Courageous movie opens Friday

Sherwood Baptist Church's (Albany, Georgia) fourth movie will open this Friday. Courageous is a movie about fathers and their relationships with their kids written and produced by Alex and Stephen Kendricks of Sherwood and former Athens residents. In the past years Sherwood Baptist Church has produced movies such as Flywheel, Facing the Giants, Fireproof and now Courageous. All of their movies were filmed in Albany, Georgia in different locations including a sports park that the church owns on the outer limits of town. All of the Sherwood produced movies were made up of their church people as well as some town residents. Kirk Cameron was the only professional actor used in any of their four movies. Cameron played Caleb a fireman in the Fireproof movie. For more information on this movie visit http://www.courageousthemovie.com/



Me with Ken Bevel of Fireproof. Bevel is also in the Courageous Movie



For the parents....it's a lot of fun for us also

We are getting ready to wrap up middle school volleyball, which will also be my daughter's final middle school season, I think of how much fun the girls have had playing the game and forming new friendships. It's not only fun for our kids out there playing each sport but it's also a lot of fun for us parents sitting in the stands each week. Friendships are also formed between parents. Getting to know those who we might pass in the roads or wherever-actually meeting these people and forming new friendships is part of our enjoyment as we watch our kids play. We sit back and talk about our fast pace lives of shipping our kids from location to location for practice or road trips. We talk about how we keep the fast food businesses running due to our fast pace schedules that hardly include dinner breaks. We sometimes second guess coaches or officials calls and we sometimes just simply laugh at each other.
Despite all the "living on the roadways" and hardly remembering what our homes look like during different seasons, we can all admit the the enjoyment we get from watching our kids have fun is priceless. And at the same time, our enjoyment of meeting new friends and striking up conversations with old friends during these times is a benefit we get to enjoy.
Just tonight as I have been trying to figure out this new layout of Facebook, I have been reading  posts from a lot of girls that I use to coach back in the mid 90's. It only took one person to get the ball rolling down memory lane. That trip was soon joined by a long lists of posts from old players with their memories of old times.
Back during those years or these we are in right now with our own kids, do we realize that we are opening new pages of memories each game, match or whatever the event is that we all assemble at? Some of those memories we end up forgetting but then again most of those memories are always in our minds. The good times and even the bad; they never leave us.
I know for all of us it can seem like the rush of going to ball fields and gyms several times in one week will kill us. The endless nights of rushing from work to ball fields or gyms and grabbing a burger somewhere on the way home from away games can wear us down. But despite all of that, when it's all said and done and these days have past and our kids are grown, we'll know it was all worth it. Then our kids as grown ups can chat about the old times and memories from these days we are in now. Priceless!