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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Into Each Life a Little Rain Must Fall

From Sep. 2010 - Damage to House


We woke up Saturday moment to a "shower" in our basement. A pipe had burst in the half-bath on the main floor while we slept and was flooding the floor below. There was about an inch of water on the basement carpet and the ceiling had collapsed in several places:

From Sep. 2010 - Damage to House


From Sep. 2010 - Damage to House


I started to cry when I saw the damage, but then somehow I just started to laugh. "When it rains, it pours" was all I could think of. Terry and I woke up the kids, and we had the basement room emptied in about an hour and started trying to ShopVac the carpet. Now, five days later, the old ceiling has been removed, the carpet pad has been pulled up and discarded, the carpet is dry, and best of all - the mildew smell is gone! Terry is a great do-it-yourselfer, so we may even come out ahead when the insurance pays up!

This is just another opportunity to ponder Matthew 6:19-21:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

This is the verse that kept coming to mind when I accidentally erased my computer hard drive in June and then dropped my external hard drive (with all the back-up data) just a few weeks later. I realized that so much of the treasures of my life are stored in photos, video, and documents of various kinds. These things are important, but I realized that I had too much of my time and effort stored in something that was not eternal. It was a good reality check.

The College Search

Rebecca has started looking for colleges, or rather they have started looking for her. She is getting phone calls, letters, and emails every day. Our favorite has been the solicitation she got from the University of Oregon. They mailed her an "O" decal and encouraged her to take a picture of herself at a Tennessee landmark with the Oregon "O". I thought it was a pretty clever attention getter and was even funnier because it came just a few days before Tennessee was to play Oregon (and after the game, it really wasn't funny anymore).

Anyway, right now Rebecca is mostly interested in Milligan College because it's a good, Christian, liberal arts school that is only twenty minutes from our house. They also give great scholarships so that it won't cost much more than a state school.

But another school in Tennessee, Bryan College, has already offered her a full scholarship - tuition, room and board, the works! We went to visit it on Labor Day.

Bryan is in Dayton, Tennessee. It's a very small town which is famous for the Scopes Monkey Trial that was held at the courthouse.

From Bryan College


William Jennings Bryan tried that case and died just five days after it ended. The college was his vision and was named after him. They had quotes from Bryan all over the campus, and I liked the one in the library that said "The incomparable benefit of the valuable experience of others."

From Bryan College


From Bryan College


From Bryan College