Hot Like Tortillas: Smith Summer in San Luis Obispo (Recap #3)

Hi Friends and Family,

We are halfway through our SLO Summer and it is going fast! Some highlights from the past few weeks:

*We stayed one week in Morro Bay with our new friends Chip & Beth Appel while the Medlocks hosted friends from out of town. The Appel's house is within sight of the beach, and it was much cooler there. Chip is a deacon at Trinity Church and he took Dan out surfing our last day with them. Chip is a soil sciences professor at Cal-Poly and loves to teach, so Dan had a great time learning surfing - which is hard!!

*We took a guided tour of Cal-Poly this past week. It's a beautiful campus and it was hopefully good to hear a refresher about college life and what students are thinking about as they come to college. (Lots of questions about sharing bathrooms and what the dorm food is like!) I'm sure people were wondering why we were on the tour since we don't look 18ish and the only kid we have is obviously in utero.

*Dan has been working on his next sermon as well as putting together a plan for Trinity to launch a small group ministry in the fall. He's been reading over resources and talking with Jon and other Trinity members to try and put something together that is both educationally and theologically robust but also in line with Trinity's context and church personality. He's reading Simple Church by Thom Rainer. Dan also helped plan a men's event which is happening right now (Saturday morning). They are kayaking and having lunch on a sand bar and had lots of men sign up to go, which is great.

*Brittany has helped Laurabeth lead a book discussion over the past two weeks over the book Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. So far they all really like the book. Brittany even wrote a case study for the first week to help the discussion get going.

*Other things: baseball games, yummy mexican food, more jamba juice, beer tastings, fireworks, and lots of fellowship.

Prayer Requests:

THIS WEEK! We travel to Atlanta for RUF Assessment. We are really excited about this and looking forward to how God will use this to help give us direction in our future call to ministry. Please pray that we wouldn't be anxious, and that we would be honest and candid with the assessors, and not try to be anybody but ourselves. Pray for patience and energy, for us as well as the assessors, as we've heard it can be an intense three days of hard questions and thoughtful reflection.

Also continue to pray for Dan's sermon preparation and delivery tomorrow. He preaches at least two more times after this as well.

Pray for Brittany and Jonah's continued health - Brittany had a stomach bug last week but is pretty much back to 100% now. Brittany is also traveling to St. Louis for a Dr. appointment before returning to SLO next week. Pray that all the tests turn out normal :)

We think we probably still have some money to raise, but we'll find out for sure next week at Assessment how much we still need.

Thank you all for your prayers!
Love,

Dan & Brittany