Today is a big day in the Fries household. Today, at lunch time, we take our oldest daughter to begin pre-school. It’s amazing to me that she’s already moving into her academic career. Now, admittedly, halfday preschool is just the first step in a long process, but for Mom and Dad at least, it’s a big move. So we’re excited as we help her get ready to begin school at St. Joseph Christian School. It should be a fun day.

On a side note, I won’t be blogging here for a bit. As I think about using this blog, and technology in general, to connect with more people and to communicate with more people, I’ve decided to move my blog and create a new portal here at MicahFries.com. That means that in the coming days I will post a new location for my blog and this page will become a portal to link to other various ways to connect and communicate (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, an audio site, a video site, and more). So, be sure to check back in the next few days. If you subscribe to this site via email or an rss feed, you will have to update your settings when I make the move.

Well, tonight is winding down as I get ready to hit the bed. I’ve got to get up nice and early tomorrow so I can catch an early flight to St. Louis where I will attend the Acts 29 Quarterly hosted by the good folks at Journey Church. Darrin Patrick and his wife will be speaking on “Living by Priorities”. I’m very excited to attend for a couple of reasons. First, I’m looking forward to hearing Patrick speak on priorities. As a guy who certainly has more on his plate than I do, I’m curious to hear him explain his process for prioritizing his life. Beyond that, though, I have been looking for ways to connect with our Acts 29 guys here in Missouri. There may be no greater church planting organization, when it comes to sound theology and cutting edge missiology, in the country than A29. I have been looking forward to getting to know these guys as we continue to study ways to help our church more effectively preach the gospel and connect our community with the gospel. If you read this and you’re an A29 guy who will be at the quarterly, please introduce yourself. I would really like to get to know you.

The following day, though, is an even bigger day. On Wednesday Tracy and I will take our oldest daughter, Sarah Grace, to begin preschool. It’s hard to believe that almost 5 years have now passed since the Lord brought Grace into our lives. We continue to be grateful to God for His grace in our lives in the forms of our daughters. This is another big step forward in her maturation as she begins the 14 year process through high school. It’s amazing to me how fast time goes by.

Here are a couple of random pics that my brother posted from his wedding. The first is a great one (I think anyway) of my youngest daughter, Kessed, all tired out at the end of the wedding reception. The second one is for all of you who have not seen a picture of me together with my wife. We have something of a height difference between us.

I am blessed with a beautiful family. This picture was taken last weekend at a wedding I performed. I had to post it so that everybody could see my beautiful family.

I have had a fast and furious past few weeks. From a nice extended weekend at the lake to a week with 200 children at Children’s Camp to this week which has been full of meetings, it seems as if it never slows down! That being said, I love so much being a pastor that even though my schedule is full, I couldn’t be happier! Tracy and I were talking the other day about how unique it is that each of us is getting to fulfill our dreams for our lives. She is a stay at home mom and I’m a lead Pastor at an amazing church which is being used by God to take the gospel to the world. What a blessing!

Coming up this week, however, is a couple of very exciting events. We start our new sermon series this week entitled “Oasis”. Just as an oasis appears in the midst of vast desert, so to Christ appears out of the midst of our depravity and offers us hope in a hopeless world. I’m excited about the new series. On top of the exciting series, the good folks who design our stage for each series have built a 10 foot waterfall which looks incredible! I’ll try and post pictures in the upcoming weeks once the stage design is complete.

Beyond that we start VBS next week. Last year we had over 200 children and this year we are praying for 400! We’ll see how God blesses our prayers and how God uses our VBS to draw children to Himself.

Finally, below is a picture a friend took of my wife and girls as we played with fireworks last week at the lake. I thought it was particularly good so I thought I would post it.

I don’t KNOW if I will, or will not, correspond with anyone for the next few days. Tracy, the girls and I are taking advantage of the extended weekend and we’re heading to the lake for a few days thanks to the generous hospitality of some friends from our church. I’m looking forward to relaxing, spending time on the water, and coming back from Osage Beach nice and tanned (and hopefully not sunburned ). We should have wifi while we’re down at the lake but I’m not planning to spend excessive amounts of time using it. So, I’ll talk to you each when I get back. Until then, have a fantastic Independence Day.

A pet peeve of mine is teaching children “memorized” prayers. I want children to learn that their faith is a personal faith and so we have encouraged our daughters, since they began to talk, to formulate their own prayers to God. At the close of our family devotional time each evening we let the girls each pray. Grace has been a pretty avid prayer since she was 2 and a half or 3. She loves to pray and she can pray some amazing prayers at times. Kessed, however, has just recently decided that she needed to begin praying. She listens to her big sister a lot and often copies her, but she is also beginning to develop her own personal ability to converse with God. It’s pretty amazing to watch.

Tonight after she prayed, we thought it was so cute that we had to get it on video for the sake of archiving it. We asked her to pray again once the camera was rolling. She obliged (which is definitely not a guarantee when you’re talking about Kessed) and I love the video. I’ve posted it below.

In case you don’t speak Kessedese and need a translation, she says: “Jesus thank you for today. Help us. In Jesus Name, amen.” I love watching my girls begin to grow in their faith.

It’s the end of another Sunday and what a good Sunday it was! When you look at numbers it wasn’t incredible, in fact we had the lowest attendance of the year I believe. It seems that summer vacation has hit us hard. In spite of that, however, we had a phenomenal day. It was exciting to watch as God moved in our hearts as we took the Lord’s Supper together. I’m always profoundly moved by the opportunity we have to remember His sacrifice.

The choir rocked this morning! Wow! They sang Thou Oh Lord for the second time and I am blown away every time I hear them perform it. I’ve had it in my head all day and I can’t stop singing it. I found a video of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing it, in case you’re not from Frederick, and they do well but they’re not as good as Chad and our Celebration Choir. Man, I am in awe every time I hear this. If you’re listening to it for the first time, it starts a bit slow but the second half of the song will knock your socks off. There was a time when I just didn’t like choirs in church very much but I’ll tell you what, Chad and our choir have changed my mind. When they begin our services they do a phenomenal job of setting the table and preparing our hearts for worship. Thanks choir!

It was a privilege to watch as God brought one family and another individual to join the Frederick family this morning. I’m always thrilled to watch as God brings more people to be a part of what He’s doing at Frederick!

For some reason God’s presence really seemed strong as I taught this morning. There are days when I struggle through messages and then there are days when it seems as if God is really speaking and it’s easy to move through the message. This morning was exciting as I taught about the church at Philadelphia. I’m working on uploading the video from the message given in the second service and I’m hoping to have it posted in the morning.

We got the privilege of spending this afternoon with our band and worship team enjoying lunch together which was a privilege. I love spending time with the special people that God is using at our church in powerful ways!

The day ended just right as Tracy and I sat on our front porch and watched our girls chase and catch lightning bugs. The little things like that are the best parts of life. We finished up with our girls by sharing in our devotion time and we just put them down for the night.

I hope that your Sunday was as good as ours was!