Every year Trinity Christian School has a retreat for the high school. They have a spiritually minded speaker, junk snacks, late cabin discussions, and games. Sometime during the retreat they play a game called Gestapo. To my understanding, the teachers that have the privilege of chaperoning are in control of the game and the clues to where people are hidden. And, I think, they play in the dark, so it is kinda spooky.

This is my son’s video to promote the high school retreat, especially the Gestapo game, but it doesn’t really show how the real game is played. The video is all about hype. It was shown in high school assembly and got lots of laughs. Take two and a half minutes and enjoy. (What I want to know is how he gets teachers to do this stuff!! He filmed this before school even started by calling teachers at home and asking them to participate.)

Because my youtube movie of Covenant Fellowship’s Neighborhood Clean Up Day didn’t work, I am posting pics instead. There are a few more pics in my album than in this post.Our congregation had a Neighborhood Clean Up last year with the help of our visiting RP Mission team, but since it was the first time, finished only a half dozen properties.

This year, the mission team got the plywood from the borough early (72 sheets donated!) and measured windows, cut boards and painted them before the work day. In the end, over a dozen properties were done. One encouraging note was that six people from the community–unrelated to the congregation–came out to help. Also, local businesses donated materials and drinks for the workers.

In addition to boarding up vacant houses, brush was cleared and trash picked up. In the business district a few blocks away, a team pulled weeds in front of the storefronts, and hauled them away in wheel barrows.

60% of the properties near our church are abandoned. It is sad, but there are still precious families living here, trying to keep their kids safe. My kids live several blocks away and sometimes walk these streets.

I have pics of people working, but some of the simple before-and-afters of the properties tell the story well. Imagine if you lived here, how much better you might feel. I am so thankful that God’s people care enough to show this kindness to a rough spot.
||||||  lynard

When pictures of the author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves surfaced, showing Lynne Truss fixing the punctuation in the Two Weeks’ Notice movie marquis, I was tempted to carry whiteout and a Sharpie in my purse. It would be fun to help the world communicate better. I mean, hey, I make typos, too, and I appreciate it when people help me clean up my words. How noble it would be to help others that make mistakes and errors of ignorance!

It seems that I was not the only one inspired to good deeds. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson challenged the country to the 2008 Typo Hunt Across America, sponsored by TEAL (Typo Eradication Advancement League):

Their travels came to an untimely end when they decided to “fix” a sign that was a historic landmark in the Grand Canyon. Documenting their permanent marker and whiteout repair on their website, Deck and Herson led federal prosecutors right to them, and they were charged for vandalizing government property. They pled guilty, and they were fined to pay for the restoration of the sign. (Will they fix the typo?)

The worst is that they are banned from national parks for a year! That is traumatic. I love national parks. I think I’ll keep my Sharpie in my purse.

|||||| lynard

At first blush, we have a shot of a lovely girl in Nashville.

But if we look closer we see the casualness of Nashville tourism.

A romantic carriage ride with a modern, uh, cowboy and his German Shepherd.

||||||  lynard

You have to enjoy a passionate, blissful clinch at the end of a marriage ceremony. Thanks, Ben and Kara!

||||||  lynard

Here is the sign that I mentioned in my last post. Really, what does it mean?

||||||  lynard

We just returned from a five-day road trip. The ultimate goal was a family wedding, which was a huge success. I’ll blog more about that later.

I think we put about 2,000 miles on the old mini-van. It had 156,000+ miles when we left. Now the odometer says 158,330. We stayed in cool and wild places, ate adventuresome food, and met colorful people.

Some of my favorite experiences were the signs. There were towns like Ellijay and Dahlonega in Georgia, and streets with the name “Grizzle” in them.

My family enjoyed taking notice of signs that were odd or incorrect. At one of our hotels, the large banner outside read, FREE “HOT” BREAKFAST. Why “hot” was in quotation marks, we could not discern. The temperature of breakfast was very warm. Perhaps that breakfast offered some culturally popular aspect that we could not understand. It was just biscuits and gravy, sausage and eggs… I may have a picture of that sign to post later.

Here is another favorite. I cannot tell you the times I would like to have purchased a B-flat sustained seventh chord, but it was NOT in the box…

Sorry, I took the picture with my meager cell phone. The box reads “Used Guitar Chords” and inside are, well, cords, of various types.

||||||  lynard

My father worked for American Motors Cars when I was born. That means we drove around in a Nash, a Rambler, a Matador, and an Ambassador. When I took my driver’s test, I borrowed a family friend’s blue Gremlin with a white stripe, and when I got married, I drove away in a aqua Pacer. The demise of AMC was no big deal to some, but to me, it was the end of an era.

I found this picture of a model of the Rambler station wagon that we owned, and colorized it (OK, sloppily) to match my memory. Yes, I *was* going for a pearly pink roof. It was plum colored with a pearlized roof. Odd, I know. We drove to Florida from Pennsylvania in this car, stopping only to put mosquito netting on the windows so we could nap with the windows down. The front seat’s back was one piece and folded back, and I had to sleep on that part. I kept rolling into my cousin Terry who was sleeping on the seat under the steering wheel.

The best thing about station wagons in the 60s and 70s was not sleeping when the car was parked, though. It was sleeping in the cargo area while the car hummed and vibrated over miles of highway. The rhythms would rock me to sleep like a baby.

I thought of this post when I read seashull’s post about her friends’ cool car (http://www.xanga.com/seashull/668689340/item.html ) ! Cars are romantic, IMHO. My grandfather, a mechanic of humble means, used to restore antique cars, including Model A’s, but that is another post.

||||||  lynard