T-Bo & the Smoker Bells

Saturday, November 23, 2013, dawned chilly and overcast, but that didn’t stop a group of enthusiastic chefs entered into the Third Annual Turkey Cookoff as sponsored by Eloisa Newsome of Josie’s. Five official entrants plus 1 unofficial (Joe Newsome) braved the somewhat inclement weather to prepare their prize winning or almost prize winning turkeys as the air teemed with the aroma of turkeys plus all kinds of wood & hickory smoke. Fun seemed to be the overwhelming aim of each cook and helper as they all joked back and forth with each other and sampled some of the ribs and jambalaya, that were waiting to increase the viability of each cook.

Besides of having a great deal of fun and amusement and sending delightful aromas into the air, this was all for a good cause as the entry fees along with visitors’ donations were sent to our Volunteer Fire Department. AND the cooked turkeys were then sent to the Benevolence Fund to be distributed in Thanksgiving Baskets. So no one loses and everyone benefits. Our thanks to Eloisa and Joe Newsome for their bravity and courage in putting this on ….

The following teams were entered and their places shown:

1- Team Butterballs, chef, Leroy Smith, entered fried & smoked turkey; Won first place again with Fried Turkey

2- Grand Slam Cookers, chefs: Curtis & Amy Gosnel, Sandy Taylor & Mundo; entering fried turkey and sangria; first place in sangria

3- Wild Hogs, chefs: Pat Ezelle & Christina Ezelle; Connie Westfall & Robert Martinez. These chefs prepared smoked and fried turkey using mesquite & applewood plus a dry rub; also entered sangria and a cobbler; they won first in cobbler

4- T-Bo & The Smoker Bells: Kim Dickens, Deidre McCollum and Steven Few; entered a smoked turkey, cherry almond cobbler and peach sangria; took first in pit turkey!

5- The Trophy Hunters: Kim Jones & John Jones; Emma Raby & David Hawes; Chantelle Pence, Glenna Brown, Patti Hutson and Jane Lane. They prepared 3 turkeys in the Cajun Microwave and a peach cobbler.

Grand Slam Chefs

Wild Hogs

Trophy Hunters

Leroy Smith

Joe Newsome & Eloisa

Photos by Sue Kubecka

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” and the Chapel is in full festive mode! The Chapel is decorated and plans are moving forward to a great celebration of Jesus’ birthday! We enjoyed a great Sectional Christmas Party on December 2 in Port Lavaca, and an energetic Friday Night Youth Christmas Party on December 13. I personally missed the Service Club’s party on December 6 due to our being in New York City visiting Crystal, her husband Jake, and our four precious grandchildren. (You should see the pictures Joane took!) Christmas Caroling on a hay wagon happened on Wednesday, December 18, and many of you welcomed us to your home. Thank you for receiving us so well! But, the Chapel’s annual Christmas Sunday is this coming one – December 22. We will gather at 10:00 a.m. to study the Christmas Story from a different perspective and at 11:00 a.m. to enjoy a time of praise as we thank our Heavenly Father for sending His Only Son, Jesus to earth just for us. Then at 6:00 p.m., we will gather for our All Church Christmas Party, which will feature a “pot luck” meal, lots of games, and our usual “Dirty Santa” game. Bring a covered dish, your “white elephant” gift and join in the fun. It is always an evening to remember!
On Christmas Eve, we will be celebrating a time for families to come and join in Holy Communion together. We will begin at 7:00 p.m. and everyone is welcomed. We practice “open communion” at the Chapel, meaning that everyone who knows Jesus as personal Savior is welcomed to the Lord’s Table for Communion.

Recently, we have enjoyed the ministry of Rev. Jason Delgado and Hermano Jessie Alderete. Joane and I ministered in Wharton, due to the home-going of Pastor Richard Smith. We are assisting them in obtaining a pastor.

As you know, the Chapel is the host church for the Port O’Connor Benevolence Fund and we pass out the Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets. We passed out 33 Thanksgiving baskets to needy area families and another 15 Christmas baskets. Last year, the food for our Thanksgiving baskets totaled just over $2,000.00. With the same grocery list from last year, our food bill was in excess of $3,000.00. I am sure that it is not a surprise to most of us, because we all buy food. But, the extra funds completely depleted our POC Benevolence Fund. There have been some generous individuals who have given, and we could not have accomplished what we have without the giving of our Ladies Service Club. The Boy Scouts collected food and money, which went a long way. The Chamber of Commerce donated canned goods and some funds. POC Hardware store has a food bin all year long and many have put food in it. Had it not been for all the help we have received, we could not have passed out Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets this year – and I believe we have reached more truly needy this year than some other years. If you can help, at any time during the year, the POC Benevolence Fund has an account at our bank, or any funds given to any of our local churches will find its way to help feed needy folks next year.

The Chapel is a congregation that is moving forward. We have been making plans to see our ministries expand as we complete our Retreat Center. The areas in the new center will be multi-purpose and used as Bible Study rooms as well as host groups from outside our community for gatherings of many kinds. We are implementing new ideas that Pastor Joane and I have been learning from Church Life, which will affect every area of the congregation. You are welcomed to become a part of what the Lord is doing at the Chapel as we begin this new direction. Our first service of 2014 will be on Sunday, January 5, at 10:00 a.m., and we invite you to come.

The Chapel is an interdenominational congregation whose mission is to heal the hurts of lost humanity and restore the things the devil has taken from God’s creation. You will always find a warm welcome at the Chapel and are urged to, “Come, grow with us!”

Peanut, a 7 month old terrier mix, wants a home with lots of laps to curl up in, please. A bubbling personality, great with people, dogs and cats – what more could you want? Come see her and all the other animals at the Port Lavaca Animal Shelter, 201 Stringham Drive (across from the rodeo arena), Monday through Saturday, 10 to 2, or call the Calhoun County Humane Society, 553-8916. You can also view her and other animals ready for adoption on line at :
www.calhouncountyhumanesociety.org
Thanks and we’ll be waiting for you!

Well here it is December and that means Christmas. This year , even though, we are way down South it also means pretty cold. It is probably colder and messier up North but it still at least takes a jacket here.  December is also the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

It seems providential that Christmas with  the promises that it implies happened at this time of year. The winter solstice and Mother Nature brings about a big change as she starts the Sun on its Northward journey. This is the big calendar change from one year to the next. One begins to wonder how many changes have come to the calendar?  As religions and cultures change over the centuries ,calendars are adjusted to vary around the things that are important to those differences. That adds up to at least thirty-three different now. However, those can be categorized into three main groups.

The first is Solar. That is the one we mostly use in our civil works currently. The second is Lunar. That is fairly common in the older societies.  And the last is a combination called Luni-Solar.  This one is where the calendar designers use some formulas and other tricks to combine the differences between Solar and Lunar.

The simple fact is that for one to be sensible to us folks we have to do something to make things come out into something integers rather than fractions. Mother Nature doesn’t mind fractions near as much as we do.  We have come to say that a year is 365 days except for Leap year. That fellow has some complex rules for when it happens.  If you use a day as a 24 hour period the actual Mean Solar year is 365 days, five hours,48 minutes ,45.2 seconds.

We simplify that to add a leap day every 4 years.  But things can get messed up because in decimal talk it is 365.242 days, not .25. So every 100 years or so we have to make another adjustment and skip a leap year. They skipped one in 1900 but didn’t in 2000.

Then when you change to lunar years it gets a little fuzzier. A lunar cycle or month is 29.53 days. When you put 12 of those together to make a standard year there are only 353  days.  Using that figure a lunar year is 97% as long as a solar year. On that basis if you count from the same point instead of 2013 it would be 1953. I like that thought because I would be back in high school and have many less aches and pains.

But we have even more problems because the earth really rotates once every 23 hours 53 minutes and 4.1 seconds.  It is just too fuzzy for me.  I really believe that the world would be simpler if Mother Nature had made all those revolutions a little neater. We will just leave the detailed adjustments to the calendar guys.