After church today, we headed out to the VFW in Leander to attend the Companeros annual BBQ Cookoff. The weather was moderate today, warm enough to be comfortable, but not hot enough to bake us. We arrived a bit late, so I’m not sure how many competitors there were in the cookout, but Debbie and I managed to visit at least five, and get samples while pretending to… I mean while actually taking pictures of BBQ. I noticed one particularly interesting activity, the hatchet throw. The idea is you throw a hatchet and if it lands on a card on the board, you get a prize. Well one of the guys was training his young son in the process. Needless to say the kid loved it. Don’t freak out, he was very careful, and no children, adults or cards were injured in the process. I have include photos of two of the winning cooker, but again, I seem to be a bit slow, so I didn’t get all the winners. Sorry! And finally, Companeros Tilt was setup to shoot portraits, so several people, including Debbie and I had our picture taken. I have seen his work, and he is an excellent Professional Photographer. I can hardly wait to see the results. Tilt said it would be a couple of week.

We dropped by the Christian Unity meeting this evening for some good food and fellowship at the Spring Hill Restaurant. We had a small group this evening, but we got some good teaching from Honor Bound Hoss on being transparent and letting God reach the world around us as He works through us. Good Stuff!

Today we had out monthly UCOA meeting, and this month it was up at Ernie’s Bentwood Texas event center in Georgetown. As usual, it was well attended. We had lots of socializing, and the meeting went well as usual. The only bad thing was we had a couple of riders go down after leaving the meeting. They will be ok, only one broken bone we know of, but y’all be careful out there!

Debbie and I went to the TMRA meeting today up at the VFW in Harker Heights after joining Don and Susan for lunch at Rosa’s Tortilla Factory in Killeen. This was basically a planning meeting, so while it wasn’t very exiting, it was good to see friends we haven’t seen in a while. Just a few pictures today;

Are you strong? Yes, I know many of you are very strong. I have seen your tattooed arms, and I have seen that some of them are as big as your neck. You are strong, physically. I on the other hand I am a wimp, physically. I don’t enter arm wrestling competitions because there would be no point.

But there is another kind of strength that we can also have, and that is emotional strength. We men don’t talk about emotions much, but we do have them. We often tend to keep them hidden because showing emotion can often be viewed as weakness, but emotional strength allows us to get things done that we might not otherwise be able to do. It enables us to keep driving toward a goal when our body wants to quit. But emotional strength, like physical strength has it’s limits. If you keep driving forward and everything around you keeps spiraling downward toward disaster, then eventually we will breakdown and maybe end up in a hospital emotionally destroyed. It is one thing to be physically exhausted, but it is quite another to be emotionally exhausted.

We can and should turn to our brothers for help before things get that bad, but again, as men we sometimes find it difficult to express weakness, even to our brothers. But then what is brotherhood for? It’s not just about chest bumping and arm wrestling, it is about family, and being there to help out a brother when they are in need. And so we do help our brother when they are hurting. They may even have made some bad decisions that made the situation worse, but we help them anyway, because they are family.

But sometimes, even family can’t help. A great as it is to be part of a family, sometimes they don’t have any answers for our problems. But there is someone who always has answers, and they always have the right answers. In our strength we often ignore God because after all we can handle it, so why bother God with my problem, but when we do that we are pushing away the best friend we can have. We are saying I don’t need you, and frankly that is a lie. We do need God, because there are things in this life we cannot handle. There are times when we need help our brothers and family cannot provide. And, being real here, God doesn’t want to just help us when we are in a hopeless situation, He wants to have a relationship with us in the good times too.

God is always available when we need Him;

Psalm 34:18-19 “The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope. Good people suffer many troubles, but the Lord saves them from them all.”

He is Strong and He will protect us;

In Isaiah 41:10 God says “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

And finally, when we trust in God, it brings Him Joy;

Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival”

I for one am going to trust in God, how about you?