Home base? Really??

We were almost late for church this morning! Too much early morning Facebooking to finish I think. But we made it just in time for the 8:30 am traditional service.

Martha opened and led the service for Ralph, who was finally feeling well enough to travel and flew north yesterday to Pittsburg to see his kids. She preached a powerful message of personal testimony concerning the value of heart knowledge over head knowledge of Jesus.  They are a both/and thing.

Between services Pastor Joey lay at the feet of all who attended welcoming them to the House of the Lord.

Sunday School followed the overloaded refreshment table between services and today Buddy led the class.  Mitch and Myrna could not make it as Myrna was busy all night at the Fort Worth ER.  Her blood pressure was spiking.  But she came home and was resting today.

The children’s bell choir led us in a rousing carol during the offering at the second service.  They have these cool colored bells and follow a very simple set of color coded cards to ring the right ones.  Beautiful!

In the first service Martha asked me to lead the offering and pastoral prayer time for her.  At the second contemporary service, which without the Praise Team this morning was pretty traditional itself, she allowed me to lead the church in gathering around a dear young woman who was rededicating herself to Christ after hearing Martha’s message. What a time!

 

Such a beautiful day did not go unnoticed by Mona who posed for a pic between the Christian Ed and Worship Buildings at Alva UMC.

Well, we have been en-tranced.  The lovely and well laid out manufactured home community called Oak Park about half a mile out of town attracted us today to have a more than cursory look about. Its location on the river and its neat and well spaced homes are part of the attraction.  Its seclusion from any major highways yet easy access to them via the drawbridge in Alva is another.

These are homes we now know we can afford, as opposed to the homes in the Hilton Head area.  And buying one could allow us to retain the coach for long trips of exploration away from a new Alva home base.

While visiting homes for sale, all of which are only for sale by owner (these homes sell off the MLS grid to friends and family so there are no agent fees then, either) we met a couple who just got married Christmas Eve.  In fact, Bonnie and Pat attended the Christmas Eve service and Ralph introduced us to them just before he began their private service.

We were looking at a home and next door out popped Bonnie and Pat with a new sign they were putting up in front of what had been her home.  So they allowed us to photo them and make them famous.

We saw several homes for sale that might have worked and two that are good possible, but we aren’t ready to sign on the dotted line just yet.  We’ll be talking to a local broker who is a member at Alva UMC tomorrow so that we can determine just how we should proceed if one of these homes come up that God sends us to look at.

When we arrived back at Alva UMC there was a tiny backpacker’s tent pitched under a tree near Pearl Street.  We heard the church youth group having fun around the area so assumed the tent was theirs.  Not so.

Dan is a Physics instructor at a boarding school in Boca Raton, and is taking a school holiday while his children are not (they are in a Hebrew School. No Christmas holiday). His wife is working all week as well so he’s bicycling out to Pine Island, etc, for four days.  He’s camping here at Alva Church for a reason similar to ours.  He was attracted to the little town across the river from the major highway, and it’s church lawn.

Tomorrow is laundry day, and we’ll also be visiting the Oak Park office to ask some questions we could not get answered today about the community. And to see if any of the benefits we saw for a home base today were imagined by our desires to become a part of this very interesting community.

We never imagined, beyond an agreement that if our budget tight enough we could live in a manufactured home, that we would ever be looking seriously at manufactured homes.

We never imagined we’d be looking at South Florida as a home base. Isn’t Florida all Disney, gator-ramas, and crowds?

But this weather!  And we are only 8 hours drive from Hilton Head, and we know a church up there that has invited us to come back and dry camp with them any time. And only 20 hours from Pennsy (plus sleep time!).

If this is a God-thing, then He will show us the way.

-Ken