The Life & Times - Now that He's Committed...

I've been saving this post for a long time - several months to be exact.  Aaron Powell visited us this past summer, sacrificing time where he could have been at home earning money to help with the ministry here.  It was a great chance for us to get to know him, and maybe a sneak peak for him into our family.  And I'm happy to announce that we didn't scare him away.  A couple weeks ago he worked up the nerve to ask Amber's sister Rikki (read more about Rikki here) to be his wife.  And she said "Yes"!  We couldn't be happier for them both.

While he was here Aaron graciously agreed to preach at our church.  Church for us is in a local high school in Thabong.  Every week is an adventure.  The first week I unwittingly preached with profane graffiti directly behind me the whole time.  We've found several disgusting items left in the room from immoral people.  You never know what condition the room will be in, or if you'll even be able to get into the room each week.  So for Aaron to step up and preach for us without knowing all the details beforehand was a big step.

That being said, Aaron did a great job.  Interestingly enough, he used a sermon illustration about faith.  It's a relatively common illustration used to help people understand the difference between faith and knowledge.  The object of the illustration is commonly a chair.  Typically, the speaker will draw the analogy that you walk into a room and see a chair.  You don't think about whether the chair will hold you up, you just kind of know "That will hold me if I sit in it."  But faith takes place when that person actually sits, changing a head knowledge into something acted upon.

Fantastic illustration, normally.  However, in our case, we spend several minutes each Sunday before setting up for church sorting through the chairs.  Rarely are we able to find enough chairs that look sufficiently sturdy to hold your average-sized person.  So to make up for that we use chairs that are obviously flawed, but might, I emphasize might hold an average-sized child, as long as said child doesn't move around too much. I doubt anybody else thought much of it, but the irony wasn't lost completely.

Aaron, you need to know we are excited that you will be joining the family soon.  And you need to know that you aren't off limits anymore.  Welcome to the family!