Thanksgiving Day is Almost Here!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm starting early! If Christmas is celebrated over 12 days, then why can't Thanksgiving be stretched a little. Who's with me? "On the first day of Thanksgiving, I started with a salad..." It doesn't fit the tune as well, so let's make a new song for Thanksgiving.

Actually, we started Sunday night with an INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS Thanksgiving meal with our Small Group. Funny thing, every single member of our small group was in attendance...hmmm...thanks everyone for contributing to a great feast. From the pasta salad to the homemade mac & cheese, brocc casserole & pot roast to the chocolate surprise, it was terrific.

Thanks to everyone who registered a guess on Baby Sanderson's arrival. Bruce's guess of January 1st was not welcomed by my lovely wife. However, if Lincoln/Faith should put off his/her grand entrance 2.5 weeks, yes, Bruce will get the cash prize. DOUBT IT. We'll see...we are so excited to hold that little baby, we can hardly stand it! Thanks to Jessica M who helped us paint part of our scripture border in the nursery.

And wow, so many guesses that the baby will be FAITH! Cool! Our resident expert in predicting an unborn child's gender (Lisa, our children's minister) is putting her money on LINCOLN. We shall see...speaking of, President Lincoln was the president who first proclaimed a national holiday for Thanksgiving.

This Thanksgiving is special for many reasons...only our 2nd one as a married couple, and our last one pre-kids-outside-the-womb, our 1st one in Virginia far far away from family (sob), etc. Jaime & I both feel so blessed to have such loving friends & families (families of origin and spiritual families). We are also grateful for jobs that we enjoy, a home, two cars, and plenty of milk & Double-Stuff Peanut Butter Oreos (no, they're not as good as original Double-Stuff.) Of course, after the spiritual blessings we enjoy through Christ, our baby is the #1 thing on our "what I'm most thankful for..." list. Celebrating God's blessings this week will be fun to say the least.

From Psalm 69:30..."I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving."

Happy Feasting everyone.

Place your bets, Ladies & Gentlemen!

We're ONE MONTH away from Baby Sanderson's arrival. Jaime & I are both so excited and can hardly wait to meet our little babe. The nursery is almost ready, we are putting the finishing touches on tommorrow night. We had a wonderfully generous baby shower at Jaime's school today. (Thanks Brookfield! See pics below.) We won't talk about how in my sugar-induced-shower-cake-and-punch-and-mints-high I demonstrated where the nursing pads are to be applied.

The baby is due December 15th, but only the Lord above knows its' exact arrival day & time, and if it's a boy or a girl. (and the sonogram tech who has long since forgotten). To make things interesting, and to win a prize of $25 (twenty-five dollars) in CASH, just in time for Christmas spending, place a wager in the "Baby Sanderson Sweepstakes Pool" by entering your guess on the following information in a 'comment' to this post:

Gender: (Faith or Lincoln)
Birth date:
Weight:
Time of arrival: (for example, 12:37 pm, in case of a tie)

This pool is a little different than your basic Superbowl office pool. You pay nothing to enter, but we ask that you PRAY daily for Jaime & little Lincoln/Faith as the birth-day draws near.

Thanks for playing, and thanks also for PRAYing for Jaime & the baby during this last month. We'll announce the winner in mid-December...or sooner? or later?

Stay tuned.

Powerhouse 2005 was incredible! Seeing 700 people praising God for an hour straight Saturday night, at the top of their lungs, was simply awesome. God was "awesome in that place" as the song says. Chris led us in the song called "This Is How We Overcome" where the chorus celebrates the fact that God has TURNED our mourning into dancing...and we actually turned in the pews! To me, it was worship "in spirit and in truth". We had our minds fully engaged, and our spirits as well. It brought to mind another key text on worship..."You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul & strength." We are called to pour out our love to God with our entire being, and that song gives us permission to do it. Thanks to God who worked through Chris & Jessica and our wonderful congregation to bring about a terrific youth event, that adults enjoyed as well.

Baby Sanderson is doing flips & kicking like crazy. Heartbeat is strong, and Jaime is doing well. Saw the doc today, we're 35 weeks along. As we were checking out, the receptionist said to me, referring to Jaime, "she's so cute!" I proudly said, "Thank you" as if I were her father. I quickly corrected myself..."It's not like I'm her father, I'm just proud to have a cute wife!" The receptionist laughed & agreed. Tonight's goal: pack the infamous "we're going to the hospital" suitcase!

After several weeks of drought in late summer/early fall, we've had some nice rain showers. Our Fall has turned absolutely gorgeous! This pic doesn't do it justice, but let's just say, Jaime has some raking to do. Kidding! I've asked her to supervise safely from the couch where she'll have a perfect view of me raking & bagging all of these beautiful leaves.

Halloween Still Alive in our Cove

I've heard lots of people saying how few trick-or-treaters they had...forget about it!

We had 50! We counted because Jaime chose PRETZELS for us to give out. Talk about being the nerd house on the cove. If we had had a pumpkin sitting out there, I'm sure it would've been bashed. We knew exactly how many bags of pretzels we had, 60...and we had 10 left when the last pillow-case-toting gremlin left our stoop. We gave each treater 1 bag. Okay, we also gave them a tootsie roll pop. Jaime was so cute, we are trying to cut down on expenses leading up to Baby Sanderson's arrival in December. She went to Costco to buy bulk chocolate for our costumed visitors, and she came home with pretzels & tootsie roll pops. I love my wife.

Today ushered in our 34 week visit to the doc! We feel so grateful, God is so good, this checkup was like the others...the doc said everything with Jaime & the baby was terrific. What a blessing. 6 weeks to go, and there's plenty left to do...but mostly little odd jobs. We visited our friends from Bradley class last night before church, and the new father had built the coolest red barn doors for closet doors in their baby's nursery. He also hand-made a picket fence for the perimeter of the room. I thought I was doing good painting the room & putting the crib together!

Here's a headline from Christian Chronicle that I'll leave with you: "Tsunami orphans give money to Katrina victims." Awesome.

Purpose of the Worship Team

The worship team at FXCC exists to strengthen & edify the church. Our key verse is I Corinthians 14, which is basically one of the few passages we have in the New Testament that describes what should happen in a corporate gathering of Christians. Verse 26 is our motto..."all of this must be done for the strengthening of the church."

We hope that which excites us (singing to God about His infinite power & awesomeness & majesty & greatness...) will be contagious, so that those who gather with us on Sunday mornings may do the same.

Basically we sing on songs which are not yet firmly in our church's repertoire (aka familiarity bucket). We hope the 'group' form of leadership will enable more people to have access to these wonderful new songs. As a song leader, I can start songs & sing one vocal part. Nothing wrong with that. But as a team, we can sing all the vocal parts, and encourage others to join in more readily.

When I moved up here from Dallas 2 years ago {Nov 1, 2003 was my 1st day on the job here...happy anniversary to me}, I had been working within a worship team framework for 13 years. It's important for me to be able to state the purpose of the team so our church can best benefit from this format. I'll be writing more about the vision/mission/purpose of worship teams in days to come.

Thanks everyone.

Baby Sanderson is kicking like a mule [the last time I'll ever compare our little genius to a barnyard animal], and we get more & more excited everyday. His/her room is mostly ready. Jaime is doing a fantastic job preparing our home for the baby. I feel so blessed to be her husband. Organizing closets, drawers, clothing, she seems to have endless energy now, with fewer naps needed. Amazing! I think she feels the best yet, at 33.5 weeks! Jaime put the new handles on the dresser we are going to use, and let me just say, that hardware makes ALL the difference on vintage wood dressers. We got a ceiling fan/light installed this past weekend in the nursery...there had previously been only a lamp with no overhead light at all. It's shaping up! Thanks for your continued prayers.