well, i’ll blame the busy-ness of the summer on the lack of posts. there has been a lot going on in the bowden world.

first, the prayer request. about 2 weeks ago dana’s dad was diagnosed with lymphoma. he has a rather large mass in his abdomen and pelvis and small mass in his neck. he started chemo today and this should run 6-8 months. i think there is a 50/50 chance of beating it. tack this onto a recent move from nashville (where they lived 30 years) to atlanta. dana’s mom and dad are dealing with a lot.

second, we are in the market for a new house. i won’t go into it all here, but through random circumstances a lady made an offer we couldn’t refuse on our house and we took it. we have to be out by sept. 28. we’ll take boxes if you have spares!

kaitlyn has turned one and also started walking and hannah is getting ready for school. you can see that dana has her hands full.

as you can see there is lots going on. last night i posted new pics to the photo gallery. they include red river, kaitlyn’s birthday, and kaitlyn’s presentation to the church yesterday. enjoy!

random thought of the day while walking - if a 1.5 foot tall plant is growing out of your gutter, it might be time to clean them out!

some of you may have seen this last night on KWTX:
KWTX Clip

well, i am somewhat ashamed that he is my across the street neighbor. i will say that both the man and his sister were recluses, and barely acknowledged anyone.

well, after 2+ long years of meetings and travels, the pastor search at CABC is over. (well, depending on the vote, but my part is over. if, heaven forbid, the vote is negative, they will be finding a new committee!)

after logging countless miles and hours, we merely traveled down ih-35 30 mins to salado to find God’s man, Brian Dunks. you can find out more on CABC’s Pastor Search page.

it was definitely a learning experience for us all, but we could see God’s hand all the way through. we received many good names of good preachers and good pastors, but God only pointed to one. if you had told me 2 years ago that we would take only one vote and that it would be unanimous, i would have laughed. but God, as only He can do, pulled a very diverse committee together early and encouraged us greatly. we met often, argued very little, wandered some, but stayed true to the task and God rewarded us. as always, God’s timing is perfect.

i am very happy with our choice and think that CABC is in store for many more years of serving God to the fullest. thanks to all of you who prayed us through this. unfortunately for Salado, they now begin the journey.

woohoo, i get my Sunday afternoons back! more naps!

a good friend and roommate sent me this video today. he was wishing we could have used it on another one of our roommates. i wish we could have, too. of course, this is a commercial, but there are plenty of youtube videos out there of real people doing this to others. watch out for any that want to play this game with you!

on sunday we sat down around 8 to watch planet earth on the discovery channel. our friend griff had suggested watching it and i had heard good things elsewhere. griff’s main take on it was that it really shows how great God’s creation is and how everythng works together and works well.

it was not long before hannah’s bedtime, so she sat down to watch it with us. this segment was about the great plains on each continent and some of the animals that live there. it was really cool. there were tense moments where our first instinct was to change the channel, but they turned into teaching moments for hannah. the first was a fox who was trying to penetrate a colony of geese. for a while the geese handled him pretty well, but they left their nest vulnerable, so the fox either ran off with eggs or baby goslings. we had to explain that out of survival some animals had to kill other animals to eat them. they handled it well and hannah seemed to understand.

another situation was a night scene at a watering hole in africa. it seems that at night the elephants lose their upper hand. they showed how a pack of lions could attack an elephant, separate it from the herd, and take it down. again, it was not a violent scene, but nature at work. that elephant fed a pack of lions for a week. again, we had to teach hannah about survival of animals. i think she handled it well.

but the best part of the evening was as we were going to bed. you see, hannah sleeps with a stuffed elephant named ellie. ellie has been around since day one when aunt julie gave it to hannah. it is a rare night when we go to bed without ellie. hannah’s comment on this night was, “the lions can’t get my ellie because she is stuffed!” pretty cute! even cuter is that she constantly holds ellie by her tail so as to keep the rest of ellie’s body soft. it works in her mind.

when i was telling griff about this story, we then traveled down the road of what happened in the garden of eden. when everything was in perfect peace and harmony, did the animals eat each other? my initial thought was that God provided food for them through the garden where they didn’t have to attack others. there truly was peace. it wasn’t until the fall of man and the closing of the garden that the animal world became survival of the fittest. anybody have any other input? just a curiousity.