I suppose that’s as Texas as I can get, all things considered, but our time in Texas is running out….and thank God this time it does not involve a warrant or a restraining order. In truth the conference has concluded, dinner is long past, and we are back in the hotel for a short night’s sleep for early morning flights back to the north. I do not know about Father Kelly, but I am exhausted. It has been a long, but energized couple of days here revolving around church planting.

With that, I must apologize, but I need to get to bed. The wake-up call is set for 5 am and it is already stressing me out. It will be good to get back to the familiar surroundings of home. Ben has another ear infection and fever and was at the doctor earlier today. Keep him in your prayers. After all I had a lot of ear infections as a kid, and look what happened to me!

Sorry for the short post…..I am pooped!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless.

Tommy+

One of the downsides of traveling with one of your best friends is that it occasionally can lead to trouble. AND, without Amanda and Marie here to keep us level, there are certain liberties that we take. Oh no, it is not anything immoral. Neither one of us has any intention to get into trouble. But with me on a diet, and us around very little healthy, the formula is more problematic than you could ever imagine.

The picture, I must confess, is really unfair. Father Kelly has been more than exemplary in his witness to dietary discipline….okay, up until the nachos tonight in our hotel room. But for the whole time I have been with him he has eaten mostly fish. Of course for me, being allergic to fish, no matter what its calorie count was, even if zero, would not produce the desired outcome. I will confess though, I will not step on a scale till Sunday morning. I have been pretty good, but pretty good when you travel is nothing I want to bet my life on.

I am happy however to report that the conference is going well. We have heard from quite a few people and have been blessed by their sharing. The Archbishop is calling for the planting of 1000 congregations in 5 years, and I hope to enthusiastically do our part.

Ironically, it is supposed to SNOW here in Dallas tomorrow and I may be the only one in Texas who will know how to drive in it. Please pray for us down here, not just for the mission of the Church, but for the people……..I do not think they have even one plow in all of Texas. Everything’s bigger and better???? Right….a couple of inches of snow never paralyzes us in Indiana!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Whenever I travel to the south I think of one of my all-time favorite actors, the Duke, John Wayne. God I miss him! Especially when I look around at Hollywood today. There is so much activism, and sadly that activism is a MESS! But as I think back to my youth I remember John Wayne. He was wholesome, he was patriotic……he was American. His movies expressed to an entire generation to be proud of who we were, to stand up for what was right, honorable, and true. Things have devolved unbelievably far from those days. Yep, I miss John Wayne.

Tonight just before midnight I will land in Dallas and be there for three days. Though I am an Indiana boy through and through, I enjoy Texas very much. It’s different in many ways, such as climate and terrain. But the Texans are much like Indiana folk…..they are hospitable, generous, and proud of their home.

I will be at a conference of Anglican Church planters for my visit there, so we will be around people from all across the country….but the hosts will be the Texans! John Wayne types my guess, in collars, sans hats, but dedicated to spreading the Gospel through the planting of orthodox churches throughout the country. I am looking forward to it.

I may never ride the range with my heroes, John Wayne or Ronald Reagan, but I can walk among some modern day ones. The work done by the people with whom I will meet is vital. There will be no horses, no dogies or gunfights at all. But I suppose all that was pre-crazy Hollywood anyway. What we share is a lot like the Duke of old…..a common, vital and noble vision of of what the world should be.

I intend to saddle up and ride, not into the sunset, but into the very place God is calling me to be!

Goodnight from under the Texas stars……incidentally, they look big and bright.

God Bless!

Tommy+ (a real Duke wannabe!)

Since I am leaving for a conference on church planting tomorrow in Texas, I thought I would enlist the help of Ben to write my blog. He and I started to look at pictures together and I decided I would let him pick. He chose this one, first by saying “ahhhh” when he saw it, followed by “he’s so cute.” Of course when I asked him WHO it was, he said something about a “baby” and “birthday cake.” He’s a total hoot. He is totally like one of those celebrities who sees and talks about themselves in the third person. Ben however is just about 2 3/4…..the celebrities are just goofballs!

It was good to have the time with him and to get his input as well. I was so pleased to have risen to the level of his full attention rather than his chief tent-maker (I am the one who puts the blankets over his bus to make a “tent” it is rarely used as a bus) or the jungle gym when Scott is not around. I really was pleased to be able to delve into his creative side, and I am pleased to report that he seems to be just a little bit more blessed in it than either Scott or me. Both Scott and I would pick this picture for the cake the fire. We wouldn’t see the different levels or the artistic complexities that the pros do.

Anyway, thanks for the help and the day Ben! It really does make make posting it worth it. I will be Dallas by midnight tomorrow and you will be in bed. Dallas is the home to many different things, but somehow all I can think about is cake. Maybe dad will get him some, after all he is on a diet…..but everything is guilt-free in Texas.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

It has been a very long day, and I am so very pleased to say I have finished it (wrapped it up as us old people say…or rapped as anyone under 20 would say). I have a light schedule for tomorrow, so since I am the parent of a toddler, I am guessing that I will probably get to sleep in until at least 7:30! I am just glad to be home.

I was very encouraged by my weight this morning and I appreciate your ongoing prayers. I did not have a very disciplined evening, so I am worried about the morning. I suppose I could get off the habit of a weigh-in each day, and I will this coming week as I travel, but I really do feel the morning weigh-ins, as well as the posting of my weight each day, helps keep me accountable. What I probably also need a Drill Sargent following me around 24/7, but in the absence of one I suppose the current system will just have to do.

I appreciate your walking with me on this journey.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless.

Tom+

This diet thing has me going bonkers. I weigh in every morning, but in reality I really do not want to look. Part of my Lenten Discipline is to make sure the weight comes off, but I am finding the anxiety of the looming scale each morning to be overwhelming. I will be heading out of town from Sunday to Wednesday of next week, and perhaps being away from the scales will do me some good. But you just do not eat as healthy as you do when you are on the road. I hope the trip finds me dropping a few pounds!

Today was a big “catch-up” day for me. I spent most of it working from home and finished the day at one of Scotty’s indoor games. The high school women’s team plays tomorrow night and I am looking forward to it too. It will be a great start to the weekend…..AND, there is just this and one more game till our regular season starts! Yep…practice begins (snow or not) March 1st!

But for now I will call it a day. I am in the north tomorrow most of the day and then back for a 4:25 game. Tomorrow will be busy, but well worth it.

My hope and prayer for you is that you have had a blessed day!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Today is Ash Wednesday, the very beginning of Lent, and a day we contemplate our mortality in light of our faith. It is a powerful day, and one of my favorites of the entire Church year. Christians all over the world will receive the imposition of ashes while hearing the words, “you are dust, and to dust shall you return.”

My prayer for you this day is that you not only attend an Ash Wednesday service somewhere close to you, but that you take the time this day to rededicate your life to the Lord. Lent is a great time to begin a journey of re-dedication too. You can adopt a Lenten Discipline or two to help fine-tune and deepen your journey along the way. I encourage you to do so too.

One service for us today has already taken place, but there are three more to go and I hope you can attend one with us or another near you. It is never too late to begin this life anew, and there is no better time than now to do it.

Every journey begins with the first step……commit yourself to taking yours today.

God Bless you!

Fr. Tom+

Yes, this is a picture from a couple days ago because neither of these two lovebirds could hold still long enough for me to get a picture without blurring. The video however (of what Ben calls “the tunnel”) is from tonight. For tonight we hit the airport for the anticipated reunion of Ben and Amanda and they did not disappoint. You could probably hear the “mommy mommy mommy” from three counties over and for Scot and I it was well worth it. We had already jacked him all up with pancakes and syrup at Christ the King in Kokomo for their Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, but I do not think it all came, nor most came, from the sugar. It was pure love for his mom…..louder in fact than the airplanes!

But the excitement has died down and we are now home. I am in bed typing which is a rarity. And yes, Ben is in here as he has been while she has been gone, but this time he is suspiciously absent from this side of the bed.

I won’t complain. They are the lights of each others’ lives and they are happy to be together. And more than that…..tonight I will sleep without his little feet draped across my head!!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless.

Tommy+

Tonight Scotty, Ben, and I made arrangements to meet my dad at a restaurant for dinner. Since Ben has talked non-stop about his grandpa since our last visit (which made my dad’s day), we thought it would be a good way to appease them both by getting them together. It has been snowing all day and although we made arrangements, the location of them due to the snow was changed quite a few times. We finally decided to meet at the Paradise Cafe on the north side of Indianapolis and had a great dinner with the Tirman men…..all that was missing was my brother, Uncle Mike.

Oddly enough, Mike strolled in with his girlfriend about 45 minutes after we did, and it was great for all of us, particularly for our dad. Though he did not arrange it, my dad was clearly (genetically) ultimately responsible for the entire mess, I mean gathering. One thing I can say in all honesty is that I have a tremendous family, and it is always great to get together. Tonight was a double blessing (at least for me, I cannot speak for the rest of them).

But our bachelorhood is coming to a quick end. Amanda returns tomorrow at 8:00pm and in all honesty, it really has already ended in that Amanda Jr (Steph) is already home monitoring our misdeeds. We will now just make sure everything is picked up and ready for inspection tomorrow at 9-ish.

Keep us in your prayers…..we Noblesville Tirman men are still in our minds “technically unsupervised!”

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Today was a tense day. First of all my weight went up to 228, which I expected with the big Valentine dinner and all, and second because of what happened this morning. Amanda was going to stay up north and teach Sunday School in Westfield and Kokomo, but I was scheduled for a 9:00 am service at St. Matthew’s in Nashville. Scott, Ben, and I, as we often do, set out quite early to make the just under two hour trek there.

But we were just far enough into our trip where we could not turn back to get anything we forgot and make it on time when Ben said the chilling words, “blue blankey.” He was looking for his blanket, and it is something (as he will tell you) he HAS TO HAVE! And a quick search of the car showed me quite clearly what an irresponsible doof Scott was for forgetting it. (Note to readers….if you would read Scott’s blog he would be saying the same thing about me, but since he doesn’t have one and I can take away his car, I can blame it on him!) So needless to say, we were on pins and needles all the way down, and indeed all the way back, since he wanted it then too.

The good news is that I am certain that neither Scott nor I will EVER forget it again. Toddlers can be pretty persistent, even 4 hours worth of persistent, but at least there was no total meltdown and thus the “Defcon 2.”

We did get back and made our rendezvous with Amanda in order to drop her off at the airport tonight and we now have the house to ourselves. We considered putting up 72 hours of sports posters and cartoon pictures, but Stephanie is returning home tomorrow night and would certainly tell. So for now we will just enjoy our one night as complete bachelors and leave the mischief for another day. At least today was an adventure, and for boys that’s what we live for! It has been a blessed day! We ended the trip home with a little horseback riding…please make sure you do not tell Amanda!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless. Envy us! We are eating goldfish crackers and chugging chocolate milk!

Tommy+