Quick Update

Since my last post was a while back I will just try to chronicle the past few days for those of you who care. Tuesday was Tom and Lois’ 25th Anniversary so the girls went over to Jim and Miriam’s (grandma and husband) and Anna invited me to come for supper and to watch The Secret Life of Bees. It was a very enjoyable evening just hanging out with church people and I rather enjoyed the movie. Wednesday passed in a blur but involved a conversation on preaching with some local pastor in which I came up with some ideas for my sermon and proceeded to forget them all because I didn’t write them down as well as my first deacons meeting.
Thursday was my first day off and I traveled to Hutchinson to meet Sarah, Jamie, Brad, Megan, and mom for a trip to the Hutchinson Salt Museum and lunch. The museum was interesting and I think that I liked it more than the typical museum because it was 650 ft. underground, the exact reason Megan did not like it. It was good to spend some time with the family and get away from Wichita for a few hours even if I did miss some swimming with the Harders and some of the youth.
Now we get to the weekend and the plethora of events that occurred. Wok was fairly typical, reading and preparing to lead worship Sunday and thinking, very unproductively, about the service that I need to plan for two weeks from today. I took off early to head home for a planned supper with Mrs. H, a high school teacher, and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening of discussion and fellowship. While everyone else spent the night at home I was forced to drive back to Wichita so I could attend four hours of meetings on Saturday morning, ah the life of a pastoral intern. Once back home dad and I went to Newton to try to get three new cell phones and my family can attest to how mad that made me. If you would like to hear me rant for a while ask about how poorly I think of Alltel. More time with family in the evening was good and I answered the same questions 5 or 6 times. Honestly, I’m going to be doing everything a typical pastor does, go ask your pastor what they do and that’s pretty much it, that way you don’t have to ask me!!!!!!!
Worship leading this morning was a good, new experience and actually, thanks to some input from Sarah and Jamie, I am looking forward to doing some work on my service for the 21st. Sarah, Hannah, Jamie, and Jason all attended the service and then decided that they would make us a huge lunch of fajitas, bean dip, and rice which was wonderful and left lots of leftovers for this week. I had a VBS meeting and found out that I was slightly misinformed about my responsibilities and that I should have planned on decorating the classroom to look like Asia, my continent. This was rather frustrating for me because I am not very creative to begin with and being put on the spot doesn’t help at all. With some help from Megan and Brad I will have a nice map in my room and instead of having decorations we will be practicing some traditions from Asian culture.
I am getting apprehensive about this week because the Harders are leaving on Wednesday and they aren’t getting back until the 20th. Not only is my whole social circle gone but my bosses/supervisors as well. I am not sure that I will be able the handle things on my own and I am grateful that Tom will set aside some time to check in to see how things are going in general as well as my sermon prep. Still I think I’ll get lonely, so if anyone wants to come visit, let me know.
Peace,
Daniel