It’s really fun having a 2 1/2 year old at Christmas. It’s really fun having a 2 1/2 year old, period. We’ve been decorating our house for Christmas, and Charlie has done a little decorating of his own. Charlie is a big fan of the movie Cars, and he also love stickers. He combined his love for stickers, Cars, and baby Jesus a couple of nights ago. I was walking by one of Charlie’s manger scenes, and discovered he had decorated it with Cars stickers. My favorite part is that he had placed a big sticker that said EXECELLENT on top top of baby Jesus. I think he was trying to quote Phil. 4:8- “If anything is excellent, think about such things.” Amen Charlie! Jesus is excellent indeed.
Happy Thankgiving everybody! It’s almost time for turkey, but this morning Charlie and I went into the woods around the cabin and took some pictures. I hope you enjoy Charlie’s Thanksgiving morning pictures!
Hey everybody! Thanks for all the excitement you’ve shard with us regarding baby Cottle #2. Keep those prayers coming! Charlie has recorded a Thanksgiving recital for you. It includes the alphabet song, the theme song for the Franklin The Turtle cartoon, Humpty Dumpty, and some Thaksgiving wishes. I hope yall have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow. Don’t forget to thank THE ONE from whom every perfect gift comes from.
Katie are I are excited to announce that Baby Cottle #2 is on the way! Katie is now 10 weeks pregnant. The due date for the baby is June 23. The really crazy thing is that before we found out, Charlie seemed to know. He told us that “baby sister” was coming on Friday. That Friday, I told Katie to take a pregnancy test to satisfy Charlie, and low and behold she was pregnant! He keeps telling us it is a baby sister, so I for one believe him! Here is a picture of Katie’s ultrasound from 8 weeks. Keep praying for a healthy pregnancy. Katie’s back has been in a lot of pain, and since she is pregnant there is not much they can do. Thanks for being excited with us and praying with us! Being a dad is the greatest thing ever, and I can’t wait for another precious little one. You can read more about it at Katie’s Blog.
In honor of the UGA vs. Auburn game tomorrow, here is a very fitting song you need to watch. Auburn’s in turmoil, and I personally love it. I never hated Auburn until I moved to LaGrange. We’re only about 30 minutes from Auburn’s “campus” and it’s awful. This song pretty much sums up what going on down in Auburn this year. My beloved DAWGS are gonna roll tomorrow. Mark it down.
I’ve been posting very regularly, but those posts must have been getting lost in cyber space. Just an update on our new service- yesterday was our hiighest attended Sunday yet. We’ve been meeting for about 8 weeks now, and yesterday we had around 540 people. We’ve had 12 people join our church in the past 3 weeks. Wow! God is doing some amazing things right now. If you haven’t come and worshipped with us yet, you need to come soon. If you weren’t there yesterday morning, our set list was: Awesome Is The Lord Most High, Blessed Be Your Name, Everything Glorious, Famous One, How Marvelous, and Jesus Paid It All.
This past Sunday I had the awesome opportunity to speak in our new eleven:eleven contemporary service. I spoke on Matthew 5:10. Besides speaking on being a “hero” by being bold in your faith, I also spoke about the heroes that make up the persecuted church. At the end of the message, I mentioned 3 ways that we can remember the persecuted church and encourage them. I’ve recieved several emails wanting them again. So here they are:
#1) Go to Voice Of The Martyrs and read frequently updated news stories about where/how Christians are beng persecuted globally so that you can pray for them.
#2) Go to Prisoner Alert and write an encouraging note to Christians (mainly pastors) who are in jail for thei faith. This website will even translate the encouraging notes and BIble verses into their native tongue.
#3) Read some books like Wear The Crown and Foxe’s Voice Of The Martyrs and study about the incredibly bold and inspirational witness of Christian martyrs.
I know I’ve been REALLY slack on the blog lately, but you know how busy life gets. Anyways, I just wanted to post this picture online. We took Charlie on a Pirate Ship Cruise the other night, and this sticker was posted on one of the windows. It was just too good not to post….
I can’t believe it, but our launch date for the new service is upon us! Here’s the schedule we’re looking at: On September 7, we’ll have a volunteer orientation after church. We’ll feed everybody, see where they want to plug in, and show them what to do. On September 14, we’ll have a “dress rehearsal” type service in the gym. We’ll do a full worship set, Dr. Baxter will preach, etc. We just want to make sure we have one week to do a test run. September 21 will be our official kick off date. I hope September 21 is the date that FBC LaGrange starts rocking our community!
I wanted to post some pictures of what’s going on in the gym. These were taken from my camera phone, so they’re not the greatest. But you can at least see what is happening. The audio/visual installation people will be back Wednesday to finish the job, so check my blog this week. I will post more pictures as they work.
Here’s the gym before anything was done.
Here a picture of the drape truss. A black drape will run behind the stage to give it less of a “gym” feel and also allow our production team to move back and forth without being seen. Also, the front of the drape will be white and we can use our LED lights to change colors for atmosphere purposes.
Here’s a picture looking towards where the front of the stage will be. It’s kind of hard to see everything, but from the ceiling, A LOT of eqipment has already been flown (hung). We’ve already got 3 projectors, 3 widescreen format screens, 4 speakers, 2 subwoofers, and 2 sets of ellipsoidal lights (12 total lights). They’ve still got to hang the LED lights, and the house lighting.
I’ve known for a while that Charlie is musical. (Seriously, he loves music. He especially gravitates towards guitar and drums.) But today, God sent me a sign that he would be the next big rocker. He’s done some re-styling to his hair. You know, the rock star hair. Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree where musical tastes are concerned. Apparently, Charlie has styled his hair in the genre of 80’s glam bands. I LOVE 80’s rock, and I attached pictures of Charlie’s new hair do and a picture of 80’s hair band Whitesnake. (If you are not a purveyor of fine 80’s music, they recorded Here I Go Again On My Own). See any similarities?
Just an update on our new service- yesterday was our hiighest attended Sunday yet. We’ve been meeting for about 8 weeks now, and yesterday we had around 540 people. We’ve had 12 people join our church in the past 3 weeks. Wow! God is doing some amazing things right now. If you haven’t come and worshipped with us yet, you need to come soon. If you weren’t there yesterday morning, our set list was: Awesome Is The Lord Most High, Blessed Be Your Name, Everything Glorious, Famous One, How Marvelous, and Jesus Paid It All.
