Feb 22nd - First Baptist Church

We attended a great church service this morning at First Baptist Church in Livingston. We attended the 10:30 "contemporary" service. The music was far to "contemporary" for me but Kathy enjoyed it. Obviously many others also enjoy it because there were a lot of folks in attendance. The Lord has led us to dynamic churches to attend while visiting Crossville, TN; Summerdale, AL and now here in Livingston, TX. It is exciting to see God's hand at work in different communities.

This church decided they had outgrown there old facility in 2004 and they bought 75 acres on the outskirts of Livingston. In 2008 they held their first worship services in the new facility. The 10:30 service filled up maybe 70% of the available seating. They already have an "overflow" area into which they can divert folks if the main sanctuary gets full.

The Pastor had a great message out of Luke 5. The passage tells about Jesus going out in a boat to preach because the crowds were so great. It goes on to tell about the fishermen, who had just come in from a night of poor fishing prior to Jesus making use of one of their boats, being told by Jesus to go back out and try again. They were tired and they had not caught anything during the prime time for fishing, yet they went out again their nets were filled to overflowing. The entire message was good but I thought the best point was when the Pastor suggested that one of Simon Peter's thoughts might have been, "I wish my net was bigger". The Pastor asked us to question if our "nets" were to small. He suggested that we Christians tend to think far to small. God is capable of filling the largest "nets" we can imagine. He related his own experience with "small nets". He had set a goal, in his head, that they would baptize and average of one person every week. While he was thinking about this someone came in his office to discuss the 2 people who wanted to be baptize this morning, the person noted that after these 2 baptisms they have baptized 31 people already this year. God planted the though in his head about his "small nets".

As we were leaving the service it dawned on Kathy that a miracle had occurred, we had attended a Baptist church service where they had not taken up an offering! There was a place in the back where people could put an offering if they so desired. Basically they don't expect "guests" to put money in the offering. Harvest Community, where I attended when we lived in Lebanon, was also like that.

After church we drove around looking for a place to have lunch. Kathy finally wheeled us into Shrimp Boat Manny's.

Kathy has a shrimp and oyster combo, which she said was good. I had catfish. I was a little concerned because the menu said something about mustard in the breading but I thought I would be adventuresome and try it. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST CATFISH, MAYBE EVEN THE BEST FISH, I HAVE EVER HAD! The breading was good but the catfish was awesome. It was really juicy, and seasoned with something that made it awesome. There are several other places we want to try but I sure would not mind it if we have to go back to Manny's.

After watching the NASCAR race I had to force myself to go on a 2.8 mile walk around the campground to try and wear off some of my lunch. Walking 2.6 miles here, with the ups and downs, probably burns as much calories as walking 4 miles along the flat beach.

Temps are heading down. The high was 66 and tonights low is supposed to be 35. Colder tomorrow but then it starts warming up again.

May God bless you and yours.