Recent Project with the Family

Posted on 1/17/2012 by John

No, I’m not in the picture, but my son did get to meet the Fire Chief of the city. My son was wearing his full fireman outfit including boots. Why on earth didn’t I have a camera to take pictures?!

Service Project for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I’m sure I know what some of you may say. Have I sold-out (in all meanings of the word)?

Maybe I have. I’d like to provide a thoughtful response to that question, but I know what it sounds like. It always sounds like the answer is yes.

Next time, I’ll be more involved to help out the logistics. We had some minor issues that complicated certain aspects. Why will I help? Because the Fire Department wanted to do this project before he knew the church I attend wanted to do anything. Point is, someone was going to do this project and for the sake of my children, I’m glad it was us. My family does a lot of deaf and hard of hearing awareness projects and those are wonderful. However, I really want my son to be a part of something where he is a participant, not a beneficiary. When he met the Fire Chief and climbed on a real firetruck, it was a beautiful moment indeed.

Next time the free smoke alarm project will be bigger and we will be coordinating with other churches in the city. I look forward to that. Again, there are enough things we as a family do with the larger fellowship of believers that I want the children to see that we do the same thing at our church, too. They both love church very much and I really want them to see that, when we choose to serve, no one fights for ownership. Instead people come together for the common good of others.

More important than my personal ramblings, people were helped. It’s dry this winter and there are lots of fires just in January alone. The dusting of snow today doesn’t help very much, but the hope that loss of life is minimized does help. Until another four months pass, that’s all the news that’s fit to type.

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A Third of a Year

Posted on 10/14/2011 by John

It’s been some time. I must confess that I didn’t think it would be this long. I’ve taught some classes and there have been blessing all around.
There has also been great sadness. A friend was shot and killed this week while at work and another friend is facing his second great battle for his life.
Longfellow said that into everyone’s life a little rain must fall. I think the poem says a lot about my present feelings.
I find that faith is no longer an albatross around my neck. Instead, it has become a great comfort. I tend to worry about things that are out of my control. Into this worry, a good passage and a ton of faith go a long way to refresh my soul.
There are times I still feel burned out, but there are more times that I feel tired from many good things that happened from the day.
I hope it will not be another four months til I write again.

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Starting Over Once Again

Posted on 6/20/2011 by John

Typically, I’m a person that enjoys starting projects, but not very good at finishing them. I’ve tried everything from GTD, ZTD (like Getting Things Done, but with Zen as the first word), Franklin Covey and a host of others. Yet, I have little to no success in completing a project.

I’d like to think that it is a function of being an eternal optimist. Beautiful as that thought is, though, the issue is simply that I am lazy.

So, I thought a while before I titled something Starting Over because I find that I post something like it about every 10 months.

Still, there is something outside of me that is motivating the change this time: my son. He has really latched on to the idea that the food panty in our little church needs to feed other children. He consistently wants to bring food to it, despite what I might consider a lack of money.

On Sunday, he brought a box of pasta. This wasn’t the 98 cent box, but the stuff he likes – the comparatively pricey multi-colored, vegetable based pasta. At the store, he chose penne pasta for the pantry because that is his favorite.

This week, we are going to the store to bring about $30 groceries to the food pantry, partly due to his eager request. He has a list of things that are ‘missing’ that he plans to find at our local grocer.

I used to think about the Bible stories we read every morning and wonder if he understood what he read. Now, I wonder in the other direction. Today, he asked me to forgive him for having a hard heart.

A bit of context, we don’t say I’m Sorry much in our house. For things that are not purely an accident, we say do you forgive me for fill-in-the-specific-offense-here? I was expecting to hear Do you forgive me for disobeying you? When I heard him mention his own hard heart, I realized that he heard a lot more of the midweek last week than I thought. Family midweeks aren’t usually like that, but it was a surreal night for a lot of us.

Back to the point, I’m starting over again.

This time, I’m putting away my projects of teaching another adult class, work on the library and some of the Sunday Night service plans. My son wants to build a food pantry, so that is what we are going to do.

Together.

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