Dad Andy Attends Consecration

Last Sunday Andy, along with his neighbors Gayle and Michael Folkerts, went to Covington to be among friends at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd as their Bishop of the Atlanta Diocese consecrated their beautful new sanctuary, baptismal font, lecturn, pulpit, and altar. June, alas, didn't have the opportunity to attend because she and her daughter Becky were on their way home from Florida, having disembarked from their cruise ship earlier in the morning. Since spending more time in Georgia in the past two years, June and Andy have come to appreciate the parish priest, Fr. Tim Graham and many in the congregation. To show our appreciation, Andy commissioned the two icons that have been installed in the narthex. If you come to visit June and Andy in Georgia and are with them on a Wednesday or Sunday (when the Eucharist is offered), you'll be invited to come and see the church. To see more of the consecration, visit the slideshow!

I got to meet Charlie Seabrook!

While at the Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center this morning (see the previous posting), someone rather famous among the birding community showed up, a quietly impressive gentleman: Charlie Seabrook, well-known columnist for the Atlantic Journal Constitution. Charlie is the national environmental reporter, the man behind the popular "Wild Georgia" column. His newspaper stories about Georgia's mining industry won the Investigative Reporters and Editors "Best Story of the Year aware in 1994. In 2001 the State of Georgia gave him the R. L. "Rock" Howard Award, its highest conservation prize. Just to stand next to this great man and have him put his arm on my shoulder was a real sign of his marvelous generosity. Let's hope Georgia has many more like Charlie!

If you'd like to read one of his latest columns, visit "Got spring fever? Try a nature walk," a good sampling of the kind of writing Charlie does so well.

A Week Not So Alone

While June and her daughter Becky are on a Caribbean cruise this week, I not able to have gone to Haiti (see the prior post), have spent a good part of this week by myself at the lakehouse. Well, not always by myself. This morning I went to the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center for a "Spring Migratory Birk Walk" with Tim Keyes (on the right) as our ornithologist. It was just great; we saw or heard sixty-six different kinds of birds, including a summer tanager, a kingfisher, and an osprey catching a braem on the wing. If that weren't enough, I got to meet Rusty Pritchard, the editor of Creation Care: A Christian Environmental Quartery, to which I have subscribed for several yeares. Rustry is on the left with his two boys, Angus and Euan. In the Spring 2006 issue, Tim has written "It's a Frog's Life: The songs of frogs are an early promise of spring." Couldn't have prayed for a nicer day!

I've placed a link to Creation Care at my other blog, Praying Daily.

Katie comes to the lake!

As many of you may already know, my trip to Haiti, originally scheduled for April 10-17, was cancelled because Christian Flights International thought it too risky to go right now. During the past two weeks, there has been considerable civil unrest throughout the island, so much so that the pilots working for Missionary Air Flights (who fly us into the hinterland near Ranquitte) have decided it's too dangerous to land their planes in certain areas, including the grassfield landing at Pignon. Those of us who were planning to go (Lutheran Pastors Ron Luckey and Barry Neese, along with Dr. Greg McMorrow) will try again in July or August. So that she would not be along at the lake while I was supposed to be gone, June had made arrangements for her daughter Becky and herself to take a week-long cruise in the Caribbean. The two of them "set sail" yesterday. Not expecting me to be at the lakehouse, Lisa, Katie, and Tim had planned to spend the weekend in Georgia and decided to come even though I would still be tromping around the house. I'm so glad they came! We did a bit of boating, tippled a small bottle wine, chatted lots, washed diapers, stir-fried veggies on the grill and pan-fried some salmon. Just a great time! On Sunday Katie got a wee bit ill, throwing up twice, but by this morning she was back to her eight-month self, all smiles, except for when Lisa tried to take a picture of her on my shoulders. She just wouldn't "mug-it-up." She really is something! And I love her!

For more information about Haiti, visit my other blog: http://www.prayingdaily.blogspot.com/.