{"id":5272,"date":"2018-03-05T02:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T02:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5272"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:28","slug":"a-morning-in-limonade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5272","title":{"rendered":"A MORNING IN LIMONADE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shortly after Christmas, I got a visit from a local pastor whom, I confess, I didn&#8217;t know very well, but he works with our church planting program, Every Community for Christ.\u00a0 Pastor Israel invited me to preach at his church in Limonade on March 4th.Now, March 4th seemed like a long, long time away and there was nothing on my calendar for that day, so I said, &#8220;I&#8217;d love to!&#8221;Over the last two weeks, Pastor Israel messaged me every few days on Facebook to say, &#8220;Don&#8217;t forget about March 4th!&#8221; But when the weekend finally arrived, I found a few conflicts. For one thing, Melissa&#8217;s friend was visiting from Michigan with her daughter and plans had been made to spend some time together at the beach. This put me in search of alternate transportation to get me to Limonade.So, much of yesterday was spent going through plans A to E with nothing to show late in the evening. At one point Melissa asked me, &#8220;Why do you agree to do these things?&#8221; I was beginning to wonder myself &#8230;Melissa was willing to sacrifice her trip to the beach, but I knew many others were counting on her to drive and she was really looking forward to it. After I had exhausted Option E, Melissa (the smart one) had the brainstorm of asking our friends at Emmaus Seminary if we could borrow <i>their<\/i> truck.They were graciously willing to loan it for the day but that did mean that my Sunday morning started at 7:00 am as a passenger on the back of Mikken&#8217;s motorcycle to retrieve the vehicle.\u00a0Actually, I admit, a pretty fun start to the day &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180304_071105-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180304_111804-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As always, Mikken did a wonderful job as translator.\u00a0 I preached on Romans 12:1 &#8211; &#8220;present your body as a living sacrifice&#8221; and the congregation was very receptive.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/received_10215022537498142-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1152\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180304_095806-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1067\" height=\"1600\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/received_1590159931076347-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180304_111257-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1361\" height=\"1021\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180304_173034-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Melissa helping Sarah, a friend, and Megan get situated on a moto to head back to Children of the Promise for the night.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shortly after Christmas, I got a visit from a local pastor whom, I confess, I didn&#8217;t know very well, but he works with our church planting program, Every Community for Christ.\u00a0 Pastor Israel invited me to preach at his church in Limonade on March 4th.Now, March 4th seemed like a long, long time away and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5285,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272\/revisions\/5285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}