He'll have his on the rocks.

It was at this very spot 2 1/2 years ago that we dropped 4 rocks down into a hole.  I wrote about it the next day:

The Golfer and I stood with the boys right on the edge of the hole. I couldn't help but be moved by the moment. God is beyond cool and amazing. He brought us here to California when everyone thought it was a crazy (i.e., stupid) idea. But we had faith. We knew that we were following God's will for our lives and as stupid (i.e., crazy) as it seemed, we did it anyway.

And you know what? He has blessed us like crazy in the last year and a half, giving us all that we could want or hope for. He brought us through a time when all we could do was look at each other and say, "What the heck are we doing?" to now being at a point where things are pretty close to perfect in our little corner of the world and all we can do is praise Him, feeling God's parental sense of humor as he says, "I told you so."

Now here we were, standing on holy ground--ground that will be used to do God's work, ground that He was asking us to invest in and be a part of. With our little rocks we were getting to be a part of something bigger than ourselves--creating an altar for the Lord to say, "Thank You God, for all that you've given me!" and to top it off, committing ourselves--in cement--to our new church home.

Standing over the hole, I closed my eyes to pray. I prayed that people would be drawn into this building, just the way the sign had drawn us in. I prayed that the people who are, like we were, searching for a new church home or perhaps their first church home, will drive by this ultra-cool, eco-church (yep, our church is very environmentally friendly) and be compelled to walk in and check it out.

Most importantly, I prayed that our sons will come to know Christ in a real and personal way in this new building, and that the next time that we would be standing here in this very spot it would be when my boys are being baptized.

889 days later, this happened.  (Not that I was counting.)

The 888 days prior to that moment we had stood in that spot many times:

eating donuts every Sunday before church.

visiting with friends from our Life Group.

enjoying coffee on the patio.

signing up to sponsor a little boy through Children of the Nations.

helping to pack 100,000 meals to feed people in places like Uganda and Haiti.

That spot was a good spot.  Of course it was--it was built on a bunch of rocks.

So did our son's baptism come as a surprise?  No.  Because God can do anything.  And with all of the craziness we've experienced lately with the Big Cheese, this wonderful, joyful occasion couldn't have come at a better time.  We have been praying for our boys to develop a deep and lasting friendship with Jesus from the moment they were both born.  I had assumed that their baptisms would probably fall into their early teenage years somewhere.  Oh how wrong I was.  And never in my life have I been so happy to be wrong in my whole life.

In the baptism packet that the Cheese filled out, he gave some of the following answers,

He died on the cross for us to have eternal life.

He wants me to spread the word about him.

Jesus will always be with me.

The only way to go to Heaven is through Jesus's heart.

His answers left no question: this kid was ready to be baptized.  The best part was the fact that the Golfer got to be the one to baptize him, who had been baptized by his father, officially making it a Freeman Family Tradition.

One down.  One to go.