Author: Aaron Taylor

As my final week of Sabbatical has come to end, I am truly overwhelmed with gratitude for this time of rest and rejuvenation. The words “thank you” really don’t quite do it justice. I am truly blessed to work for such a great company. That being said, my final week’s service project was with Love & Care Ministries here in Abilene. As most of you know, this ministry is absolutely incredible! I saw literally hundreds of people being helped and served by this ministry. From the minute the doors opened until the minute they closed, Love & Care would serve the homeless and poor. The attitude was very upbeat and Christian music was played everywhere I went. There was just this joy that I couldn’t describe about the people and the work they were doing. The job that I was given was serving in the Clothing Ministry. We would grab plastic trash bags full of clothes and sort them into Men’s & Women’s categories along with categories for sizes. I was amazed at all the clothing that Love & Care had received from the community. At the same time we were sorting the clothes,  there were literally people waiting in a room to receive those clothes. Needless to say, it was something I will never forget, and also serving in that ministry is something that I will definitely do again. Thank you Funeral Directors Life!

Here is the pile of clothes that we would sort through.

My 3rd week was a little more relaxed than the first couple of weeks. I got to enjoy the time off with my wife and 3 boys. It seems like their favorite thing to do is wrestle on the floor and play “good guys – bad guys”. I can see how much they are loving this time with daddy being home. One of the things that I have realized through my quiet times these couple of weeks is God the Fathers heart for his children. I was reading Psalm 107 and all throughout the chapter it talks about those He has redeemed and His heart for them. It says “Some wandered in the wastelands – they were hungry and thirsty – then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. Another verse says “Some sat in darkness and their deepest gloom – then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and He saved them from their distress”. Again, another verse says “Some became fools through their rebellious ways – then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he saved them from their distress.” I love these verses of scripture because they paint a picture of the Fathers heart for his children. Most every morning I wake up before my sons and my 2 year old still sleeps in a crib (because he would constantly come out of the room if he slept in a bed) and every morning when he wakes up his first words are “Daddy – Daddy – Daddy” and there is something that pulls in my heart every time I hear him say those words to go get him and rescue him out of that crib. I truly believe this is the way Father God feels about his children every time they call out to their Heavenly Daddy. One of my service projects for the Sabbatical was helping out with the “Boots on the Ground Ministry”. This ministry provides help to people in preventing possible hazardous situations in the homes of the elderly, disabled, and poor. Boots on the Ground has built numerous wheel chair ramps for the handicapped, repaired roofs for the elderly, and also provided needed essentials for the poor. During my service project, Boots on the Ground generously received 218 mattresses from ACU. We moved and stored the mattresses at the Boots on the Ground Warehouse on North 1st Street. I was surprised to see how many items Boots on the Ground had in their warehouse. From Refrigerators, Washers and Dryers, Furniture, Clothing, and Kitchen dishes to Lawn Mowers, Mattresses and home décor, they had it all. So if you are looking to donate to a wonderful ministry here in Abilene, you couldn’t go wrong with “Boots on the Ground”.

My second week started off quite like my first week of Sabbatical. Getting all 3 kids packed in the car and headed East (Just not as far East as Florida). We were headed to the big city of Alto Texas (Population 1,223). We were going there for my nieces High School Graduation. The weekend was very relaxing and it was wonderful to be with family, but this time it was a little different. My Mother and Father couldn’t make the trip. My Father the week earlier was picking up broken limbs from the storms we’ve had these past couple of weeks and hurt his back pretty severely. So much so that he’ll be having back surgery in July. My Father is the most Godly man that I have ever known. He pours his heart and soul into others and into the Lord more than anyone I’ve ever seen. This has been very hard on our family, because he’s basically in pain all day every day. We have prayed more into the Lord healing his back than ever, and things just seem to be the same. We are confident that God has a plan for this and will ultimately heal him, and we will continue to pray until it happens. Needless to say, when we returned from the Graduation our plans changed a bit. We have been driving to Winters and helping out my parents as much as we can with things around their house. I can tell that the hardest for my Father is not being able to get out and work. He loves to work outside with his hands, either in the wood shop, garden, chicken coop or his new orchard. I completely believe that God has his hands on this situation and that my Father will experience physical healing either by the miraculous or by surgery.

As you can guess from the title of this blog… the first week of my sabbatical was very memorable. The 30 days started off with getting our 3 boys packed in the car and driving 14 hours from Abilene to Destin Florida. It was quite the adventure! From changing diapers to changing the overhead movie in the car, to getting hit in the back of the head with a sippy cup, we finally arrived at our destination. The beaches were absolutely perfect and to say the water was beautiful would be an understatement. We spent the next couple of days, swimming, building sand castles and playing bean bag toss with total strangers in the hot Florida sun. Even with 3 boys under the age of 5, it was pretty relaxing, but the fun didn’t stop there. It was on the 4th day that the excitement really began. My brother-in-law had informed me earlier that he wanted to catch a shark, but I really thought he might be joking…oh he wasn’t! We purchased about $200 worth of fishing gear (with our 7 day Florida fishing license) and once the sun had set, we headed out for the beach (isn’t it more fun to do dangerous things at night?) We had heard that most people shark fish by casting their line from the shore…. Not us, we got in a Kayak and headed out with the line, hook, weight and a bloody fish head and got out as far as we could and dropped it…then headed back to shore as fast as we could without tipping the Kayak over (we might have made the morning paper if that would have happened). Needless to say, after repeating the same process 3 times and 2 hours later, we caught us a bonafide reef shark! It was pretty exhilarating reeling him up to shore, and it was an experience i’ll never forget. (Don’t worry, we released the shark after catching him). The rest of the vacation was absolutely wonderful and i’m just so thankful and grateful for the opportunity to experience the Sabbatical. I have been reading the book “Not I but Christ” by Watchman Nee and to say that it has been transformative would be an understatement. I am extremely excited about continuing in the book and seeing what the Lord will reveal to me in the next 3 weeks.

-Aaron

Video of the Shark Catch is below: