It's been a while since I last updated, but things are going well here in Flint. Though it was a 3 day weekend, the weekend flew by.

On Friday night I lead a worship practice with our summer cadet Julie Tamayo. We've been asked to help her learn bass guitar so that she can play bass during her second year at the College for Officers Training in Chicago.

Saturday I was able to relax and hang out with my daughter Hannah (almost 4 months old) and watch some Nick Jr. with bits of SyFy channel (corny) movies in between. We were eagerly awaiting the arrival of my sister Stephanie, her husband Rick, and my nephew Garrett. The three of them have moved back to Michigan to be closer to family. We helped them unpack and then grabbed some dinner together.

On Sunday we went to church, grabbed some lunch, then headed out to Corunna to see some of the 4th of July festivities with my inlaws. It's interesting to see the change in my relationship with my inlaws over the years. When I first met them, I was around 20 years old, in a rock band, touring, and had no job. We met, and shortly after Rachel and I got engaged. I am sure this freaked them out. They were/(are?) not fond or my tattoos, and not sure how stable of a person since I was unemployed and looking to go into ministry work. I remember my father-in-law (who works for GM) tell me that God does not do payroll. I understood what he wa trying to say. He wanted stability for his step daughter. Now, they tell all their friends about us. They are proud of the work we do in the neighborhood. They are proud that we live somewhat simply. They love their grand daughter and are not worried about risign her in Flint.

After we left Corunna, we went to Grand Blanc (my parents house) for a cookout. We also took Hannah swimming for the first time. Around dusk we left for home because we wanted to catch the Flint fireworks. Our friends Bill and Brian had invited us over to their place to watch them. They live in a mansion just down the street and so we were able to go up on the roof (50-75ft from the ground) and watch. Being up there level with the tree tops, able to watch awesome fireworks was awesome, but also being able to spend it with friends in a tight knit community made it extra enjoyable.

Just before heading over for the fireworks, Bill and Dave called saying that a guy had just run down Oak street with a commercial snowblower. In july, this meant that it was stolen, presumably from one of our neighbors. They confronted the guy who, who later abandoned the blower and took off to avoid the cops. No sooner had he taken off did the (new) drug house stash it behind a house. We recovered it and took it back to Bill's house for safekeeping. The drug house across the street is semi-shut down. They were evicted from the house and moved across the street to a house on the corner (semi-new drug house). Luckily for us, our neighbor just put up a privacy fence and so now they are his problem as he has inadvertantly sheltered us from any traffic or possible theft in our back yard. It is pretty quiet now on our street as the amount of traffic on our street has gone down to nearly nothing. We did however have to call the fire dept. because someone dragged one of the couches at the curb of the old drug house back to the drug house and set it on fire.

So, all in all a busy and mostly fun weekend.