Community Gathering

Today, David is writing on the blog....

I would like to talk about our family outing to east Portland today. Normally, we attend New Song Community Church in NE Portland. A couple days ago, we were invited to spend some time in fellowship with some old friends who have started a new church farther east in Portland. This was a celebration of their new church building. It was encouraging to see how God works everything out. There are now three churches sharing this same building and they were all present at this gathering. Before they had this building, one of the churches had been meeting in a cafeteria. It was great to see churches come together and work together for God's glory.

Because there was lots of food, all the Sheppard kids had a blast. There was also face painting and various other activities made everyone present a "friend" in the eyes of even the youngest Sheppard, Naomi. Sadly, she didn't have the patience to wait in line for face painting. Instead, she got several temporary tattoos which she adored. A frog and a rainbow were the ones she most admired and showed to all of her "friends". While we were there, Naomi missed her nap. This means that when we finally piled back into the family bus, she quickly fell asleep. Everyone else was tired also. However, the candy kept everyone awake and made the trip back home quite exciting. Forty minutes of sugar induced laughter surprisingly didn't wake Naomi, but Mom and Dad needed to stop at Starbucks. Hillsboro seemed far away and coffee was necessary. I'm sure you understand.