Last Sunday our choir and orchestra under Troy's leadership, along with Gen. Jerry Boykin, reminded us of the freedoms we wake up to every day, the freedoms we take for granted, freedoms like voting, writing a letter to the editor, wearing shorts, shaving, not shaving, going to church, not going to church, driving to Georgia or Kentucky, even to Alabama!

“How's it going?” That's a common greeting on Sunday morning isn't it? Of course, most of the time folks aren't really asking for an up to the minute status report. In fact, if you do launch into a lengthy monologue of all the happenings in your life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, it won't be long before people quit asking!

I’ve recently returned from a short trip to Matamoros, Mexico. A team of twenty-four church members will be serving there the third week of June; I went down to make sure everything was in order. First Baptist Church has had an ongoing relationship with Christian communities in Matamoros for eight years and in that time well over a hundred people from our church have served the Lord just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

At Third Ward Elementary, in my home town, two field trips were always considered the best trips of the entire elementary school experience. In the first or second grade it was the fire hall. In the third or fourth grade it was the newspaper. No one got sick, unless they were really sick, on those field trip days.