Roger Ammons' Wine Cellar

My real title should be "Home at Last" or something similar, but I promised Brother Ammons I was going to post the above title, so I had to follow through. You'll have to wait until later to find out what it's all about though. ;-)

We are finally home from our Colorado trip after 14 full days, which is only 3 days longer than originally scheduled. When I think of all of the blessings in the Revival that I received in those extra three days (not to mention the FUN and FELLOWSHIP enjoyed, of course) it would have been truly tragic to have missed out and come home any sooner than we did! I'm sooooo thankful we were able to make the trip and stay the extra days. Now we're home and unloaded, but that's about it. I'm feeling the big Post Trip Crash coming on, though I can't understand why. We were up late every night, but we were able to sleep in the past several days and even grab a nap here and there. Somehow all I'm feeling right now are the late nights, not the naps or sleeping in! So I have half a mountain of laundry in the floor (the rest is yet to be unpacked and discovered), but I think I'm DONE for the night and will just plan on starting fresh in the morning. For now, I blog. :-)

Let's see, now. I last blogged on Tuesday, correct? Jamey fixed a really fantastic Mexican chicken casserole (forgot to get the recipe, Jamey--can you e-mail it to me???) before we headed to church that night. We had another good service with even more visitors from the north and the south. ;-) Brother Ammons preached about the need to rescue the perishing and how the words "lost" and "perish" are often interchangeable in Scripture. That's all my brain is able to recall at the moment, but I know it was good! :-)

After church that night the game of choice was Pictionary--Brother Ammons, Brother Dustin and James against Sister Jamey and me. Girls vs. Guys. Who do YOU think won? ;-) Jamey and I were off to a roaring start but the guys had a real surge and nearly caught us toward the end of the game. It would have been extremely difficult to lose gracefully to them considering some of the art work they were producing. (I'm typically the epitome of a gracefuly loser, of course...) I was glad I didn't have to figure out a witty response to such a loss--I may have just turned to violence instead. ;-) Jamey and I work pretty well together, I think. Good enough to beat the fellas, anyway.

Here is Brother Ammons doing his part to help what turned out to be The Losers. :-)

This is one of his most impressive drawings. Any guesses?



The word was "fever." And they actually guessed it once they figured out that it was a sick dude with a thermometer instead of a sad dude grossed out by a worm. :-) For Brother Ammons' sake, I will let it be known that this particular piece was drawn with his left hand. ;-)

His next piece was even more impressive. Come now, surely you can see it!



This is, of course, Brother Ammons' wine cellar. But, of course! How could you have missed it??? It's subtle, yet obvious, don't you think??? HA! The truly disgusting thing is that they GUESSED it. Can you imagine?! This was during an All Play round where Brother Ammons was drawing for the guys and I was drawing for Jamey--and we had to draw with our eyes closed. I managed to make a house with a room underground and James overheard Jamey guess "basement." Eventually he tried "cellar" then went with my previous statement about there being no possible way for them to guess what we were about to try to draw with our eyes closed--and he guessed "wine cellar," almost sealing his fate as either a single father or a corpse. (I was struggling to decide whether to kill him or myself...) It took some doing to convince me that he hadn't simply looked at the answer, but even still I'm not too awful thrilled about it. I mean, LOOK at that picture!!! I really love Brother Ammons... but they sooooooo did not deserve to win that round! Ha! Talk about abstract art... :-)

I can't remember exactly what was going on in this shot, except that I was trying to take a picture of the game board to show that Jamey and I won and Dustin lost yet again (it's becoming quite a tradition), I'm just sad I was too slow to snap the picture while Jamey still had him in a headlock. Ha!

All of the little people woke up on the wrong side of the bed on Wednesday. Well, almost all of them! HA! I must share this... One day Brother Dustin noticed a mess that the kids had made in the backyard and hollered, "Alright, everybody under four and a half feet tall get outside and get that stuff put away!... Um... Except for Brother Ammons!" HA! Maybe you had to be there. :-) Anyway, all of the kids were crabs on Wednesday. Joe and Sam crawled out of bed hitting each other and griping and tattling and in all other ways begging for spankin's and naps. So what was I to do?! Actually, I believe all of my children were sent to lay down by about 10:30 that morning! We'd been gone from home for a long time and they run on pure adrenaline when they're with the other kids AND they'd been staying up way late because of services and such. So they were just shot. I had them all lay down for quite a while again in the afternoon, though I'm not sure any of them ever actually fell asleep. Stubborn little brats! Ha!

Revivial was really good again that night. Brother Ammons preached on being changed and talked about the life cycle of the butterfly and the process of metamorphosis. Preceeding his message he wanted all the kids to come up and sing He's Still Workin' on Me, but none of them knew how the verses went. Brother Dustin and James were supposed to be helping them, but you wouldn't have known it when the second verse came along! Ha! They had a bit of trouble fitting all of the words in and I thought they'd just about given up on it, but then they spit 'em all out in a hurry to make up for it. :-) Enjoyable, if not entirely austere.



And here's a special song Brother Ammons sang to go along with his message--I thought you might enjoy it. :-)



After service that night the Wantuloks came over for a while. We visited for a bit, then played a truly great game of Balderdash. I would have to re-read some of the really great definitions (we have a "keepers" bag in which to save the truly worthy submissions that we just don't want to forget about!)--but it still wouldn't be the same. You just had to be there. More times than not, you have to do very little wondering about which entries are Dustin's or Daniel's. Dustin has a particular pattern of writing that is uniquely his own. And it usually takes up two or more sheets of paper for each answer. Daniel, on the other hand, is more concise... but you can't pronounce half of his words and wouldn't know what they meant even if you could! HA! Makes for a truly interesting game, I assure you. Still, I think Brother Ammons was the most surprising of all. I feel like I've learned so much more about that man this week. I've been around him several times before at various church functions and when he's stayed in our home for revivals in the past, but it was quite different this time. He's always cracked me up and had a quirky sense of humor, but I was a bit surprised at how hanging out with a bunch of punk kids (which is how I still view myself and most of the other folks in our region--we're all still pretty young!) influenced him! HA! I will forever recall his impression of a blind man doing karate and a few other things that, for his sake, I won't share here. ;-) The man is a MESS and we truly enjoyed every minute with him--the crazy, laughter and tear filled ones as well as the good, rich discussions and spiritual insights he had to share. I think I respect him now more than I ever have before. In spite of that last game of Balderdash. HA!

Had to post the traditional picture. James and Jamey won the game on the same round. I'm always red and Dustin is always yellow. Here we are in our proper positions. :-) I'm not sure what he's smiling about. He probably just saw me whip out the camera and was trying to plaster a good "I don't care that I'm a big loser" smile on his face. I'm not buyin' it. ;-)



Somehow throughout the course of the evening Dustin called me a genius, then later on said that I was his friend. (Nevermind the circumstances surrounding the statment...) I was astonished at both admissions and was going to try to get them in writing with his signature attached but he quickly withdrew them when I was unable to spell "genius." HA! It did come to me about 10 minutes later, but it hardly took the embarassment away. ~sigh~ Anyway, I think the party broke up at about 1:30 and Daniel finally took his poor, exhausted wife home! I'm so glad they came, but I know Cathy was sooooo tired! I felt bad for her.

Thursday was our last day at the Hays' house. I got everything all packed up and ready to go and we pretty well just sat around and enjoyed the rest of the day. Brother Dustin ended up having most of the day off from work, so we sat down in the afternoon and finished the game of I Buy that we'd begun earlier in the week. I won. More importantly, somebody else lost. Yet again. I wonder if I'll ever tire of the same old thing happening time after time after time... Nah! :-)

All week long we had a girl van (ours) and a guy van (Hays') for going to church (not sure it was a good idea after the tragic incident of Monday night!), so we stuck to the pattern last night when we headed to Salida for service. That means I had Jamey and Katie and Aleah (who I've had SO much fun with this week--that girl is a nut!) and little Lillie with me for the drive over there. It was so great. The more I'm around Jamey the more I just really, really like her! It was great to have a couple of hours to just chat. I think we ought to do this more often. Maybe on those trips when our husbands are exchanging yard work for each other, right, Jamey?! :-)

The trip to Salida was pretty uneventful for most of us, but James says he saw a BEAR near Coaldale. Can you believe that?! It was crossing the river. I would have LOVED to have seen a moose AND a bear on our big Colorado trip... Still, it's cool that somebody did. :-)

The service in Salida was really, really good and I was so blessed by Brother Ammons' message once more. This time he preached about the greatest singer in the world and made certain we knew that it was Jesus, not Elvis. :-) He spoke about singing in the midst of our troubles and trials just as David, the great Psalmist, sang songs to the Lord throughout his deepest, darkest trials, and how Paul and Silas sang praises at midnight in the midst of the prison. The most poignant to me, however, was when he pointed out that Jesus sang a hymn with His disciples after the Last Supper and just before He was betrayed. And Jesus, of course, knew what was about to happen, but still sang a song to God in anticipation of it! Wow! Brother Ammons brought out different passages revealing that Jesus wants to join in song with us--it was something I'd never thought of before and was so very blessed by.

We had two visitors from the Elders' church come join us about half way through the sermon and they both seemed to really, really enjoy it. If you think of it, please say a prayer for that Salida church. Most everybody has moved away from there, leaving an almost empty building and no pastor. James feels strongly that the work is not done there--that there are souls hungry for the truth in that area--but we really need God to work a miracle (or a few!) to see the work growing and thriving there again. HE IS ABLE.

After the service we said our final goodbyes to Brother Ammons and the Hays, then went over to Sister Flora's house. We had a really nice visit with her over some Ramen noodles (long story--but it has to do with Joe's love of food (particularly Ramen) and Sister Flora's love of children and of making them happy!), then stayed in her spare room that night. She is such a neat lady. Such a loving and selfless person, always using up all of her strength and energy serving other people. We had a wonderful visit with her and were so thankful for the opportunity to be with her.

After a nice breakfast ala Sister Flora, we finally hit the road today and headed south. Such a bittersweet day! I love being HOME again. My very own nice, comfortable home--where I belong. But I hate it that we had to leave all of the PEOPLE behind in order to come here! Ha! The only real consolation is that we've got Camp and Convention coming up in just a few weeks. In fact, when we got home tonight I got out a notebook and started making a list of everything I need to do between now and then. All I can say is I'm real glad I didn't start making this list while we were on our trip or I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun! Ha! I started to feel a wee bit panicked as the list just kept growing and growing and growing... But it's all good. I am more excited about Camp this year than I have been in a long time. Can't figure out what the difference is (I've always LOVED Camp), but I just feel extra excited this time--can't wait! Wa-Hoo!!! :-)

Okay, before I go, here's one last picture. It's the one we had made in Estes Park. I love it! :-)