Welcome, welcome, welcome to Gateway Church. Welcome to those of you that are watching at every campus, every gathering and watching online today and welcome to you here at the South Lake campus. I'm honored to be back speaking to you.

I want to give you a quick update on my dad as he mentioned a couple weeks ago. He preached through it, but he had he lifted something heavy and ended up tearing a muscle in his, what's this thing called right here?

Hamstring, and thank you, and this is a rough start already guys. I can't remember hamstring, so he pulled the muscle in his hamstring and it swelled up really bad, blood internally, and then all that blood trickled down to his feet, which then caused the nerves to inflame.

It's a really hard medical term to say, I think the abbreviation is RSD or something like that, and so his foot swelled up and it caused the nerves to go crazy. He described it as like as if your basement in your house is flooding and your house starts banging against the walls trying to get your attention, like just a significant amount of pain in his leg.

And so you hear pulled hamstring and you think like, okay, that's a pretty simple thing. I'm going to show you some pictures. We debated, I just met with everyone back there, because well number one, I don't want to faint in front of you, so it's not bloody or anything like that, but if you're squeamish at all, you might not want to look at this, but I just want to give you an idea of what actually is going on in his foot.

So this first picture is when it really started to swell, get ready, here it is. It swelled up really bad, turned black and blue. Here's the next picture, it's kind of a progression of that.

And then here's a picture that he took yesterday, and you can see that the swelling has gone down significantly, but it almost looks like he has a sunburn, and that's because of the inflamed nerves that are going on. He's on some medicine that is going to relieve the pressure on those nerves and has already caused the swelling to go down.

He's keeping his leg propped up, and so he's doing great though, recovering, and so he's feeling great, and we'll be back next week to start that series that we just heard about, which is the seven churches of Revelation.

He told me a little bit about it. He's been spending a lot of time sitting in bed, keeping his feet propped up, and what does a preacher do when he's got nothing else to do is study a lot.

I was so excited to hear what he's going to talk about. You're definitely going to want to hear this message, and that series starts next week, so make sure that you're here for that. We would love for you to be a part of that.

Let me just give you a quick update as well. Dan mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. My family and I, we have been living for about the last year in Amartillo, Texas, and we just, over the last couple of weeks, moved back here to the area. We're excited about that.

It's been great. It's been a good move. God has worked out all the plans. It was very quick, and so we had to rush to get the kids into a school and find a rental house around here so that we could move in on time for them to go to school.

We put them into a Christian school here in the area, and they're doing great and loving that. Hannah, my wife, accepted a job at an organization called Embrace Grace. Many of you will know that name because it was birthed right out of Gateway Church, started from a small group right here, and now has grown to be a ministry that impacts people all over the country.

It is literally her dream job. It is her favorite thing in the world, and she's doing such great work. If you don't know about Embrace Grace, they help mothers who find themselves in unexpected pregnancies and do not have a support system around them.

It's a very important work, something that I'm very passionate about, and I'll tell you a little bit more about it actually a little bit later, but Hannah is doing great and enjoying that.

My daughter is 11. She's here on the front row, and she's the funniest person I've ever met. I was thinking about taking her to improv and see if they let her do a couple minutes of stand-up because she has me in stitches every day. She's so funny.

Grady is 14. He is fully 14. He is fully a teenager, and that means that he smells bad sometimes. He acts like a teenager. I got permission to share this from him.

He's here with his friend, Judah, and I recently from Judah came up to Amorillo and hung out with us there for a little while, and so I drove from Amorillo back here to drop Judah off, and we were going to spend some time in Tim.

That's about a five-hour drive, and for no less than two weeks, my car smelled like a boy's locker room after that.

We're making the drive, and I was already stressed out. I like to keep my truck really clean, and these dudes had whole meals. I don't know if they had a microwave back there. They were making microwave meals and stuff. They were eating constantly, and the trash was flying everywhere. The drinks were spilling everywhere.

Then soon enough, they said, hey, can we pull over and stop at a gas station, and so I said, yeah, sure. I'm thinking they have to go to the bathroom because they've been eating and drinking like crazy. We get to the gas station, and they just start loading up on snacks. They were already hungry again, so they're just like a bottomless pit, and so they come out with all these snacks, and some like, okay, let's buy all these snacks.

We get back in the car. We're not two more hours down the road. They're like, hey, can we stop at the gas station? Like, finally, they do have to go to the bathroom. We stop. They just want more food. That was it. That was the entire trip. It was an expensive trip for me. I took out a small loan. I got a really good interest rate. It was fine. That's all they do. Just constantly, that's all they do.

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