Happy Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving week -- hard to believe I know. Where to start?

It was so good to see as many of you as we did last week on our trip to Anacortes. It was a great time for us to take a break from the craziness that has been our lives for the past 3-1/2 months. We've definitely missed being with y'all, but we've been blessed by God's goodness and what he's allowing us to be part of here. So on to our trip experience...

We set off for Anacortes a 1/2 day earlier than we expected to because of the super cold weather. School was canceled here so our evening activities were canceled at church and we (five Team O members and our dog/mascot Hunter) set out to beat the snow, which we did. The trip was as smooth as can be except for a couple of traffic delays and one car sickness incident.

While in Anacortes I (Kevin) got to take part in Eyran Richards "Change of Command" ceremony. It was an incredible honor and a great experience. If you've never been to one of these ceremonies, its quite an event, the Navy is so full of tradition and cool ceremony. My job was to offer the opening invocation and the closing benediction. I got to sit on the stage and look out at all the people there to send off the old Skipper, Eyran, and welcome the new Skipper, Dan Johnson. The cast on stage was impressive, Commanders, Captains, an Admiral, and a Master Chief. These guys were in their dress uniforms complete with medals, ribbons, and swords! I felt really out of place, but it was awesome. I only messed up once in my prayer for the soldier. Did you catch that? In the Navy they are sailors, not soldiers. I corrected myself in the prayer and I know that God heard and knew who I was talking about. Thanks again Eyran for the honor.

Another highlight of the trip was attending church with y'all on on Sunday. The chance to hug people,  see smiling faces, and of course to hear a great message preached by Todd was wonderful. BTW, Todd is going to be a great Associate Pastor! Especially after listening to him, I know that he will do a great job of connecting with teenagers and young families and because I know that he loves God, he will serve all the people of FBC, young and old alike. I'm super excited for this new chapter for FBC! Do me a favor and love on Todd and his family as they come in to serve.

Here are the few final things about the trip... My beautiful bride was diagnosed with Strep Throat while we were in Anacortes, thankfully, none of the Pruiett's got it! Daniel got to celebrate his 7th birthday with many good friends, oh and he got initiated into the boy world of stitches! Our final day in town, Kate was resting because of the Strep, so I took Daniel, Claire, and Cassidy P. out for a hike to Flagstaff Island. It was great, the day was beautiful, the skies were clear, we took some great pictures and were enjoying God's beautiful creation until... We were headed out and took one last side trip to the beach to climb on stumps and throw rock into the water. I took pics of each kid on a stump when the girls decided to go somewhere else so I left Daniel to climb down by himself. This was not a big stump, Daniel climbs things like this in his sleep, but that day he slipped and fell backwards! When I heard his scream -- parents, you know the "I'm not hurt but I want your attention" scream, this was NOT that. I knew immediately that he was hurt. I ran back and saw him on a rock crying/screaming and a little bit of blood on the ground. I freaked out and broke all the hurt person protocols, I immediately picked him up, check to see where he was bleeding from. I expected to see a busted mouth, but then I noticed the stream coming from the back of his head. Sorry if I'm giving too much detail. I yelled to the girls to get up the trail, wrapped Daniels head in my jacket, picked him up and began to run back to the car with him. Claire was crying because she was scared for him and poor Cassidy was probably just freaked out and shell shocked by everything. Long story short, poor Daniel had to get two small stitches above and behind his right ear, and a couple of hours later you wouldn't have known that anything was wrong! I totally over reacted, but hey thats the way it goes.

Back in Blackfoot... We arrived home super late on Tuesday night to a cool house and a lot of snow on the ground. Everything and everyone survived the early season "ice age" and in just the last couple of days things have thawed out and the snow is disappearing.

While we were away, the chairs we ordered came in were set up for church. It was a beautiful sight to see when I came in on Wednesday. They are comfy, I'm going to have to work really hard to keep people awake on Sundays : )

Another crazy thing happened while we were gone. We got parking lot lights. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal but the way it happened is another one of those "God" happenings. The short story is that our parking lot was really dark and one night after Awana was over we noticed that kids and parents were trying to navigate the dark parking lot and it seems really unsafe. One of our people stopped by an electrical company that he had done work with in the past to check on something and he mentioned the situation. The owner GAVE us four lights and we just happened to have men in the church who did all the work of trenching, running the cable, pouring the concrete footers, and installing the lights. Did I mention that they did all the work in below freezing temperatures? Pretty awesome huh?

While we haven't had over 100 people in a couple of weeks, we still had a really good crowd including more new faces. In fact today was really awesome because we had seven people raise hands to receive Christ and to rededicate their lives to him. The message was out of Acts 9, the story of Paul's conversion, the Damascus Road experience. The big idea is that we are never to far gone for God's grace to reach us and our past doesn't disqualify us from serving God in the future. In fact God is in the business of transforming monsters like Paul, like you and me, into children of God who are his chosen instruments to...bless all people. You and God get to figure out how specifically you'll do that. Four of the people who prayed this morning were high school boys, it was pretty cool to have them here. I'm praying for more baptisms in the near future!

Next week we step out of Acts and into our Christmas series called Christmas Presence: Hope - Peace - Love - Joy. I love Christmas and I can't wait to decorate my house and the church. But before that I can't wait to eat some yummy Thanksgiving turkey.

Here's what we need prayer for:
Family - Patience as we continue to learn how to homeschool our kids.
Balance - we've been doing too many things and we need to be still and know that God is God.
Wisdom - for leading our family and the church.
To find godly leaders who can run with ministries.
Health.

As always, we love y'all and wish we could have spent more time with you. May God give you the realization that you have an overabundance of things to be thankful for and may you love and serve the people he puts in your sphere of influence.