Wow, what a day.
Woke up at 6:30 this morning, headed to the office by 7:15 and was on the road with 7 Junior Highers heading towards Fairmount by 8.

I left Fairmount after lunch time and came back here to the office to begin the “I’m back from vacation and camp” stuff.

My office looks as though it has been inhabited by gypsies (sorry to any gypsies who may read this!)

Leaving for supper now and then accountability meeting!

This morning Jess and I had the opportunity to visit the Nappanee Missionary Church on our final day of vacation. This church is about 50-minutes away from our home in Winona Lake, and the drive there was filled with the Amish scenery I have grown to love!

The service was great – we went to the “Connections” service – which meets in the gym. It’s mainly a youth and young adult service with modern worship songs – after the praise and worship time, they play a video of the Senior Pastor’s – Pastor Dave Engbrecht – sermon from the 8:30AM service! Very interesting way to hold a “contemporary” worship service!

The band was great, the atmosphere was “young adult-ish” with coffee and refreshments available as you walked in the door.

We were greeted VERY warmly when we first walked into Nappanee Missionary church – and were given directions to the “Connections” service in the gym without hesitation – it felt good, again to be “visitors”!

Pastor Dave spoke openly this morning about sexuality and the church’s responsibility of talking openly about how God intended sex to be for his people – an act that should only take place between a man and woman who have taken the covenant of marriage upon themselves. He related the covenant of marriage to the covenant God has with Israel – a neat perspective that I am sure I’ve heard, but heard in a new way today.

Following the service, we met up with Craig Helfrich – who now attends Nappanee Missionary, and he gave us a tour of the facility and joined us for lunch in Goshen at the Backyard Barbeque! It was his first time and he was impressed!

After a leisurely meal, we headed back home for the afternoon. On the way, just outside of Goshen, we saw a car on the side of the road that was engulfed in smoke – with fire dripping from the engine compartment onto the road. We approached cautiously as a number of men guided us past and maintained a safe distance from the flaming car. Of course I took a picture:

Tomorrow I will head to the office just after 7AM. I will pick up 7 Junior Highers and drive them down to Fairmount Camp where they will spend the next week at Junior High Camp. And then it’s back to the office! I’m looking forward to getting back to the grind of things!

As I type this, I am sitting comfortably on my own couch in apartment 20 here in Winona Lake. I’m watching a John Mayer concert on PBS and almost ready to call it a day and head to bed.

Before heading to sleep – I needed to publicly thank my buddy Kory Pence for an amazing gift he gave us this week – his house as a place to stay during our week’s vacation in Indianapolis. Without Kory, Jess and I would’ve had the most boring vacation sitting in our little apartment here in Winona Lake!

THANKS KORY.

Before we left this afternoon, we shared one more meal with Kory and enjoyed visiting some folks at Wesleyan Headquarters. I also took care of some Wesleyan Pension Fund business by changing my beneficiary from my parents to my wife – so now, if I died, my wonderful wife would get the money I’ve been putting aside for the past 3 years I’ve been ministering in the Wesleyan church! Isn’t she lucky? (sorry Mom and Dad!)

Also – on one of our numerous trips up and down the interstate this week, we noticed that I-69 now has a 70 MPH speed limit – UP from the usual 65 that has been the “state-standard” until this week! Of course I risked our lives and snapped a photo of the speed limit signage!

Please give me an opportunity to share some more about the Body of Christ…

Apparently, a post I made a few days ago after visiting another local Warsaw church while on vacation has caused some questions from some stevansheets.com visitors.

I would like to take an opportunity to clarify a few things about that post:

First, I love my church – maybe I should have started that post a few days ago with that same statement! I absolutely love the part of the Body of Christ that I am currently a member of and on staff at! Warsaw Wesleyan Church is an amazing body of believers, an amazingly loving body, and a great church for a freshman minister like myself to have his first years of ministry at! I absolutely admire the church that I am a part of!

Second, I acknowledge that the Body of Christ is larger than Warsaw Wesleyan – even larger than the Wesleyan denomination for that matter. That is what I was trying to acknowledge in last week’s post. I wanted to admire the diversity of the Body of Christ – realizing how God is worshiped in various venues – hopefully all with the main purpose of that – Worship! I did NOT intend to offend or diminish anything about the church I currently call “home”!

Third, I appreciate those of you who commented after last Sunday’s post – thank you for sharing your thoughts on what you read from my heart. I would also ask ANYONE who may read something they either agree with or disagree to PLEASE feel free to bring to my attention ANYTHING that may cause you to question my motives or cause you to ask, “what in the WORLD is he talking about?!” I always want to live a life of honesty and be constantly ready to dialogue out-loud on anything I may post about here on my personal website!

Finally, thank YOU – stevansheets.com readers for doing what you do best – READING! Keep on reading, keep on challenging me, keep on dialoguing – both in the comment-section and in-person! That’s what this site is for!

What a great day we had today. While Kory was busy working at Wesleyan HQ, Jess and I headed back downtown to enjoy the White River State Park – mainly the canal portion of the park. It was a beautiful day to walk the entire 10 and a half blocks of the canal walkway. We stopped and ate lunch at Subway and ate right on the water! Beautiful! After lunch we finished our walk and headed back north to the Castleton Square Mall where we enjoyed the air conditioning thoroughly.

While at the mall, we bumped into David Zigler – on of the Brothers and current Indianapolis pastor! It was great visiting with him for a while before heading to Starbucks to fulfill a promise I made to my wonderful wife. More pictures here.

After Starbucks, we headed to Brad and Heidi LeRoy’s home where we had a wonderful 2-hour visit!

We enjoyed getting to know their children – Logan and Lexa very much! I worked with Brad in the Youth Department as an intern when I first finished at Indiana Wesleyan and he and Heidi have continued to be great friends ever since. They are currently pastoring at the Crux church here in Indianapolis – where I used to attend when I lived here! More pictures of the LeRoy family here.

After our visit with the LeRoys, Jess and I came back to pick Kory up for dinner at Charlestons – a favorite restaurant of mine here in Indy!