January 11th, look at that, the first month is almost half gone already. Time is just a little army that continues to march on, never to return. It’s cold again this morning, at 26 degrees. It could be worse of course. I can’t complain about a sky full of sunshine and little to no wind. 

We lost another parishioner last evening. The fellow was two years older than me and has had almost a year of cancer. He was really a nice guy; — quiet, unassuming, a farmer. He owned the property that surrounds St. Lucas church. In fact back a hundred years ago, his people donated the ground that St. Lucas was built on in 1921 after they small group of folks broke away from St. Paul’s. The cancer had really taken its toll on him and he was well prepared and ready to pass on. Our prayers for comfort are sent to his family. Ms. Kate and I have enjoyed sitting in the car in the church parking lot, eating lunch and watching he and his son drive back and forth across the fields with the different farm implements as they prepare the soil, planted the seed, and then harvested the crop. We’re going to miss him. Now the farm falls on the son to pick up the whole thing. I’ don’t know how he is going to manage because the son has a full time job outside of farming, and they farm about 400 acres I think. I haven’t heard any funeral plans just yet but suspect we will do either a Thursday or Friday funeral. 

We went and joined Costco yesterday. We thought we might give it a one year try. Frankly —— having walked through the store, I’m not the least bit impressed. The only thing I can really say about it is that it was a very clean store. But then, it should be. The place is only a year old. But for all the rows  of stuff, it didn’t seem to me that they had much. In fact, the thing that we joined for wasn’t in the store at all. I ordered that and paid for it on line last night through their web sight. Sam’s seems to have a lot more stuff but then Sam’s is also more crowded in their layout. I guess it’s a toss up. We got the basic membership so we will see how we feel about it in a year. 

We also did an on-line grocery order from Meijer’s yesterday and picked that up. After we got home and put stuff away Ms. Kate started taking a mental inventory of what we had received and not received. It turns out that we only received about half of our order although we had paid for the whole order. She called them and wen through the list and their excuse was that “they were out of this and that.” But, they had not told us any of that, and charged us for the whole order. Their excuse made no sense at all. For instance, she had ordered three loaves of bread, and they gave us one; but didn’t have two more??? She ordered three bags of chips and they gave us one, and didn’t have any more??? Anyway, we are supposed to be getting a refund of our money for the items we did not receive. They wanted to give us “in-store coupons” for the difference and she said “no”. You can’t use those for on-line shopping and she doesn’t want to go in the store. I’m thinking we won’t be going back to Meijer any time soon. I personally think it was a careless and lazy employee pulling the order. That employee just cost the company money; not that that employee cares one bit. But, it’s a shame. We enjoyed the experience and the ease of shopping that way. 

Ms. Kate is getting ready to do laundry today and I’m heading downstairs to my office to write a funeral message and work on a sermon. I hope you have a blessed day. Peace.