Downtown Denver Colorado, 16th Street Mall

Denver has put a number of pianos (old and rickety ones) in the center of 16th Street Mall and people just sit down and start playing ... beautiful!  It reminds me of how we are called to be salt and light in this world for Jesus ...

Praise God, early in the afternoon, Jody is feeling better and we decide to see if we can make it to the Rocky Mountains ... so off we go.

After winding our way up through the foothills we crest the top and laid out before us is Estes Park, a beautiful little city nestled in the Colorado mountains.

It struck me, as I walked this path in the mountains, how this is like what God calls us to be.  God creates us each as unique works of art.

 

Being able to be so close to these Elk reminded me of how it must have been earlier in creation as animals were not afraid of people ...

The male is above the female watching out for possible trouble ...

Night was falling as storm clouds rolled in over the mountains.  Jody and Colleen had never been to the Rocky Mountains before and were so glad they came.  God's creation is astounding!  And to think that this is just the "fallen" world.  Everywhere we looked we saw how Pine Beetles were destroying vast numbers of trees  ... I wonder what His original creation was like ... but for now, we get to see "dimly" and guess at what it would be like if creation were not "groaning" in futility due to our sin.  One day we will know when God comes to judge the living and the dead, destroy this present heavens and earth and create a new one where there will be no more crying or death or pain.

Here For You

The photo's blurry because, well, it's all kind of a blur, actually ... A smile finally appears on Jody's face six hours after the fire department arrived.  First the fire department's "first responders" ... five of them, came up, then the two paramedics and then off to the hospital with Colleen in the ambulance.  Jody's back went out on her Monday morning, got worse over the day and by supper time she could not get out of bed.  Six hours and at least fifty attempts at IV (do I over exaggerate? See the white pads on her arm and hand ...) she has enough meds and healing and aid to slowly and painfully stand to her feet, sit in a chair for a while and then be helped down the hall.  Yeah, Jody!  Colleen thinks it was these two nurses that did the trick, but we all know it was God all along working through all the great staff at St. Joseph hospital's emergency room.  The gold lettering above the doors as we left read, "God Is Our Refuge."  They were great, and now we need to go get the prescriptions filled ... so we can get to bed by 4:00 AM our time ... :o

"I Wonder What They Think of Jesus ..."

"I Wonder What They Think of Jesus ..." Jody pondered as we watched crowds of people walking by when we stopped for supper at the Paramount sidewalk cafe.  As people strolled by I wondered what they were living for.  Many may know Jesus, many don't.

I am reading through the book of Job in the Bible and I'm at the end, where Elihu talks about God revealing Himself in the storms.  It seems so often that God is like that guy playing on the green piano at the right of this photo behind the woman in the red shirt.  For all I know, he's playing amazingly well ... I can't hear him from where I sit because of all the noise of the people walking by and the College football game being played on 100 TV sets in the cafe we are sitting in.  All the noise drowns out the Piano Player.  I wonder if he's an angel playing for the poor man sitting on the park bench behind him.  The Piano Player is so much like God in this world we live in ... all the noise and rush and stuff we do more often than not exalts ourselves or our interests but drowns out God.  I hope I can hear Him playing today.  I pray He would attune my ear ...

Looking out over part of our hotel with 16th Street Mall running alongside it in the heart of Denver.

Small Beginnings

Delta changed our flights so that we did NOT leave the airport at 3:30 PM, we had to LEAVE the Valley at 3:15 AM to catch the flight they gave us ... hmmmm ... well, we made it to the airport, and the fog didn't keep us from taking off!  I'm headed to Denver, Colorado with two of our awesome staff from the Valley Care Pregnancy Center.  We are attending the Care Net Conference, an equipping and inspirational gathering of Pregnancy Center leaders from across North America and around the world. 

The young man next to me (14 yrs.) was an amazing young man ... having traveled around the world, into competitive boxing, etc.  In our conversation, he commented that he was an atheist.  I asked him what he meant by that ... and his answer showed that he was not saying that God did not exist, but that he didn't know if God existed ... so I explained that that was called being an "agnostic."  We talked about all sorts of things from chemistry to his cousins and his family history; how he stuck up for his friends when they got picked on at school, etc.  Later in our conversation, he commented about how beautiful the clouds were.  God opened up a great opportunity for me to share with him about the time when I came to think God didn't exist either ... until I really considered the amazing creation all around us - and how totally impossible I thought for all this to just come from nothing ... by chance ... and how amazing a creation we were ... which displays God as a personal being to whom we must be accountable.  I told him how I looked at all the other world religions and how they all said I had to live up to impossible standards ... but how Jesus was the only One who ever was said to love me ... to come down to me, pay the penalty for my sin and rise again from the dead inviting me to accept His sacrifice on my behalf and receive forgiveness of sins ... I got to tell this young man that this was the most beautiful love story I've ever heard ... and I had chosen to cling to that until I found something better ... and that in the 30 years since then, nothing has ever held a candle to His amazing Grace.

Toronto was a blur because we had to go through customs ... and we Jody and I had to eat Second Breakfast ... but when we got to Detroit, the underground people mover had music playing and the color on the walls danced and changed color according to the mood and rhythm of the music.  We couldn't get Jody to stop dancing!!!

Colleen kept dancing so much, she hurt her foot on the smaller moving sidewalks.

Detroit's airport had two sky trains INSIDE that ran the length of the terminal.  Jody INSISTED we go for a ride ... no, wait, that was me who insisted :)

Fianally, we arrive in Denver

In the train under Denver's airport going from Concourse C to B to A to the Terminal.

Just down the street from the Sheraton Downtown Denver Hotel, is the Paramount Cafe ... the food is addictive.  Jody made me eat too much.  The whole street is actually a mile long mall called, "16th Street Mall" and has buses that buzz by every few minutes on either side offering free transportation up and down the mall (see below)

Who knew that this weekend, Denver has a city wide party downtown with free food and rides, shutting down roads, and drawing huge crowds all weekend!  It's nice that they went to such an extent to greet us!  Such friendly people!!!

Colleen had to taste the bottom layer just to make sure it was cake ... oops!

Jody's was almost as big as the table!  We all promised we wouldn't eat again until next week.

All along the middle of 16th Street Mall were people busker kinds of things.  A piano was across from where we ate and people were just walking by and would start playing ...