Two weeks ago today we were getting back from Troy, Illinois and the Fire Up Conference there. The conference ran from Friday night to Sunday noon. My part officially was to lead a seminar on Saturday afternoon, perform my Kermit the Frog impression accompanied by Tim Price on banjo after dinner on Saturday and then I got the chance to preach three services on Sunday morning.Tim’s dad is the pastor of the church and has been there since 1988. I believe that is some kind of record for a United Methodist Church! As the church has grown spiritually under his leadership, the church’s facility has grown physically as well. The original sanctuary is now dwarfed by all the additions. I got to preach to the regular Sunday morning crowd while the Fire Up Conference was wrapping up in the gym. Tim’s keynote speaker for the conference was an amazing preacher from New York named Tom Richter. I don’t know much about the guy, but he sure can hold a crowd’s attention. He is one of those rare preachers who can be both funny and deep at the same time. And although he was speaking to 300 teenagers, he had full attention from Dats, The Drama Queen (AKA Belle) and Ida too. Meanwhile, The Princess got very attached to Tim’s six year old daughter, Ruby. And, apparently, Ruby knows me as “Old Steve Gross”. During father/daughter time, Tim likes to tell “Old Steve Gross stories” to Ruby. Some of them are true and some are made up. I imagine that even the true ones are mostly fiction. I’ve got one more story to share from our weekend in Troy, but I want to devote an entire post to it, so for now I will post some more pictures:
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