Kansas City

We left at 4:30am Saturday for the trip to Kansas City to visit IHOP. That is NOT the pancake IHOP, it is International House of Prayer. Our first stop was the prayer room. we stayed a few hours just enjoying the singing and praying. IHOP has a coffee shop in the same building, in fact right next door, so some of the group made their way over for some wonderful java.
David rented 2 apartments for us, they were in different buildings but the buildings were adjacent so it was not too far of a walk. We couldn't check in until after 5:00pm. Our 2 bedroom apartment had one bedroom with a queen bed and the other bedroom had 4 bunk beds and the living room had a nice big couch. Ben, Taunya, and Addyson took the queen, Sarah and Maria Kellenberger took the second bedroom and I took the couch. David and Stephanie's had one queen bed and the other bedroom had twin beds. Phil and Anna slept in the second bedroom and just moved the twin beds together but the way I heard it, that didn't work out too well, the beds kept moving apart and Philip kept rolling into the crack. Once we were settled we met Philip and Tom Kellenberger at a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Our food was good and plentiful. Phil Kellenberger is a 4th year student at the IHOP school and Tom Kellenberger is a first year student. They told us some wonderful stories about the school, IHOP and the awakening going on right now. After dinner everyone came over to our apartment for some sweet and funny fellowship. We crashed about 10:00pm and even Addyson slept for the entire night. Mom called early this morning to tell us that Julie and Chad Herman, Beth's son, had their baby girl around 4:30am and all is well. She was 8 pounds 6 ounces and they named her Livy.
Sarah and I walked over to the prayer room before breakfast to prepare ourselves for the church service. We saw David there also. David asked me if during the church service they announce that someone here has a bad right hip and come up so it could be healed would I go up? I said of course I would and I kept waiting for that to happen. I don't know if I was worried they actually might call that out, but deep down I was kind of hoping they would. Oh well, Paul had his thorn in the flesh.
Breakfast was actually at the pancake IHOP and again the food was good and filling. The church service at IHOP was very different from what I was used to but good. The song service was a lot of Christmas carols and the minister talked about Mary getting the news from Gabriel, then how Herod tried to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. He made the analogy that our government is voting on Christmas Eve to try to pass the health bill which is just another way to fund abortions. I've never thought of Christmas in that light. At the end of the service there was more praise songs.
My children asked me if I would be interested in going again and truthfully, I would rather be in my own church.
We left for home right after the service and were making great time until 36 miles to Springfield, IL. The roads turned bad and we crawled along for miles. Our 6 hour trip down took 8 1/2 hours to get home.
I'm glad to be home.