Small Towns

This is kind of hard to articulate but Brownwood (pop 20,000) is consider a small town and especially so when you think that the nearest "large" town-Abilene is 70+ miles away and their population is just over 100,000. We are definitely very rural. I sometimes think what it would be like to have remained in the large cities in which we use to live; Denver, Wichita, Birmingham, Ft. Lauderdale, Toledo and of course Sweetwater (to be exempted from the large city threshold.) This morning after getting up at 5:30 AM to prepared and take my son to marching band rehearsal - I scooted off to have our vehicle (pictured) put into the vehicle hospital. As it approaches 170,000 miles this is to be expected but-as we are only one or two payments away from a debt free vehicle I don't mind the occasional several-hundred-dollar repairs that are needed to keep it in good working order.

What I appreciated more than anything this morning was that I took my car in - was greeted by name, and proceeded to have a seat (waiting for Jill to pick me up) then have some great conversation with people that knew me from early childhood and just loved my parents. We talked about the amazing 6" rain during the span of an hour that we received at the lake last night and how good it was for the lake to get those kinds of downpours. Brad walked in and another conversation took place as he wanted to help us get a kid-jumpy-thing for a big event we are having at church later this month - and he doesn't even go to our church. After Jill arrived we headed out to get some breakfast (a very rare occasion for us) at a local non-national-chain restaurant and had additional varying conversations just as above with more people.

There is something really fulfilling today about getting to minister in a small town, knowing people and loving just where God has placed you for His purpose.