Is good to be back home. It’s good to see you. And to be able to be with you this morning, we had a very good trip down to Lakeland, Florida for the Florida school of preaching lectureship. That’s where I attended the school of preaching and had a very good lectureship there. Just so that some of you know, it’s not always in the seventies and eighties in Florida. Okay. I lived there for 10 years, so I can vouch for that. But there were a couple of nights where it get down, got down into the thirties. And we, we were out a couple afternoons when we had to go to the grocery store for, for some things. And those Floridians were going around with winter jackets on, I mean, overcoats. And we were there either with a light coat on or nothing at all. I mean that, I mean, no coat, no coat. Sorry about that. But anyway, it did get cool, but it, it started warming up as the week, went long, went along and did get up to about 80 a couple of days, Thursday and Friday, I think it was, but we had a very good trip down. We were ahead of the front that brought all the cold weather to you last weekend. And, but on our way down, we’d, hadn’t even thought about it until we were actually there that when we got to South Alabama on Friday or no Saturday last …

Dreary, but he had his is a good day in so many different ways. I mean, after all, if we lived a Oh a couple of hundred years ago, we’d have to deal with the cold inside the building. And so we have a nice place to come and to that’s warm and a place out of the, out of the shelter. I remember one of the trips that we made to Ukraine that, that particular Sunday morning, it was well in Ukraine. It was customary and only wear a suit even when it was a super, super cold. And so I don’t remember how cold it was, but I know that it was ice all over the outside and, and snow piled up. Great big piles of size of houses and no heat in the auditorium where we were. And so everybody was all bundled up, but it was my turn to preach and got up in the suit. Just what I’m wearing right now and preached just did whatever was necessary, but it was cold. I’ll tell you for sure. So we, we don’t have that and we can be really thankful that we don’t have to deal with those kinds of things. And there are other places in the world, I think about Costa Rica, that they have metal buildings that they meet in the summertime. And you can imagine a hot, it was, I remember one time though it rained and you couldn’t hear the speaker. …

So I can see you not look through it. It is certainly my privilege to be here this morning and to be a part of this congregation, I didn’t know what we would find over here, you know, and as far as ice and those kinds of things, basically the first mile away from our house and our subdivision and getting out toward the highway, it was, it was pretty bad. And I thought, well, I’m not sure about this, but we got through the highway and it was pretty well clear from there on out until we got into town over on this end. So anyway, it was pretty clear as most of you probably know that my work has changed. The, my work with the Bible Institute of Missouri actually ended last Wednesday with the giving of the finals. Although I did some other work on Thursday for, for them to kind of help out a little bit. But anyway, my work with them has ended and I have taken on the responsibility of being the administrative director of the online Academy of biblical studies. Brother, Ted Thrasher has been struggling with health problems for a really a couple of years. And they tried to work it out, work, maintain that, but it has not been able to be done. And so they asked me to actually, when I resigned from BIM, they got word of that. And then they ask me to go full-time with the online …

Certainly grateful for your presence this evening, as you know, our numbers were down this morning. And so we fully anticipated that they would be down again tonight. Not quite as much as I thought, maybe. So we are certainly grateful for you being here. Sister Costco was not feeling good this morning. The reasons she was not here and she’s not here again tonight, but also Keith, let me know that she received word today that her mother passed away. If she had lived till the 25th, I think you said the 25th, she would have been a hundred years old, but fortunately she was not having health issues and she just faded away. And certainly that’s one of the best ways to go if you’re going to go. But certainly remember Costco and her family and your prayers, if you would, He became a Christian, her mother<inaudible> That’s. That’s great. Yeah. Okay. That’s that’s great. Statistics show us that older individuals are less likely to obey the gospel than those who are younger. They are set in their ways. And so when you hear of someone who’s up in their seventies and their eighties or something like that, and they obey the gospel, it, it certainly, of course it always causes us joy. It should anyway. But to hear somebody that is up in age like that, that realizes that they’ve not done what they need to do and to make the proper preparations for heaven. That’s certainly …

Well that you are able to be here. We know that there are several from the congregation who are not able to be here this morning. We’re assuming because of the weather, but we certainly want to remember them in prayer and hope that they’ll be able to be with us very soon. Let me, first of all, begin with an announcement that I intended to make last week and forgot about it. Most of you know that at the end of this week, Cheryl and I, and my mother and brother are going to be going down to Florida for the Florida school of preaching lectureship, which begins next Lord’s day morning. And I always try to make you aware of what the theme of the lectureship is. And also let you know concerning the fact that they produce a lectureship book each year, the theme this year is going to be on. Do you understand the relationship of the Christian to the civil state or the Christian to the government? And so if you are interested in a copy of the lectureship book, if you will let me know, I’ll be more than happy to pick one up and bring it back. The regular price is $16, but as I mentioned Wednesday night for the last few years, they have offered that if you bought four of the books, you paid for three and got the fourth one free. And if they do that again this year, then …