This past Sunday we had guest speaker Jerry Trecek visit.  He is the Executive Director of Peoria Rescue Ministries.  Jerry and his wife have been involved with Peoria Rescue Ministries for 46 years now.  When they first started, there were taverns all around the mission.  Now there are none.  But just because they no longer see alcohol addictions as visibly, they now see all types of addictions: prescription pills, pornography, online gambling.  The average age of addiction they see is 29 years old. 

The topic of the sermon this week was “The Disciples: Making and Being Disciples.” As our pastor and his family are on vacation, our elders led the service.  They drew from their experience and wisdom on how to be and make disciples in order to give us some encouragement on doing the same. 

We had a great week together as a church family, and not just because the Wright clan is going to be on vacation for the next two weeks (when asked we told people that this year, we were going to Irian Jaya... which is actually the old-fashioned-y name for Papua -- ask me later, and I’m sure that there will be a slideshow available).  But though several of our FCCers were off on vacations, and several others are home-bound at the moment with physical issues, we still had other extended family members and non-related visitors in the mix today, so it averaged out.

We had a sweet day of worship this week, and we’re all enjoying the unusually pleasant weather this Summer (especially after so many people were predicting that it might get terribly hot this year).  Of course, now that I’ve said that, everyone’s going to blame me if temperatures soar over the next week or two...

A big “thank you” to all of you who helped out with and prayed for our annual Vacation Bible School this past week.  Yes, everyone who worked all week was a pack of shambling zombies this Sunday, but it was totally worth it.  We hosted more than 60 kids this year -- 10 households of which were completely unchurched families -- and we saw eight children make a decision to follow Christ.  If even one child had done so, it would’ve been worth all of the work, so I figure that our church family was blessed seven times over.

Before I forget, let me share that we hope that everyone had a very Happy Independence Day!

Tons of our FCCers gathered in East Peoria to watch the fireworks together--we took up an entire section of grass in front of some storefronts (and I’m sure that Papa John’s Pizza loves the influx of business that we all threw them).  I hope that you were able to spend time with family and friends as well.

Thank you for letting me head up to Chicago this past week for the Covenant’s Annual Conference.  It was great to see several people that I haven’t seen in a while, and I was able to take my family with me.  True, I had to go to some long meetings while they shopped the Magnificent Mile, but then we were able to eat some great food together in the evenings.  Everybody say, “Giordano’s Pizza...”

We’re a week and a half out from our annual Vacation Bible School, and things are really kicking into full gear around here.  Tons of people came to help out with the preparations for our crafts and decorations last Saturday, and that helped out a great deal.  I hope that at least that many come to help out again on July 5th, when we actually do the decorating of the church facility.  The theme this year is “Wilderness Escape” -- revolving around the time that the Hebrews spent in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt -- so I’m looking forward to seeing how our VBS team transforms our building into Sinai (I’ve already heard what they’re planning for the Red Sea, and it’s pretty exciting...).  Please be in prayer starting even now, not only for our VBS directors, crew leaders, station leaders, etc., but even more importantly for the hearts of those children and families whose lives will be touched by FCC that week.  We don’t just want to entertain the kids -- we want to facilitate God changing their lives.

Before I forget, let me wish all of you who are reading this a very Happy Father’s Day!

We had a wonderful time in our service this week, celebrating not only our biological fathers, but also those men who have invested of themselves into the lives of others, being “father figures” to those who have really needed a strong, Christian man in their lives.  It’s amazing what a simple commitment to loving one another well can do in the lives of those around us -- and most of us will have no idea how many people we’ve really touched, simply by living out what we profess to believe.

I’m writing this Update on the fly a bit, because I just read that my eldest brother has just had another seizure of some kind, and I need to leave to go to Bloomington to find out how he is.  For those of you keeping track, my father had a heart attack a couple of years ago, my eldest brother had a stroke in November, and my middle brother had a heart attack at the turn of this year.  These would constitute reasons number 1, 7, and 8 for why I’ve been trying to lose weight and eat healthier since last Fall...

We had a great day this week, opening up the Summer season here at First Covenant.  I’ll be honest, it always astounds me how the change of the seasons changes people’s patterns so dramatically -- they feel droopy once the snow falls in the Winter, and giddy once it melts away in the Spring... only to feel like they need to physically collapse once the Summer kicks in, and then overload themselves again in the Fall.  All because the world spins around the sun...
 

Welcome officially to the Summer heat wave season.  I tried to explain to a friend of mine that 90 degrees in the Illinois humidity is a different kind of heat altogether than the 90 degrees he's familiar with in the dry climate of New Mexico, but he just chuckled.  I can't wait for him to come visit during the Summer sometime and have his mind blown...

I hope that you had a wonderful day with the Lord this week -- even those of you whom I know were out sick (apparently, there was a nasty stomach flu that ravaged at least three of our church family’s households this Sunday morning).  Those of us who were here enjoyed the last comfortable day before all of the Summer heat wave days kick in.  Seriously, it seems like weather-wise, we’re jumping from early Spring directly into mid Summer, with nothing in-between.

Before I forget, I hope that all of you out there had a very Happy Mother’s Day!  As many people pointed out this past Sunday, Mother’s Day is ironically a lot less work for me than Father’s Day is around here, since the Youth Group always takes over the service on Mother’s Day (and does a wonderful job of it, too).  Basically, I just teach Sunday School, then spend the rest of the day sitting around looking pretty.  Or at least just sitting around…

My son was very excited that this year, May 4 fell on a Sunday.  Why?  Because he’s a geek, geeks consider it to be International Star Wars Day and Alex loves running around telling people, “May the Fourth be with you!” (if you don’t get the joke, then go rent and watch Star Wars immediately).