Visitin'

This morning I got up with one of my sick friends on my mind who is in St. Mary's Hospital in Knoxville. He had a need for gastric by-pass surgery. Twice I had been to the hospital to see him in the last three weeks and he was not aware of my presence...but after talking to his dad last Sunday and learning he was now getting up out of bed and able to talk, I decided I would go see him again. On the way I met a mutual friend and together we went to visit and pray with Gary. We had a good visit.

Afterwards, I decided that I would go to the cabin and spend the night. Since this was on Wednesday, I decided to visit the little Baptist church pictured below - which is three miles from my cabin.


This is an old fashioned country church. The people are friendly and welcome all visitors. It was Prayer-Meeting night, so I knew they would be having church. I have now attended the place enough times that they will call on me to sing or testify or combination thereof.


See the two benches on the front of the church? That's where two or three of the men were sitting when I arrived. As I expected, the stood up and welcomed me. More deacons, arrived, the Pastor arrived. I learned that they were in Revival services. As we sat there and talked - all the deacons and the Pastor and the Evangelist took out their cigarettes and smoked. As a child I had been taught that smoking was a sin. I chuckled to myself about that when the Pastor said, "It's time to pray." Cigarettes extinguished, they invited me to join with them under the shed out front for prayer over the time of worship and preaching just ahead.


Under this shed there were 16 elders and deacons taking prayer requests and lifting them up to God in concert prayer. This is very normal in our area for our "holiness" churches but a little unusual for Baptist churches to have these "concert" prayers. Some things in the Baptist church are very different from the way we do things in our church, the Church of God. One of those things is that generally we preach against smoking, drinking, cursing, etc., and etc. while it has been reported to me that the Baptists do not. They even allow drinking (in moderation) among most members.


The preacher was a bit old fashioned in his approach and laid his coat down on the front seat. After he had read his text and prayed, he walked the aisle (as you can see in the picture above) while waxing warm in the old fashioned way of preaching. Wish you all could have heard him. I was surprised to hear the evangelist preaching against long hair on men. I loved it. There were "Amen's" coming from every corner.


I spent a very quiet, very pleasant night at the cabin and rose "a great while before day". I got the picture above as the sun sought me out on the back porch where I was reading my Bible and drinking my coffee. The smell of sausage and canned biscuits mixed with coffee had really permeated the air around the cabin and I could hear birds and see a squirrel playing in the trees. After cleaning some boards off the front porch I swept both porches and enjoyed the great weather! It was 62 degrees at 6:00a.m. and didn't start getting warm until almost 12:00.


After cleaning up the dishes I locked the cabin and went for some walk/ride/picture-taking moments. Above is Possum Grapes. The woods are full of them here this year.


When I saw what appeared to be beautiful fruit from the road, I had to get closer. I thought it might be a fig tree - or even some yellow apples. I stopped the truck and walked over to the tree only to discover that it was not fruit at all - but was what I was taught to call "buckeyes".


If you peel off the exterior hull, this is what you find. If you see "buckeyes" out of the shell and you don't know better, they look just like chestnuts. I need to find and take pictures of a chestnut tree so that you can see the chestnut is covered with sharp prickly outside covering whereas the "buckeye" has a smooth outer hull.


Just as I pulled up to a quiet place and took out my gun, I looked down and saw that someone had been here before me. I do not like to see litter on the forest floor. It's so easy to put that trash in your pocket and carry it home to the trash bag. Don't let me get started on that subject or this blog will not hold all of my words. ☻



Just a few steps further and I saw something I was looking for! See that huge acorn? The squirrels love them! I'll be back soon. Hopefully with squirrel meat for the freezer!!!