Who thought the end of the semester would be as crazy as it was.  I knew going into seminary life was going to be crazier with a family, working as much as I do and wanting to have some personal time.  But this has been almost the craziness as it has been.  Thursday before finals week my daughter came down with a lung infection.  She had to be put on a nebulizer and we had to give her a treatment every 3-4 hours.  Needless to say that was very time consuming as each treatment took 15-20 min to give.  Over the weekend she did not get much better, in fact she got worse.  So I kept her home and took her to the doctor’s on Monday (the day a paper was due) and she had a double ear infection as well!! Poor girl!

I tried to finish my prison ministry paper between naps and nebulizer treatments.  Tuesday was better with her and Wednesday was my last swimming class to teach and I had to work.  Which left me on Thursday with two papers to finish. I finally got the last one done today.  A day late but I felt it was an okay paper.

I have one more paper to finish and then I will finally be done with the semester.  I should be done with everything by now but with the craziness I was granted a few days extra to get done.

There are still Christmas presents to buy and holiday cheer to muster up.  This year has been the first year where I felt so unchristmasy it is crazy.  I hope next week I can get in the holiday spirit some more.

We will be leaving on the 25th for New Hampshire.  We will spend a few days visiting my wife’s side of the family and then we will travel to Vermont to visit mine.  I hope to see some friends over New Year’s but we will see.  No plans as of yet.

I don’t have a class until the 21st of January.  So three weeks where I will be “free.”  I must be careful because my “free” time seems like the most hectic for me.

I have never gotten into the New Year’s Resolutions per se, but I am going to be true to my 100 things to do before I die list and pick 5 to accomplish.  The other thing I want to do is to take more pictures.  I am thinking about starting a photo blog.  I think that would be pretty fun.  I really would like to get into taking pictures some more. I might even try dig some old pictures out and post them.

Off to dinner, Franks and beans tonight! mmmmm

Nana

Originally uploaded by mcgarryjoe

Here is a picture of Nana and Addyson over Labor Day weekend. For the last three years every time we visit we keep saying that we need to take a lot of pictures with the kids and their great grandmother.
We were able to visit her in the hospital over Thanksgiving and unsure if she was going to make it to Christmas. Well she went to her heavenly home last weekend.

She requested no funeral so there will be a time of rememberance this weekend in New Hampshire. So close to Christmas and the business of our lives we won’t be able to make that 7 hour commute, but we will pay our respects over Christmas.

I have found over the last few years that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a very rough time for alot of people. It is a sad time because of the loss of loved ones – either during the holidays or celebrating the holidays without their loved one.

If you are remembering loved ones this holiday season, I will be praying for you. In this season of Advent – preparing the celebration of Christs birth — we also remember the love and grace of God and the reassurance that our loved ones are with him.

God Bless

The Cold Within

Six humans trapped by happenstance in black and bitter cold. Each one possessed a stick of wood or so the story’s told. Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back, for of the faces round the fire, he noticed one was black. The next man looking cross the way saw one not of his church, and coulden’t bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch. The third one sat in tattered clothes, he gave his coat a hitch. Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich? The rich man just sat back and thought of the walth he had in store. And how to keep what he had earned from the lazy shiftless poor. The balck man’s face bespoke revenge, as the fire passed from sight. For all in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the whites. The last man of this forlom group did naught except for gain. Giving only to those who have was how he played the game. Their logs held tight in death’s still hands was proof of human sin. They didn’t die from the cold without, they died from the cold within.

When I was born, I was black
When I grew up, I was black
When I am sick, I am black
When I go out in the sun, I am black
When I am cold, I am black
When I die, I will be black
But you….When you are born, you are pink
when you grow up, you are white
When you get sick, you are green
When youare out in the sun, you are red
When you are cold, you are blue
When you die, you turn purple
And you ahve the nerve to call me colored

Nicole B. Age 12, Miami, FL

The Spice Girls have extended their world tour and now are coming to Philadelphia next february. Boy i can’t wait……

On more of a serious note, i had my interview to become a Mission Developer. It was about an hour and a half. They did not so much want to hear my theory about certain things– they wanted to hear my real life experiences. It was not a bad interview. I felt pretty comfortable. The one thing that I was surprised about was that I talked more about my experiences as a Youth Director than I did about things that have happened during seminary. I don’t know if it was because I was there for two years and I felt like I had more “control” of my ministry rather than doing things for the sake of evaluation and doing things to make my supervisor happy.
Now don’t get me wrong I loved internship and I learned alot but I did not feel alot of it was “my” ministry. But besides my internship project, could I expect it to be “my” ministry?

Anyway, the person who interviewed me is going on vacation for a week and then will get back to me about moving forward with the second interview or not. I guess the next interview would be three to four hours long.

I could not get a read about how I did. I answered the questions and I felt good about it but you need certain skills to do this kind of job (church planter) and if I don’t have those type of skills that does not mean that I will not be a good pastor, and I need to remember that.

I have been sitting on the couch for the last four hours. It has been the first time that I have taken a break since the end of thanksgiving. I have despertly needed this time for rest. My back still hurts pretty bad. I suffered alot during my six hours of class yesterday. But I made it through.

Next week is the last week of classes. I have two presentations to do next week and I have three more papers to write. The semester is almost over and then I will REALLY be able to rest after that.

I have not been able to fully get in the Christmas mode yet. I have not had the chance to get to our storage unit for the Christmas tree and I have not had time to go Christmas shopping. I have not time to even think about Christmas. Hopefully this weekend.

Back to rest and perhaps some reading.

I should be happy, I really should. I feel like I should be out celebrating because a huge load has come off my back. I FINALLY sent in my assignment papers for the ELCA assignment process next February. However, I was nervous sending out my papers. What if I could of said something differently? Was three times enough to go through the spell check? Did I leave a very important piece out of my profile that might turn a church around? Too many questions for me to worry about. I need to lift everything up in God’s hands because that’s where it is now.

Admist the craziness of life I am having a pretty good week. The end of last week I had a lockin at church- followed by the Souderton Christmas Parade, I was kinda disappointed by Santa Clause. There are more and more Santa’s around that have real long white beards and my son knew that this was a fake and he is only three. He just asked what was on Santa’s face, I just said that Santa was cold and he seemed okay with that.
This followed with lunch and the much needed nap.

Sunday was church and then a trip to the King of Prussa mall to the Apple Store. Currently on my labtop (where I am typing from) I am missing the F2 and F5 key, the space bar, the left and down arrows. This is caused by the aforementioned son. When he was smaller he would sneak onto the computer and pull off keys. They told me it would be $150.00 to get it fixed. The computer is functional and I have adapted this long it would not matter for alittle while longer. Like our cars I am hoping this computer will make it through the rest of seminary.

I don’t think I would ever go after a PhD. I was intimitated enough by coming to seminary for my masters degree. Plus the language would keep me out of most programs. However if I do get my Dmin down the road. I would love to get into the idea of Theodicy and Psychology. I just had to write a paper along those lines and I think it is very interesting. How does evil come into the world? When we talk about evil and an individual – what is the psychological make up of those individuals? And how does God fit into all of this. I would consider doing a Dmin down the road with perhaps a focus on becoming a CPE supervisor. I think I could tie those two things in together and that would be something that interests me. But right now I am thinking that would happen 5-10 years from now.

For the current time I am goign to be in the draft and I have indicated on my forms that I am in conversation with Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission. Basically I was told by my advisor that I should consider being a mission developer or a Church Planter. I would not mind doing something like this, acutally I think it could be fun and that I could do a good job at it. This Friday I have a prescreening for the position.

Well I should get back and watch my Patriots. Right now they are not doing so good. GO PATS!!!!!

We almost have 100 people in our facebook group!! That is very exciting. We hope that means that you guys really would like to support this project!! Now we just need some activity on the boards and we need some emails. Feel free to post things on here, you can ask questions, make comments. We will have some forms up here pretty soon.

Check back often for some updates!