Category Archives: Boone FUMC

But I love gatherings. Isn’t it ironic?

August 27, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Lowell has signed on to teach Sunday School for Middle Schoolers. He was recently give a stack of potential books to use as curriculum. One of these books was trying way too hard to be “young” and “hip”.

Not only did they try to make the guy on the cover look like a cartoon version of Randal Graves from Clerks, they gave lessons titles like: “That isn’t fair. What’s up with that?”

There is also a great lesson on the similarities between Jericho and what the United States government did to the Native Americans.

Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Mission Trip, Ruins, Vacation

Cedar Rapids Trip Day 2

July 26, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

On the second day of the trip we headed to a house that hadn’t been touched or mucked. I can’t even describe how this house smelled. Once you opened opened the front door, you could stand across the street and still smell the house, with your mask on.

The strange thing is that despite the smell of the house, you could still smell the fridge on top of the smell of the house.

Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Mission Trip, Ruins, Vacation

Cedar Rapids Trip Day 1

July 25, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

I went over to Cedar Rapids with a group from my church to do a little flood relief. All I can really say is that it was 100 times worse than I imagined. 5,038 houses were effected by the flooding in Cedar Rapids. It will take 4 years of continuous volunteer work to get Cedar Rapids looking anything like it did before the flood.

Below are some pictures from the first day of work.

hold

>We worked on two houses on Thursday. Unfortunately the second house we worked on could not be saved.

Boone FUMC, Event, Lowell

The Right Color Tractor

June 25, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

I believe an important part of being an Iowan is having an opinion on what is the “right color tractor”. I don’t wish to get into this debate. I bring this point up because on Tuesday morning Lowell and I served breakfast with the Meth Men (as Lowell and I now refer to them) for the WHO Tractor ride that was in Boone. I had a look around and took a few photos.

Lowell mentioned to somebody in the kitchen that the Meth Men needed t-shirts. I believe a committee was immediately formed. If you are a Methodist, you should appreciate that story.

Baier, Boone FUMC, Christianity, Jay, Jesse, Life, Nader, Shannon

Sunday

June 22, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

I managed to make it through this Sunday’s Sermon/Interview. I don’t think that I embarrassed myself too much and I think at least a few people were touched or were able to relate to my message.

I don’t want to re-hash the experience, but I would like to thank Jesse, Jay, Shannon, Jason, Carrie and Nader for coming to support me. I also would like to thank Lowell for being there. My family was incredibly supportive as well.

I do want to share a video that Andrea found on the internet and played during the sermon of the song No One Else Knows by Building 429. A song that is very important to me.

Of course if you subscribe to this blog via e-mail or RSS Feed, you will actually have to go to the website to see the article.

Also, even though the video credits Casting Crowns with this song, I assure you that it is Building 429’s song.

Boone FUMC

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

June 16, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

My church, the First United Methodist Church of Boone, is doing a series of sermons this summer where the Pastors interview a member of the congregation. This Sunday is the second sermon of this kind. The lucky person being interviewed is me.

I’m not really sure how or why I got got chosen for this honor, but if you are awake and bored with your church (or maybe you are looking for a church) or just want to see me go down in flames, you can come to our church this Sunday and watch.

There are two worship services.

A traditional worship service at 8:55.
A contemporary worship service at 10:45.

All are welcome to come. After all, our church motto is: “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors”

Boone FUMC, Brog Frog, Formal Portrait, Grandma, Lowell, Music

Sundaze

May 25, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Sunday was an interesting day for me.

I started the day as a greeter for church. There were a couple unique events at church on Sunday. 4 of the churches in the area combined choirs and toured their churches. One of the other 4 churches is the Central Christian Church, so it was a rare Sunday that I got to see my grandma sing.

She is in the lower left side. She is the one that looks like my Mom. I should point out that this picture was taking during rehearsal. Normally those pews are filled up.

Lowell’s youngest Holden was baptized.

Lowell’s family with Phil

Plus I’m throwing up a bonus image of the Jesus and rice that Andrea used during Children’s Time.

A small group of us, (I will now call them my Inner Sanctum) went to the House of Bricks to see Shawn’s band Act of Gravity. They put on a good show despite not being aided by the sound guy.

There was a pretty sweet moment when Shawn was rocking the drums so hard the banner for the Albino Spiders came partially unfurled.

After Act of Gravity was done, a carnival act performed. They billed the dude as a fire eater, but I’m not convinced that I couldn’t have duplicated the same act.

He put either a sugar cookie or a pineapple (although to me it looked like pound cake) in 151 then lit it on fire and ate it. It wasn’t all that impressive.

The other interesting thing about the fire eater was that he was dressed like a drag queen, but had put enough makeup on to look like a mime. Very interesting.

After the hard rocking show, we were joined by a few other friends (that I will now refer to as my Inner Circle) at Hu Hot. I think an enjoyable time was had by most and it set up what I was hoping would be an enjoyable Memorial Day.

Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Jaycees, Jeff Kewer, Lowell, Monica, Music, Suzie, Teresa

False Snake Hype

May 4, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I have been looking forward to today for quite some time.

After church Lowell and I attended a Methodist Men board meeting. I learned a lot about our future activities. We are serving the food at the Mother-Daughter Banquet this coming Saturday. We are serving Fellowship in the month of June. We are running the Church Food Stand for some Cattle Shows coming up. We are serving breakfast during one of the days of the coming tractor rally. So there are a lot of things going on this Summer. The convenient part is that most Methodist Men activities take place on Saturdays so it won’t be a scheduling conflict with Ames on the Half Shell.

At 2 PM Teresa and I showed up for an Exclusive Series Preview of the upcoming season at Stephens. I was a little bit worried that we had wandered into a nursing home tour when we got in line to get our packet of information. We were the youngest people in the line by at least 40 years. Well by 50 years for me.

The presentation was on the stage at Stephens. I haven’t been on the stage at Stephens since High School. From the stage you can really see what a beautiful auditorium it is and can tell why it is the Building of the Century.

They did a little program and announced the upcoming season:

September 24 – Sweeney Todd
November 2 – Vanguard Jazz
November 6 – Movin’ Out
November 9 – Jerusalem Symphony
November 23 – Lorie Line and her Pop Chamber Orchestra
December 3 – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
December 18 – A Skaggs Family Christmas
January 25 – Goodnight Moon/Runaway Bunny
February 8 – The Peking Acrobats
February 13 – The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
February 20 – To Kill a Mockingbird
March 27 – Blue Note Records Tour
April 9 – The Drowsy Chaperone
April 14-15 – Stomp
May 1 – Australian Chamber Orchestra

From our preliminary discussions it seems that Teresa and I are slightly at odds as to what we want to go see. The one event I know that I want to see for sure is the Blue Note Records Tour. Teresa isn’t overly interested in that one. For some reason she thinks that Kenny G. and David Sanborn is jazz. Perhaps, I have a friend out there that likes real jazz that I might be able to persuade into going.

At the end of the presentation they asked everybody to look at the back of their folder. If you had stickers on the back you won a door prize. Teresa had stickers on the back of her folder. I was expecting some cheesy door prize based on the lousy corporate events I had attended in the past, but what Teresa won was pretty sweet. She won 2 free tickets to see the Jerusalem Symphony (over a $100.00 value) and a couple of their CDs. So on November 9th, we will be going to see the Jerusalem Symphony for free and you can’t beat that with a stick.

Roland

After the presentation we went up to Roland to check out the new house that Monica and Jeff are renting. When we got there we were warned to watch the grass because they had seen snakes everywhere in the yard. I was excited. I haven’t seen a snake yet this year. I looked all over the yard (even in a compost pile) but I didn’t find a single snake, let alone snakes. I was the victim of false snake hype.

I got the nickel tour of their new domicile. Monica, Jeff, Suzie and Cassie were painting. I grabbed a few pictures of them at work. I always love watching other people work.

Sweet Windmill. I think it needs to be sanded down and painted, but Monica thinks it looks awesome rusty. I respectfully disagree. It looks awesome rusty if you are going for some kind of Nouveau Texas Chainsaw Massacre look, but a splash of bright red would really do wonders for this thing, but it isn’t mine.

Suzie slacking off.

The bathroom color.

Jeff painting the master bedroom

Monica crawling.

Suzie playing with the master tape.

Cassie painting the living room.

I think it is going to a pretty sweet place when they are done painting.

Ames on the Half Shell

The Band Selection Committee that I was on that kind of half ass did our job and has completed its work. Here is the list of bands that are going to be playing Ames on the Half Shell.

May 30 – Redzband
June 6 – Murphy’s Law (Family Night)
June 13 – Burnin’ Sensations
June 20 – Vivace
June 27 – Box Brothers
July 11 – Saucy Jack
July 18 – Kountertop
July 25 – 3AM Band

If you can only make it to one Ames on the Half Shell event this year, I urge you to attend Kountertop. They are excellent. Unless you have small children. In that case, come on June 6 and see Murphy’s Law on Family Night. There are going to be a lot of cool things for small children on Family Night.

Becky, Black & White, Boone FUMC, Formal Portrait, Photoshop, Shannon, Teresa

Olivia’s Stitching Time

May 1, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I went to the church on Wednesday to take a group photo of the stitching group that Teresa started in Olivia’s name. Here is the result.

This picture is going to go in the church bulletin, so in the end it will end up looking something like this:

I took a couple candid photos of the group.

Then Becky grabbed the camera and took this picture.

Olivia’s Stitching Time meets two more times before taking a hiatus for the Summer. It is a group for people to come and work on and share their sewing projects. It meets from 6:30 – 8:30 on Wednesday nights in the Parlor of the First United Methodist Church. All are welcome to come.

I also fired off a few other random pictures in the sanctuary.

I might be prejudiced, but I think that we have a beautiful sanctuary. I’d love to seriously photograph it at some time in the future.

Boone FUMC

Class of 1993

April 6, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I’ve had some strange encounters with members of the Class of 1993.

My home loan officer is from that legendary class.

I ran into a member from the class at a nursing home.

Then I met a member of the class during Fellowship at church.

Interesting.