A Feast Fit For A Beast

About 150 men joined us last night for our Annual Beast Feast. We were treated to some of the most savory 'wild' dishes you could ask for: Deer Chili, Wild Boar Jambalaya, Deer Stew and Duck and Sausage Gumbo. After our Men's Ministry Director, Devin (T-Frog) Lantier, opened things up with a welcome, some laughs and a prayer, we all got to dig in! The food was delicious!

The girls in my office - My sister Holane and her assistant Arlene - Really had the place looking good! The decorated with duck decoys, mounted trophy bucks, lanterns on the tables as center pieces, deer feeders, duck blinds and everything you can think of to make the hunters feel at home. As the guys gathered early, they had the opportunity to test their shooting skills on the Wii with some hunting games and the ever-popular BB Gun Skeet Shooting.

After a duck calling contest and a few more jokes, Devin turned the Mic over to me and I shared a brief challenge with our guys. Then it was off to the cafe where we held table-game tournaments: Billiards, Ping Pong, Spades and Dominos. About half the guys stuck around for the tournaments and had a lot of fun!

We are blessed with some wonderful men in our church. Men who love God and love their families and want to make a difference in their world. It's so much fun getting together with them at events like this to spend some time together. I realize that many churches don't have a strong group of men like we have and I never want to take it for granted! Pictured here is one of the cooks for last night's event - My good friend Ken Lantier.

Sonny Side Up

Well, my little man turned sixteen yesterday. Like it's been since the day he was born, his mom had his day lined out for him. They had a 4-H event the first half of the day and a Home School event last night. Last night's event was a costume party. Chase went as a fried egg, Robin went as a hippie. I asked Donna what her costume was going to be and she said she was the chick that laid the egg! (The perfect response on the birthday of the boy in the egg costume!) I'm so thankful for Chase. He's a wonderful young man who loves God and is a real joy to live with. He is smart and funny and I'm very proud of him! (Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a proud rooster!) Okay - No more poultry puns. Happy birthday Chase - you're an 'eggstrodinary' young man!

Who Dat?

I can't believe the day has finally arrived! The day I've been waiting for since I was just a little boy: The Saints are going to the Super Bowl! No more jokes about Hell freezing over and signs of the Apocalypse! The boys in black and gold are for real!

You have to realize, this has been forty-three years in the making and I've witnessed it all: The early days with Archie Manning that had moments of greatness, but just never could quite get us there. (Isn't it ironic that the Saints first Super Bowl appearance will be against Archie's son Payton? No sentimental feelings here - drive him in the dirt!)

Then there were the long, embarrassing years of sack-wearing misery as the home team lost game after game. In the eighties; Ricky Jackson, Bobby Hebert and the boys gave us a glimmer of hope - getting us into the post season, but still - No Super Bowl. The Benson Boogie would always end a few yards short of the big game! We began to think the team was cursed. We began to think that the New Orleans French Quarter voodoo stood in the way of any hope of victory!

Then it happened: Katrina washed the curse on down the Mississippi River and fate brought us the likes of Sean Payton, Reggie Bush, Drew Brees, Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Jeremy Shockey, Darren Sharper and so many more!

Last night, I screamed myself hoarse as our New Orleans Saints won a hard-fought battle in the Louisiana Super Dome against Brett Farve and The Minnesota Vikings, advancing to Miami to play in Super Bowl XLIV!

The days of watching through the eye-holes of our brown paper bags as those dynasties emerge in Pittsburgh, Dallas, San Francisco and New England while our beloved Saints remain the laughing stock of the NFL are officially over! Perhaps we are watching the emergence of a new dynasty right here in New Orleans? Who dat?

A Greater Tragedy Than Haiti

What could be more tragic than the Haitian earthquake? What if I told you that the disaster I refer to had more than fifty MILLION victims? What if I told you they were ALL children? Imagine that I told you the disaster could have been avoided all together but people chose to let it happen. Suppose that I told you that the same politicians and celebrities who are so compassionately speaking out for the victims of Haiti are actually in favor of the calamity I refer to. They actually passed laws to permit it. The disaster? Abortion. Since Roe verses Wade in 1973 there have been over 50 million babies aborted. What makes the loss of life in Haiti more grievous than the loss of these innocent children? Where are the relief efforts? Where is the compassion? Where are the telethons raising money to end the suffering? We dare question God's character and how he could allow what's happened in Haiti? I suspect God has a few questions of His own. How could we let abortion happen? There's no doubt that God's heart breaks over the human suffering in Haiti. His heart also breaks over the selfish butchery taking place in abortion mills across America and around the world - A greater tragedy than even something as horrible as what's happened in Haiti.