| A sermon Gene preached in June 2018 : (the sound doesn't start 'til about :22 seconds into it) |
| 2018 |
| We're in the middle of constructing this page. Why don't you go down and click/advance to an older page of recent news . . . \/ \/ \/ |
| Matt n' Amber's Birthdays (July 30 and August 3) are so close we usually celebrate them together |
| Landon digs the sting rays and sharks at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago |
| Gabby, Ariel, and Jonan, the Florida Smillies, love to have their Daddy pick them up and THROW them high in the air over the water. They have all become "fish" who are at home under water. |
| Meanwhile in Illinois, Matt Smillie (who also seems to put in over 60 hrs/week in his remodelling and construction business) and his Amber and Landon, also come over once in a while to our apartment complex to enjoy the pool as well |
| Gene still gets to teach a couple of New Testament courses / year at Trinity and a course or two / year of modern history or Asian Religions at University of Phoenix |
| . . . and gets to preach maybe once every couple months (would like to a lot more, both teaching and preaching, so we hope doors will open for both) |
| Trinity University REACH Program has also asked Gene each of the past six years to do an assessment of both their Christian Ministries, and their Liberal Arts, departments reading and assessing dozens of students' final papers and making suggestions . |
| And, I continue as Director of Adult Education at Lombard Bible Church of the C&MA We have four different 9 a.m. Sunday classes to offer our folks; I teach one of them myself, about half of each year. |
| We Smillies do love Chinese food and it seems like a go-to for birthday celebrations |
| Matt |
| Gene |
| Malcolm |
| Susan |
| Landon |
| Cookie Monster |
| If you've known Susie over the years, you might be surprised to read that she has not been teaching over the past year or so, just a bit of tutoring here and there, and some ESL on a private level with a few Spanish speaking folks. She cranks out a couple of books read a week, and is catching up on all the old TV series we missed while we were overseas as missionaries! Ha! I (Gene) think she deserves a break, after watching her bustin' her butt for so many years helping bring in the bacon for our perpetually under-funded Smillie family enterprise. But I bet she'll get restless after awhile and want to "do something" again. So I hope it is something that makes use of her two Master's Degrees and her years of experience in church ministry and teaching. |
| Our son Dave in Florida works about 80 hours/week divided between full time work for the city of Melbourne & full time studies, towards a career in nursing. He's also a very caring & devoted father, and husband. Don't know how he does it. I'd be exhausted. |
| . . . where there are links to more stuff than even my Mother would want to look at |
| Recently Susan brought home a crate of strawberries in which EVERY. Single. One. of them was perfect Just sliced 'em, froze em -- blend with yogurt for smoothies, or put 'em on waffles . . . |
| Never seen anything like this -- Not one of 300 or so berries had to be selectively carved, thrown away, or saved to ripen later |
| We're MOVING. Packing up and moving about 12 miles to a condominium in WHEATON. Appears to be a real God-send site . . . ground floor, facing south, very near all the familiar stuff, on the edge of a nice big park in town. |
| Right now we're up to our necks in packing. I've concluded, after moving some dozens of time in life, that the last 10% of the process takes AS MUCH TIME AS the first 90%. All those diddly little scraps of daily existence that you put off deciding what to do with . . . . . . and then, just as you're running out of time, you've got to deal with ALL of 'em at once. |
| Some items on these shelves are over 4000 years old ! I'm not kidding. Some of those ceramic shards and jug handles have been dated to the time of Abraham. The one with Hebrew characters etched into it (at about 7 o'clock in this pic) is from the time of Jeremiah (about 600 B.C.). I suppose that's my rationale for "keeping 'em a li'l bit longer." [Works for me ] |
| September |