The Birth Of Hope

As I mentioned last week, I was thrilled to preach under the Tabernacle at St. Thomas. I had been looking forward to being at that meeting to sing, but I never really thought about the joy of preaching outside again.  

First, I did not know I would be preaching during the meeting and second, I was mostly concerned about the possibility of excessive heat. The meeting has a well earned reputation of being a hot one.

Here I am after service, which I preached, Sunday night.

So once I learned I would be preaching the previous week, I never considered all it would mean to me. As I was preaching Sunday night, I was nearly overwhelmed by emotion that I was actually preaching outdoors.

Earlier this year it was highly uncertain IF I would ever stand behind a pulpit and preach anywhere, much less under a tabernacle in a camp meeting. I have been emotional about it ever since and thankful to God for bringing me a mighty long way!

It is not exactly the same as preaching under a Gospel tent as I have many hundreds of nights, but it sure was nice and felt mighty good. I may never be able to set up a tent and preach under it again, but this meeting dared me to hope.

Hope never hurt anyone. Thank you for stopping by.

Davy

Crazy Spam Comments

Spam, Spam, Spam. I love the food Spam grilled on a sandwich with cheese and Mayo but I do not particularly care for the comment Spam.

I receive several bogus comments every week on the blog. Sometimes I receive a dozen or more per day. They always include a link to their "personal" website. The website may be something deeply inappropriate or a site that is phishing for your personal information. There is no way I am going to publish comments with all of that.

Every comment comes to me by email first and I can usually tell by their halting English that it is spam before I even see the link. They will use the wrong word in a sentence and I can tell they are not familiar with English. They say something like, "I really like the information I glanced." (Should be saw) or "You gift me a great insight." (Should be gave).

Other times they are so crazy mixed up that I can not make heads or tails of them. 
Example: 

Definitely consider that that you stated. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the internet the simplest thing to take into account of. I say to you, I definitely get annoyed whilst other folks consider worries that they plainly don't recognize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the highest as neatly as defined out the whole thing without having side effects, folks could take a signal. Will probably be again to get more. Thank you, Here is my website.

This one came in this week and made me laugh out loud.

An outstanding share! I've just forwarded this onto a friend who was doing a little research on this. And he actually bought me breakfast due to the fact that I stumbled upon it for him... lol. So let me reword this.... Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this topic here on your web page. Visit my page here.

Wow! I did not know my writing was that good. If people are buying meals for others that send them to my site it sure looks like I ought to be able to make a living at this writing thing. Yeah right!

 Can you see all that I go through for you millions of readers?

Hey, maybe we should have a contest. Let's see who can write the craziest spam comments and still make it onto the blog. How about a new "He Came - The Gospel of Christmas" CD to the craziest comment as decided by the other commenters. OK, all Five million of you battle it out!

IF you link to a suspicious website you do not stand a chance! Lol

I hope you are having a good weekend.

Davy

The Winner of Our New CD

Julie Stephens from Calotype Photography designed several covers for our new CD. They were all good but one of them really stood out for us. We posted a contest last week giving readers a chance to guess which cover we had chosen and win a free CD. We had decided on #4 and six commenters guessed the CD cover that we had chosen.

We need to do these contests more often. The pictures of Odie drawing names is worth the price of admission. She is hilarious. She wants to make sure it is plainly evident that she is not peeking. Can you tell if she is peeking or not?

And the winner is Jennifer Blevins!

Jennifer, send us an email with your mailing address and we will send you our new CD, He Came - The Gospel of Christmas as soon we get them in.

If anybody would like to pre-order you can find out how to do that HERE.

Thanks for everything, friends!

Davy

davykellyandodie@gmail.com

The Winner is?

Thank you for all of the comments about our CD Cover Design. Your participation makes it fun!

We had guesses for every cover but #1. I am sure that #1 feels like a dork. I think you looked great #1. Keep your head up, pal.

Julie did a great job on all of them but the cover we chose is #4.


 Out of 20 guesses, 6 of you chose #4 as well.

We will put the names of all the correct guessers in a hat and Odie will scientifically draw out the winning name.

I will let you know the winner on Thursday. Thanks again for your participation. If the rest of the millions of readers would like to have the new CD you can learn how to pre-order HERE.

Davy

CD Cover Design

Yesterday I posted about our pictures for the CD from Imprints Photography by dee. She did a super job with the subjects she had to deal with and we appreciate it so much. We had to have good pictures in a short  amount of time and Dee came through.

But that is only the first very important crucial step in the process.

The second step is to translate those pictures into some kind of workable design. The cover needs to look sharp, catch the eye, contain the right information without being crowded, sell a million CDs and hopefully have a little fun in the process! (Selling a million CDs would probably be pretty fun.)

All of that is way above our pay grade. So what to do? The only thing a person could do is turn to the resident expert in all things photography and design, Julie Stephens from Calotype Photography in Neosho, Missouri.

For all the reasons I explained yesterday, we were working against an impossibly tight schedule but thankfully Julie waved her wand and made it all work some how and some way. In just a little while she was sending us amazing creations and we were staring in wonder at what she had done.

Folks, I am not exaggerating when I say that Julie Stephens is one of the most gifted and talented persons I know. She has applied herself to learning her craft and she has learned it well. I am sure she might object to all of this praise but I am trying to convey much more that mere flattery. She really is that good.

It is true that we consider Julie and her husband John as very good friends. They are dear to us and we love and appreciate them so much. We love preaching revivals in their home church and love getting to spend time with them in and out of church.

But these compliments are more than blind friendship. Julie really is awesome. Thank you, Julie, for putting your heart into what you do. It really comes through in your work and we get to benefit from it. 

I am going to post a few examples of ideas that Julie came up with. None of these are a completed project but they offer ideas of what can be done. To my eye every one of them would work perfectly on our new CD. Like I said, Julie is awesome. Visit the website of Calotype Photography and see for yourself.

One of these below is the design that we chose for the CD cover. It has some slight changes but it is very, very close to the one we sent to the printer. Can you guess which one we chose? What is your favorite? I feel a contest coming on. You ready for a contest?

If you choose the correct design for our new CD cover I will put your name into a hat, have Odie draw out a winner and send you one of the very first new CDs we receive. (We should have them by August 1st at the latest.) You must make your selection in the comments below this blog in the next 3-4 days to be eligible to win.

Now, a few of our regular readers have already seen the design we chose. Sorry, you can not win but you will probably end up with a free CD anyway.

Well, what are you waiting for? Start guessing. 

Davy

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10 Years On The Road in Pictures 2005 & 2006

Here are a few pictures from 2005 and 2006. We are loving going through these old pictures and remembering all of the good times with family and friends. There is also a little contest included at the end of the post. I hope you enjoy.

You can read the post marking 10 consecutive years on the road for our family right HERE. The first installment of pictures from the last 10 years is HERE.

Pictures From 2005

Boggs Family Reunion

Driving the truck and trailer through a Redwood tree in California. Trust me there are pictures of this from excited tourist all over Asia.

Odie's 20th Birthday in Atlanta, Georgia

At Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park

Odie in the hospital in Pensacola, Florida

The Redwoods in California

An RV Park near Seattle

Davy, Kelly and David Riddell in Sullivan, Missouri

Recording "Simple Truth" CD

I think it is time for a little contest. Let's use the first two pictures of this post. First, tell me who the girl with the beautiful hairdo is with Kelly Jo in the first picture. Second, tell me where Odie is in the second picture. 

We will send a CD to the person that leaves a the first comment on this post with BOTH answers correct. You will have to be really good to know both answers. We will keep the contest open through Saturday or until we receive a correct answer. Guesses welcome...

Update: There were no winners. I guess I made it a little too hard. Several guessed by comment and text the identity of the girl with Kelly Jo and only two people guessed by text message where Odie was in the picture. The girl was Sarah Blanton (Paul Blanton's daughter) and Odie was in a gym on the property of Mitchell Boggs near La Russell, Missouri. Thanks for participating.

Davy