Mad Wanderings To Show I'm Back (Plus Big Change)

We Swaits have been very busy bees recently, so I’ve not been blogging much. For now. I mean to flip that table. My momma did always tell me that it’s easier to accomplish what one wants done when one is crazy busy, so I mean to use the opportunity afforded by the mad scheduling to blog regularly. Does that make any sense? Good. So y’all can start coming back now, we’re alive.

And definitely read this entry all the way down (above comment indicates patient’s lack of confidence in own writing, recommend low dosage Jasper Fforde pills), there’s a lot going on in the Mundo Svaitis.

This past Thursday evening I went up to Jacksonville for their yearly Friends of the Library sale, and got some decent stuff. I was most excited about finding Billy Collins’ The Art of Drowning. Ex-library and all that, but I was able to remove the stickers on the outside, and have added it to my personal library (I also found the coolest book on beer, and wanted to keep it until I saw that I’d be able to sell it for a decent amount). While I was waiting in line for the sale to begin, I struck up a conversation with a southern Georgia bookstore owner who told me he was planning on picking up and moving his store to the mountains of North Carolina. [Here’s the big announcement] I responded by saying, “Really?! I’m moving to the mountains of North Carolina to open a bookstore.”

That’s right, boys and girls, our offing is in the offing. It’s actually going to be a very fun family affair, because we’re going up to be near/be partners with my parents. My folks have been planning on moving to Hendersonville, NC, for a while; Kimberly and I were thinking of moving, and Greenville, SC was on our short list (the two towns are less than an hour apart). Knowing that we were thinking of moving from G’ville, and overwhelmed by the possibility of being separated from his grandkids, my father was moved to invite me to help him open the photo gallery of his dreams. People make the strangest decisions when they’re in love with their grandkids. So, off we Junior Swaits go: North Carolina-South Carolina border ho!

There is a church we’re very interested in attending, Trinity Reformed Church, which is a plant of Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis. Trinity is in the town of Greer, SC, just to the west of Greenville. Please pray that we’d be able to live somewhere close enough to that church to be a part of their community, but not too far from wherever the gallery and bookstore are located.

Some of you know that our session very cordially heard me out when I asked to bring 18-month old Renata into communion, but declined to allow it. They claimed as their ground conformity with the PCA Book of Church Order; having since researched the situation in the PCA a little more thoroughly (I came armed with the 1984 Minority Opinion on the question at General Assembly, but that was pretty much it from the PCA end), I see that they were right.

I went into the meeting believing that other PCA churches practiced paedocommunion (as is done in the OPC), but have since found that even the most vocal paedocommunionist sessions in the PCA recognize that to be a part of the PCA communion means submitting to her credocommunionist practice.

On the one hand, Kimberly and I were very glad to find a CRE church in the area into which we’re moving, although for more reasons than you might think from reading the above. On the other, it makes things kind of awkward, since we want to be around Hendersonville for business. We’ll see how things shake down. I’m visiting the area for a few days in mid-April, and will hopefully have a firmer idea of our plans then.

On Friday I visited a few estate sales, and got some good arts n’ architecture books at the home of a retired professor of architecture at the University of Florida. I also found a lot of B-17 Flying Fortress stuff, including memoirs and oral histories. Going through this library was certainly very interesting; I believe that what we had was a veteran of the 8th Air Force who was a flamingly homosexual architect. This made for a very (how shall I put it?) intriguing collection.

Joffre David Swait, Jr. was baptized this past Sunday by Pastor Joe Greer (from the same family for whom Greer, SC is named) as Pastor Neemias Gomes held him. Renata was happy to sit next to her grandparents during the service, since they usually worship at St. Andrew’s Episcopal. Baptism makes me glad to have children. It definitely affected Kimberly: she’s already talking about having more babies right away, so she can get this infant stuff over with quickly. That’s crazy talk, I tell you!

She’s a great wife.

So there it is, boys and girls. The Swaits are moving. Again. This will be my thirteenth city…maybe we’ll stick around for a while.

And I know I’ve not been writing at all (nor my already aprolific colleagues), but I plan on resuming the habit, if you’ll support it. Let the lost readers know. And as for quizzing, I believe I shall kill it. H’m?

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