Sorry....

I'm sorry everyone for not being a better blogger. I ought to be kicked out of the club ( if I was ever in it in the first place..) All I can do is humbly express my sincere apologies and hope to do better next time before I make you totally forget there was anything to be forgiven with my wonderful news!!!!! I have been incredibly busy lately. My Mammaw is making Easter eggs to sell for church and I am being taught how. Then of course we have to sell them. We went to S.C. over the weekend two weeks ago for my cousins baby shower. Number 1 for my cousin David ,the former marine, and his wife Katie. They are so excited! While we were there we were able to visit the Midway Church. It was so nice to walk into that Church and feel the love you always feel wherever you go in the Church. The people there are very friendly. I'm so glad we have somewhere to go when we visit family! Ok now for the good news..... We had another awesome service. God is so good! In those two services we had 1 saved, 3 sanctified, and 1 filled with the Holy Ghost. We just had our District Convention Saturday which was very good. The Sandys came and really enjoyed it. Bro. Tony stayed up praying all night Saturday and, drumroll please, Sunday morning they, the whole family, joined the Church! We have our 10% increase! Not to mention, we also have a 50% increase in our VLB band! That's right Farmville now has 12 VLB's! Tonya and T.J. and Autumn and Jennifer. Two were gleaners that turned 12 this year but the other two are new! Yeah! Wow I caught you guys up fast.... I guess that's it. Goodbye!

"O what singing, O what shouting..."

The observation has been made that every time the Baldwins go to Florida we have an awesome service the Sunday after we get back. It's only happened twice but it seems to be true. Sunday morning we came back from the nursing home and as soon as you opened the door you could hear shouting and singing. It was great. Sunday School was evidently not even dismissed. We have a very annointed teacher in our adult sunday school class and we've really really been enjoying our lessons this quarter. Anyway she was teaching and then she started preaching and God started moving and there was a message and interpretation given and the Holy Spirit started convicting some of the folks that come all the time but aren't saved. One of our member's daughters who was raised in the church but hasn't been serving God for years was saved. She was so happy she was just laughing and crying and saying, "Bro. Frank I'm back!" It was great! I mean we really had a time. We even had a Victory March. It reminds me of that song heaven's jubilee. I remember some of our older members testified saying it's like old times! Now for a cute kid story as I promised.... The first night we were at the Cox's, Ruthie and Mary-Fran were fighting over who was going to sleep with me. Mary-Fran said, "I'm gonna sleep with you" so I said, "who's gonna sleep with Bethany?" She said, "Ruthie can." Ruthie interjects at this point, "No I'm gonna sleep with Charity!" Sister Betsy says, "Mary-Frances why don't you want to sleep with Bethany?" Mary-Fran replies, " I wanna sleep with Charity cause Charity suffereth long and is kind." That was their memory verse for that week and let me tell you I got the full effect of it! The guys are all like "Yes! we can do anything we want to to Charity and she won't do anything about it cause she suffers long and is kind!" I'm sure there are lots of other stories I just can't remember all the details. Oh yeah Caleb came to me when I was changing Abby's diaper and said, "Did you know, I didn't know this, but did you know that when Abby was born she was born with finger nails and toe nails?!" I thought that was hilarious he is right though it is wonderful that God creates babies with all their finger nails and toe nails! O that we could see through eyes of wonder like little children do. They can always see there is a Creator because their eyes behold the wonder of the creation! No wonder Jesus said of such are the kingdom of heaven! Well I'll write more later. Beth is wanting to use the phone.

Home Again

I am home in good ol' Virginy. Florida was great and we would have loved to stay longer. However, we have certain responsibilities at church this Sunday which we need to complete so we had to leave, amid much lamentation, and come home. March is World Mission Month and we have to get started on our missions drive. March also happens to be when our young people are responsible to hold Sunday services at the local Nursing Home. Anyway, we had a great time with the Cox's. We arrived just after 7:00 Thursday night and said our hello's and the next thing I knew I was hiding in a bush telling Francie to be quiet or the big boys would find us. War had broken out. I really don't think it was quite fair. Zach, Beau, Josh, and Daniel were on one team and Micah, Nate, Caleb, Noah, Bethany, Francie, and I were the other team. We had the bigger team but there were a couple of problems. Beth and Francie would scream at the top of their lungs whenever we saw the big boys which directed their attention to us, Caleb talked the entire time we were hiding, and when Noah got caught he would show them where we were hiding. Thus it was really Micah, Nathan, and I against the big boys. It was still pretty fun and the 3 of us made a deal that we would never give up. We ended in a truce. We went to St. Augustine the next day and had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit. We went to the Spanish Quarter, Fort Matanzez, and The Old Florida Museum. Saturday we rested up and Sunday there was a dinner and singing at the Palatka Church. After the dinner we went to the hospital and visited a couple of the members. That evening it was VLB service. We played a Bible Trivia game, we won by the way, and then Beau had a short devotional and alter call. I really enjoyed Beau's devotional he had a great visual aid. Zach, Beau, Josh, and I learned Amazing Grace on our respective instruments and played together. It was a lot of fun. I taught all the Cox kids, except for Abby, the Bright Arrow Song. Beau and Josh weren't too keen about it but they learned it anyway. The rest of our visit was filled with Basketball, War, Spotlight, Dutch Blitz, and lots of talking, laughing, and joking. We also made one more trip to St. Augustine and visited the Castillo De San Marcos. That was very interesting. We also visited a quiet and deserted strip of the beach and played Frisbee, built sand castles, and got our feet wet. Friday was a sad and dreary day. It was raining and that made everyone feel even more gloomy. The older kids had discussed the possibility of pulling out a spark plug or something similar to that but we decided we would get in big trouble so we were good and didn't do anything. That's about it except for details and other things that make up our inside jokes. We finally arrived home early this morning. In other news Hailey's test results have come back and she tested negative for Leukemia and everything else they tested her for. Praise the Lord! She is still having all the symptoms that I mentioned before and has now been running a Temp. for almost a month. Please keep her in your prayers. The doctors have no idea what this is and it is stressful for Vanessa and Jacob. Pray for them also that the Lord would give them perfect peace and comfort in this trial.