiful place in Florida with Carol to follow suit as soon as she’s able to travel. And that might even be this week! We will miss them terribly but we applaud the family’s compassion, generosity, and effort invested in taking good care of them there.

And then we went on to our regular Sunday afternoon church service at Aksarben Village Senior Living. Our congregation today was 16. Joining us for the visitation before and after our 35-minute service were some of the “standards” of our team: Allen, Ruth, and Don. The sermons (always only 13-15 minutes long) have lately been from the Book of Philippians and today I spoke of Philippians 4: 4-5 (“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.  Let your gentle spirit be known to all people. The Lord is near.”) 

Our YouTube musical selections today were “All Hail The Power Of Jesus’ Name” (Choir and Orchestra of First Baptist Church, Dallas), “You Must Be Born Again” (The Ferguson Family out of Mount Dora, Florida) and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” (Gracias Choir, originally from South Korea). Claire closed in prayer and we enjoyed the cookies, coffee, lemonade, and plenty of lively fellowship for another half hour or more.

It was a terrific time.

By the way, we always pass around sheets with the order of service, the song lyrics, and the sermon text to everyone and we encourage them to take them back to their rooms to use as devotionals. But we have recently stepped that outreach up by using what used to be blank spaces to print other items of interest. One week, for instance, we printed several D.L. Moody quotes. One week was a Charles Wesley poem. And today, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day coming up, was an edited version of this Vital Signs Blog post (The Real St. Patrick) was itself edited from a radio script I wrote long, long ago. Check it out.