Category Archives: Religion

Chance with Necessity, Randomness with Determinism

On Sunday, after church, I grabbed my camera to walk around the church to grab some STILL LIFE moments for the THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. It seemed like a beautiful day, so I thought I would walk around downtown Boone a little bit before meeting the family at the Chinese buffet for lunch. When I came around the corner of 7th Street onto Greene Street, I came across a gentleman doing sidewalk chalk art on the sidewalk in front of the Ericson Public Library.

Fascinated by his work I struck up a conversation with him. During the course of our conversation I learned many of his religious views and some of his art background. He was a Boone expatriate that had recently decided to come back home. He indicated that he wanted to do an Easter art project and he had contacted the local Baptist church and they told him, “No.” Then he contacted the church he was raised in and they also told him, “No.”

I offered him use of our church’s sidewalk because we’d love to have this kind of artwork at our church in Easter. We struck up a deal and hopefully everything falls into place and the Boone First United Methodist Church will have some sweet sidewalk art come Easter Sunday.

Here are some pictures of his Christmas artwork he was doing at the library:


Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

Sidewalk Art

After I joined my family for lunch and I relayed the story, Teresa actually knew the artist. His name is Don Hughes and apparently back in the day, they used to run in the same circles. He had even been to our house in my youth. So after our lunch Mom, Logan, and Teresa went up to talk to Don. Which resulted in a selfie that was sent to one of Teresa’s oldest and dearest friends.

Old Salvation Army Building Wall Phase #2 Beta

Mediacom. That is all I’m going to say for now.

So these pictures actually started out with me just wanting to document a little bit of the Mural Project progress, but then a bunch of kids wanted to take pictures. Which made me nervous, but I let Jaxson, Wyatt, and Kyle take the majority of these picture while I stood as close to them as possible.

This week, I’m going to bring the camera that wasn’t a thousand dollars with the $700 dollar lens attached to it and let them go as wild as they want.


Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

Youth Group!

The first mural has been finished and will be going up this Wednesday. Hopefully. At least that is the plan, Stan.

Old Salvation Army Building Wall Phase #2 Alpha

Here are a few more photos of the progress we’ve made with the Old Salvation Army Building Wall. Where the windows are boarded up, we are going to put up murals. The work on those began on Wednesday night in Fellowship Hall.



This one is going to be a cross with paint drippings behind it.


Some of the ideas.


Working on tracing hands for a heart-hand thing.


More of the same.


Bonus picture of Sarah G. leading Devotions/Worship.

Hoping to make significantly more progress on a couple of them this Wednesday night!

Old Salvation Army Building Wall Phase #1

Last Wednesday before Youth Group, a hearty clan of painters painted the south wall of the old Salvation Army Building. This phase is just to make it less of an eyesore. Phase 2 will involve painting murals where the boarded up windows are. Well, it is one of the phases.

This group consisted of a lot of Sharps, Pastor Doug, Pete Nelson, and I helped do some of the finishing up work at the end. Here are a couple of photos:


The last 2 pictures are from setting up for the Youth Group. I wish I would’ve gotten some pictures of that, but I didn’t. I was in charge of the lesson for the Sr. High Students. The idea of the lesson was to talk about what they liked and didn’t like about previous Mission Trips. This was going to be bookended by the old preacher’s story “The Lonely Ember”. We got the first part of “The Lonely Ember” done and lots of Mission Trip talk done, but we never got quite to the closure part as we ran out of time.

Oh well. At least everybody got to eat s’mores!

Methodist Men NOT a Steak Fry – 2016

The 16th was The Event Formerly Known as the Methodist Men Steak Fry. I think it was an overall success. We served 51 smoked pork chops and 2 hot dogs. Our speaker was Jack Owens, the founder (more-or-less) of The Salt Company.

It was good food and good company and a good speaker. We didn’t even go broke doing it! Here are a few pictures I was able to snap (when I wasn’t working like a dog) of the event.


Hopefully, under the leadership of our poor schmuck president, we hand increase our attendance by like 25%.

I Stood in the Disenchanted Field

Last night was the annual Hayrack Ride for the Youth Group. Unfortunately, I brought the wrong lens and the wrong flash, but here are a few pictures from the evening.


Although, I probably wouldn’t have taken many pictures any way. A flash in the dark isn’t the most popular thing in the world.

But there was a good turn out. 30-35 kids. Most importantly, a good time was had by all AND there were no clown sightings!