Here is a photo taken at sunset, from the far end of the adult pool, looking toward The Palace. Behind the building is the river, or in front of the building, depending upon your perspective. Between this adult pool is the baby pool, and then down toward the building is the 18 and younger pool. And then the parking lot for my building is below that!
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As I sit at my desk, I can hear sea gulls making a racket outside the patio doors, which are opened at the moment. The breeze is a delight, at least up here it is. Earlier, at the pool, the breeze was more of a gust, and managed to flip over a glass-topped table down by the teen pool when the wind grabbed the umbrella. Shattering glass made a huge noise, and fortunately, no one was sitting there or in close proximity to be injured by it. Poor Marlena had to hustle with cleaning that up, with the help of Danny from the cabana. I thought the life guard should have involved herself, too, being younger and all that, but she stood guard over the cabana while Danny went down there to clean up with Marlena. She had to leave to go to her next job, and I hope she was not late because of this.
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This morning, we had a shortened version of Bible study with only a small gathering of ladies, so we all fit around one table in the church office. Tina was conducting the modified Sunday school class in the Fellowship Hall, and fortunately, one of the girls brought two friends or she would have had only one student! Wait, two, because the Pastor's son came later. It stinks to go through the work of preparing for a class and then have only a couple show up. So today they had four in their class, and we had six in ours!
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We had a better showing for worship, though, with nearly 70 people in attendance, including 11 visitors/guests. The two ladies sitting next to me were from a Prebs. church that is closing its doors, I believe in Riverside, and they came to check us out. I gave each of them one of our 'goodie bags' to take home, as well as a bag to another couple sitting on the other side of the church. I understand that the gentleman was a former MO Synod guy but did not get to chat with them after church, only gave them their lovely parting gifts.
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Late afternoon yesterday, Mom and I were talking on the phone, and she shared a little story of a conversation she had with her two lady friends the other day. They were talking about the new hymnal, no, not the Supplement, but the CW Hymnal which came out in the early 1990's. The ladies were comparing notes on their favorites and Anita commented that there is no better hymn than "What a Friend We Have in Jesus", with some conviction, and "I'm But A Stranger Here"....Upon hearing that, Mom said she was compelled to tell the story of how Pete sang that hymn, all the stanzas, at Timmy's graveside the day of the funeral. She indicated that tears flowed, and as she told me, mine were flowing too. Mom said that while some of the details of that day are somewhat blurry, as you might imagine, that 'picture' sticks in her mind and she remembers it often. Well, today, as I sat waiting for Bible study to commence, I reviewed the hymns chosen for today's worship and there it was, on the hymn board. Obviously, as the congregation sang, I sat with the book in my lap and just listened, and remembered why this hymn is so special. What a great comfort it is to us, knowing this life on earth is just a mist that appears for awhile and then disappears. Some people's mist disappears sooner than others, it seems.
