the nyc craftons took a trip down south to visit the memphis craftons. we spent time in memphis of course and took a trip up to alton, mo with my dad and uncles ralph and steve to kayak on the eleven point river there.
here is a link to some pictures of the kayaking trip on facebook, if you have an account there. i’ll be posting those pictures on this site soon as well, for those of you who don’t have a facebook account. Michelle is also processing photos from our time spent in Memphis and we’ll have those for you soon as well.
so, here’s a few videos of chloe. she’s been talking a lot for quite some time now, but her ‘vocabulary’ grows more every day. the first two are from two months ago and the last is from yesterday. she loves her sunglasses. all three pairs. thanks to the ladies in creative services who knew a little girl couldn’t live without her shades.
NOTE: she has three pairs of sunglasses and a thousand other girlie toys for every one boy transformer she accidently gets from micky d’s. besides, we’re living in the 21st century, right?
so yesterday i look out my office window and see the good year blimp hovering over midtown, and it’s there again this morning. not sure what event is going on, but it’s weird to see a zeppelin over central park. i took these pics, one with the naked phone cam, and the other with the phone cam + binoculars. they’re both informative and eerie.
as i was reminded by a recent exchange with an old friend, we haven’t had a substantial “what’s up with the craftons/what’s God doing in their lives” post in quite some time. So, there’s no time like the present.
recently, my brother and his lovely fiance tied the knot, so we had some time with family in connecticut and in brooklyn. below are some pictures from that time. we have no shots of the actual ceremony because michelle and i were both in it, but i suppose there will be some official photos of the event available soon.
lots of great things are happening at church too. we have five members on our worship team now. they’re a talented group of individuals and some of my dearest friends. i love playing with them because i know that they’re not just playing any old songs, but that there is true worship happening in their hearts toward the one saved us from our sins. and it’s such a great help to have such great music and tuned hearts when seeking to call others to worship our God with song.
we’ve been studying through 1 John in small group on Wednesday night. it’s a great book that reassures if you are God’s child with the evidences of the work and love of Christ in your life, but also calls you to greater love of the brothers and everyone, and not just a fuzzy, ambiguous love, but concrete “action” love.
we’ve been having a good amount of people in our services the past couple of weeks, but more than that, the bond of believers within our church is growing ever stronger through Christ. i see the people bearing one anothers’ burdens both in prayer and in tangible, physical acts of love whether through the giving of time or material resources. i have great conversations recently about how we view world events through the gospel as well as motivations for certain activities. We have a mercy ministry team that is meeting and brainstorming ways for us to reach out with the love of Christ to our community.
i would ask that you pray for us as we seek to grow in the area of evangelism. there is some happening, but we feel that we are weakest there, so we are planning steps to be have stronger gospel out reach to the lost, as well as beginning a small group study about how evangelism took place in the scriptures and how we can apply that to our situation.
we have a team from heritage coming to help us with some outreach and some construction on our new space toward the end of july. by the way, we are going to begin with the renovation of our building this week. it’s very exciting. we’ll try to post pictures as it progresses.
this is a problem. how did insurance companies get such a strangle hold on doctors? these are people that are working to make people well and the insurance companies are stonewalling them at every turn, trying to bilk them out of a little more money. i’m not laying the blame at the feet of every single person who works at an insurance company. i know that there are many of you trying to do what’s right and just. but it is a culture of greed.
it makes me really glad to see people like jay parkinson and even more glad that he’s practicing right in our very own williamsburg. this article is a pretty clear presentation of his vision.
