re-entry

Apologies for the week without entries....we began early on Monday morning, a week ago, driving to Atlanta, where I taped two sermons with Peter Wallace of Day One. While in Atlanta we saw the Braves....they lost. It is odd that the United Methodist Church moved the 2012 General Conference from Richmond (where the minor league Braves play) to Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida. Name one of the two best-known Florida athletic teams? The Florida State Seminoles (right Skip?)...And I guess Atlanta would never have been an option...

The next morning we drove to Lake Junaluska, through the beautiful foothills of North Georgia. We stopped for lunch at a real "hole in the wall" in Franklin, North Carolina...but it was good! I remembered hiking in the Wayah Bald area near Franklin when I was in college. We then arrived at Junaluska an hour later. That night (Tuesday) we had a meal with about 80 of our closest friends....a loosely configured group of Methodists, pastors, district superintendents, their spouses, etc., at the Jarrett House in Dillsboro, near Sylva and Cullowhee. It is an annual gathering that has no agenda other than catching up with each other...and its an open group....let me know if you want to attend next year. The next day Annual Conference would commence. I began the day, as I usually do, by walking around the lake. It is a very peaceful 2.5 mile exercise, and it is therapeutic for me.

In the meantime, our younger daughter Abby is now a senior in high school, offficially. She told me that she already has senioritis!

I will post more about the annual conference later. For now, I am catching up on the small mountain of email that awaited me in Charlotte. Thanks again for your patience, and for stopping by.