4-1-17 Sat.

I received a lot of response from last weeks blog. From Hawaii to Oklahoma the response was the same. Churches becoming more of a place of entertainment.

I remember a message that Pastor Tony Sr. preached when Sonrise was still meeting at the Spring Valley location. This was about 20 years ago and the title of the message was, "Raising the Bar". The message was concerning raise the bar not lowering our standards of excellence. It seems that in the past 2 decades that the Christian Church in general has moved in the opposite direction, its is the dumbing down of any standard of excellence.

It is like the dumbing down of society. Since the mid-60s the SAT scores have dropped and instead of making the students work harder, they consistently lowered the standard so that it does not look as if the students are learning less nor the teachers doing a poor job. That seems to be the attitude that prevails in the Christian church. Let's lower the standards and entertain the great unwashed.

I am teaching the Bible class every Wednesday evening at Philip and  Rogina's home. We continue our study in the Book of Acts. It's great to see there are people still interested in studying God's word.

This past week my friend Larry and I had gone to the beach real early. It was Wednesday and Thursday morning we would get to the beach approximately 6 AM. We start videoing by 6:30 a.m. for approximately an hour and half to two hours. My friend Larry has been surfing for most of his life as have I. He has also purchased a drone by the same company but a different model than I have. We do mostly videoing rather then pictures. They are all real high definition videos and it's amazing. If you have a Smart TV, you can watch the surf videos I make on your TV. Very cool!

During this past week I've learned how to extract a specific picture from the video. I'm going to include a couple of pictures that I've extracted from videos so you can see how they look. The first few pics were taken before the sun came up over the hill in Del Mar. As you can see with the picture of the guy riding the yellow board, the pictures look much better when you have direct sun light.

This is my friend Ken. We have surfed this same break in Del Mar for a few Decades. When it was a full moon we would paddle out 45 mins or more before dawn and surf by the moonlight. Ken was with me when I paddled out with Harriet's ashes. She wanted her ashes to be in the same place where my will be spread out. Probably Ken is going to have the job of spreading my ashes.

Surfing by moonlight.

David surfing his 6'4" fish shortboard

In this last picture, taken by Autumn when we were in Hawaii, you can see my drone flying above the head of the surfer. I fly about twice the height of the wave and just a little bit more.

When the waves break, the spray goes up in the air. Even at the height I fly, the drone still comes back with moisture on it which is not good. So I can't fly lower or I could have major problems.



Last Sunday I was invited by Brad and Karen to their daughter Kylie's birthday party which they were holding at the Santee Lakes. I'm going to include some pictures I took last Sunday. These are really good friends and I love their kids. Yes, I love Brad and Karen too!

Brad and Karen to their daughter Kylie

                        Kylie

Lisa, her son Logan and me. I think Lisa's husband Mark took the picture. Long time good friends.

 

Lots of nice people.  We had a really great. time.

I guess that's it for today. I just need to find a nice picture of Harriet to finish today's blog. I still miss my girl!

 

Maranatha, even so come quickly Lord Jesus! 

Rev. 21:20

Frank

 

Sat. 3-25-17

Good morning! As I mentioned in last week's blog I was going to go to the church that Harriet and I were married in. I'm going to include a picture taken at Harriet's and my wedding and then show you pictures taken last Sunday, so you can see the change in the sanctuary.

I added the second picture because it's in the same folder. It's Harriet's and my engagement picture taken in the basement of the same church where they have their fellowship hall.

 The picture below is taken from the balcony and you can see the drastic changes. Please note a couple of things. The pews and carpeting are removed. They're replaced with folding chairs side tables fully upholstered chairs and fully upholstered loveseats. (Let's all take a nap at church)

 There used to be a large placards on both side walls with the names of the missionaries that were supported and those placards are gone.

 The above picture is of Bill Stoll's his wife and myself.

I could not help but wonder how much churches have changed in the last 10 to 20 years. It used to be a place of worship. Worshiping the Creator of the universe and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Now it's become a place of entertainment. The audience watches the performance on the platform. I won't go into a whole lot of detail except for the fact that I was very surprised at the changes. I guess you can tell. It's one thing to use electronic means to help during the service, worship and presenting the message. It's another thing when the people on the platform no matter how well intended, perform and the music is so loud that you can't tell if anyone else in the audience is participating in song.

(Sorry the formatting has changed and for some reason no matter what I do it does not want to change back into the normal margin on the left-hand side.)

The message that the pastor had was very good. The senior pastor was not there and I found out he will be preaching tomorrow. I've known the pastor since we were in our early 20s so that goes back a ways. I'm going to go back to church there this Sunday so that I can greet him. He's a good guy.

Harriet's parents and all the relatives went to church there. It's a good Bible believing, gospel preaching church. I guess I'm just sorry to see the changes not just in this church but generally speaking most Christian churches.

(I was able to fix the formatting on the above to paragraphs but the previous paragraphs will not submit to changes)

I'm heading down to the beach this morning to take some more surf videos. My friend Larry and I went yesterday morning and did some videoing. Here is the link if you want to check it out. If you subscribe, you'll get all new videos that are posted.

https://youtu.be/8YbH87xbfQA

If you copy and paste the above link into your Internet browser you can check it out. I'm leaving this morning about 5:40 AM to down to the beach. Some of my surfing friends will be there and it's fun to see them and video there rides.

Then I come home and I go over and pick up the grandkids and take them to a new movie that just came out is called "Power Rangers". We always have a fun time and I enjoy being with them so much. I wish Harriet was here to enjoy them to. She love them dearly.

Then this afternoon I am meeting Andy and Autumn, yes the same couple that were in Hawaii at the same time as I was there. Really nice friends. Mexican food of course.

That's about it for today. I hope you have a great week and don't forget......... Maranatha!

Frank

3-18-17 Sat.

It's been summer weather here in San Diego for the past week with the temperature in the 80s. Unfortunately, it's been foggy along the coast all week and the waves have been flat. So I've not had the opportunity to go and take some surf videos. But my friend Larry and I have been practicing at the "Sandpit" in Santee. Next time I go I will take a couple of pictures so I can post them. It's an area in Santee that is close to the river bottom and a lot of people that use RC cars, gliders and drones go out there because it's a large open space.

We go out there about 6:45 AM and no one else is there, I wonder why? You know what they say about the early bird getting the worm.

My friend Tanner invited me to come over to his house yesterday (Friday). Then we changed it to meet at his wife Breanna's parents home, Tony and Linette who are very good friends of mine also. It was really a nice time.

Tanner and Breanna's baby, Lincoln is so cute! Actually, he's beautiful. I'm going to include some pictures.

No that is not Lincoln. Tanner and I took Lincoln for a walk in his stroller and I saw this palm tree that someone had done some artwork and I thought, that's unusual, so I took a picture.

The last picture is of his "Dude" outfit. He's such a nice little guy.

 Tomorrow is Sunday and I was thinking of trying the church where Harriet and I met Scott Memorial Baptist Church. The name has changed. I'll let you know how it goes.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Maranatha,
Frank

Sat. 3-11-17

If you've not heard, we have decided to close the doors of our church. We started Maranatha Bible Church four years ago on March 3, 2013. We were notified on January 18th that our lease would not be renewed. We had been looking for a new location anyway.

Since January, I've been told by 19 people that they are either moving out of state or looking for a different church. Some of them are moving to Arizona, Idaho, and Texas. When you have a very small church like ours was, you can't afford to lose that many people and especially a lot of those people were the hard-working backbone of our church. Because of this our trustees and I decided that it would be best to close the doors and not make a move even though we had found another location and been approved.

We will continue to have a Bible study each week on Wednesday night at Philip and Rogina's home. A number of people want to continue practicing their music together.

A lot of sad people when I gave the news this past Sunday morning at the end of the service. Lots of tears were shed. I will tell you that they're all wonderful people and I love them all.

Romans 8:28 says: "For we know that all things work together for good, to them who love God and to them who are the called according to his purpose."

This was my father's favorite verse in the Bible. You either believe it or you don't. I choose to believe it.

I went out to lunch with Daniel and I thought I'd show you a couple of pictures. I had to teach him how to play pool. We used to have a pool table just like this in our home when we lived in El Cajon. I purchased a three-quarter size table that was operated using quarters. Yes, I did it on purpose. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately this time Daniel "Schooled" me. We ate at the Boil Weevil restaurant in Lakeside and yes I love the onions on my hamburger.

I almost forgot. I don't know if you remember but in October I flew up to Oregon and went to Caleb and Ashley's wedding. Caleb is Harriet's brother John's son. I posted a bunch of pictures from the wedding. But this past week I received a few extra pictures I want to share with you. Ashley made a bouquet of flowers and around the base of the flowers were pictures of those relatives who had died before the wedding. If you look carefully you will see Harriet's  picture.

That's about it for this week.

Maranatha,
Frank

3-4-17 Sat.

The big news this past week was the rain. Last Sunday it rained off-and-on, but last Monday we received over 2 1/2 inches of rain in 24 hours and some places receive 4 inches of rain. I know that in some parts of the country this is not unusual, but in San Diego County it's rare. I've never seen so much green on the hillsides, it's just beautiful.

Thursday and Friday morning I went out to video my friends at the beach surfing. I get out there before 6 o'clock in the morning and video for an hour or two. Yesterday was the best. It started off really small and as the morning went by the waves picked up, the sun came out it got crowded, but there were lots of fun waves. If you have subscribed to my YouTube, you should have been notified. If you haven't subscribed, type in the following: Frank Kovacs drone surfing

Then you will see a picture of me in a white muscle shirt and all you have to do is click on it. This will take you to all the videos I've done.

Thanks to everyone's great advice, I'm able to finally cook a baked potato properly. The chives I grew in my vast garden. That is a joke. My daughter Hilda explained that if I take green onions straight from the grocery store and plant them in the ground they will grow and she was right. I planted eight of them and they're all growing. Thanks again for everybody's help.

This Sunday I am going to preach on the eternal security of the believer. This is been a long-running debate in Christianity. After a person has been born again, can they lose their salvation? I hope you'll be able to be there and hear this message.

Maranatha,
Frank

That's my Girl! And that is the muscle shirt I am wearing in the pic I described above.

 Harriet and Autumn