Sunday and Early Morning Rain

I slept pretty well last night and was up about 5:00am or so to the sound of thunder and rain... .a welcome sound I might add. I made my bed, dressed and got myself ready for church. It has rained for around 45 minutes but seems to have slacked off now. Too bad..we desperately need the rain. Everything is yellow in this area. If it's still raining mid morning, it will seriously affect the attendance at church and lets face it, we sure don't need anything to do that. 

Our congregation is ageing and dying off little by little and we are not attracting many new people. For one thing, our people are not particularly into inviting new people possibly because of the small size of our congregation. 

We let the Independence people, which consisted of six people when we built the church in 1999, influence where we built it. They had run out of money altogether and had to sell their building. They were using their small building fund to pay their utilities. They wanted us to build our new church halfway between Independence and Coffeyville and the building committee at the time tried to accommodate them. 

Unfortunately that seems to have been a mistake. Within ten years, they had mostly died off and only the Coffeyville congregation, who had the bulk of the money to build, were left. So we are out in the country and now our people are mostly dying off too. I am the only one from Caney..formerly from Coffeyville and I will be 87 in December and am the oldest one in the congregation and will probably be the next old person to die off.  Our Neodesha people are now driving to Pittsburg, which is a larger congregation, and they have sold their homes in Neodesha to move there. We have six people from the Independence area left and they live in the country outside of Independence.  Luckily, they are mostly active. It's a dilemma. We have two from Cherryvale and five from Coffeyville and the others are from the rural area near the church.

It has quieted down now and I fear the rain has stopped altogether. It's still dark out and I can't tell for sure what it is doing. But it is quiet now.

More later..I doubt the cats have come out in the rain but I will check to see.

I will also check the "weather on the 8's" to see what is left of the previous forecast.

Sure enough, the forecast is for AM thunderstorms and so they may be over now. Monday is to be 95 degrees and partly cloudy, Tuesday is forecast to be 96 degrees and partly cloudy, Wednesday 95 degrees and sunny, Thursday 95 degrees and partly sunny, Friday 96 degrees and mostly sunny, and Saturday 96 degrees and mostly sunny. It's just as I thought!

More of the same...heat and humidity. It's 6:30 now and still dark, of course. I doubt the cats will be out there but I will check again.

Both cats came for breakfast at 7:25AM. I took their food out to them and they ate their fill and left. I will go bring it into the garage and cover it again now.

More later...sure enough, the rain has stopped.

I read until time to go to north of Dearing to the church. I went early to do some cleaning but Melissa had hired a great cleaner to clean the church and it was spotless!

The service was very good and afterward we went to Dickey's, a neat barbecue place in Independence in the old J.C. Penney's location. We had a great meal for $12.50 plus tax. I hope we can go there again soon. Much as I enjoy "Just Us", Dickie's it is a great change and a good alternate place closer then Cherryvale.

Now I will write my letters to those who were not at church today. Gene, Rick and Carmen, Billie Jo and Becky. 

More later...I got those letters written and out on the mailbox for Michael to pick up tomorrow. Then I read awhile before watching the last of the football game so I could then watch 60 Minutes. That was over an half hour late thanks to the football game running well overtime.

After that, I went out back and picked up the leaves in my back yard that came from my south neighbor's tree. Then I watered the back flowerbed. We had a little rain this morning  but not near enough for those flowers. Before I take my bath, I will go water the mailbox flowerbed too.

It's 8:07PM now and I will go take my bath and then get back to my book.

I will  read until 9:00PM or so before going to bed.