Most merciful God, we confess we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed. By what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole hearts, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us. That we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your name. Amen.
From the Book of Alternate Services
What is hard for me
Dying
Dying to myself
For a greater cause
I don’t have to face
Danger
Danger because my faith
Is not popular
What is hard for me
Giving
Giving up my wants
To help another
I may have to face
Rejection
Rejection of friends
They don’t understand
What is hard for me
Loss
Loss of what could be
For a greater cause
I don’t want to face
Confusion
Confusion of ideals
I don’t understand
What is hard for me
Focus
Focus on the goal
To honor the Lord
Give me the strength to face
Life
Life brought by my death
Your death on a cross
OR
Yeah.
It has been a while since my last real update. This is partly due to the fact that I have been staying busy. It is also partly due to various amounts of processing I have been doing in my life these past couple months.
The semester is already half over. It has really flown by. The weeks seem to come and go as quickly as the candy I get from the ARC. I just finished a major step in this semester, a 19 page paper for my Old Testament class. I had a 30 minutes presentation with a friend to do in class, as well as a group paper of 2500 words on open theism. Group papers are so difficult to write.
Coming to this year, I was excited for my classes, but not in the same way that I was excited for what we will get to do second semester. It has taken all this time for me to shift my attitude to greatly appreciate my classes for what they are, and try to take full advantage of them.
Team Sherpa, the name for the 2nd year Explore team, definitely has created opportunities to grow in many different ways. Most of us know each other really well from last year. However, two people, in particular one of the guys, did Explore two years ago. This means I do not know him very well. Because he is a 3rd year student, he is in completely different classes and has a completely different schedule than I do. So it was naturally harder to establish a friendship. This created some conflict within the group. Some people were feeling left out, almost rejected by the others, some really didn’t know where they even fit into the team. This is something we had to deal with (and are still dealing with) as a team.
Coming into Explore, I had to deal with a lot of uncertainty in my previous choice of career. At the end of last year, I had thought I wanted to become some sort of camp director. However, I began to question that after coming back this year. So then I had to wrestle with the question, “why am I even here at Prairie and in Explore?” If this has nothing to do with what I am going to do for a career, then it almost seems like a waste of time and money.
Part of why I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life comes from my goal of someday being the head of a family. I had to resettle my convictions on starting this process. Now I have come to a place of peace, and am patiently (for now, at least) awaiting a day when it will be right. It is funny though, how God sometimes answers prayer. His knowledge is above mine, His thoughts higher. Still it is funny when God doesn’t answer prayer the way you think He would.
Throughout it all, I have felt a much deeper connection with the LORD God. At times I cried out to Him in desperation, and He was faithful to comfort and calm my weary soul. I praise God for He truly incredible greatness and goodness, that His lovingkindness endures forever. That He is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness. His love endures forever.
Perhaps tonight, the first fruitset with the 1st years, is a good picture of what is happening in my life right now. A fruitset is where we go out to the train tracks and watch the sunset. We all have a piece of fruit which we eat in unison. These sessions are rated on four separate, 1-10 scales: the beauty of the sunset, the uniqueness, the group (attitude), and the fruit. This one was rated 8, 5, 8, 9 respectively. That brings an average of 7.5, which is decent. The group was Dustin, Beth F., Anna, Samantha, and I. Hopefully more of the first years will join in later.
I wonder how many valuable experiences are lost when I don’t allow myself to become involved in them. Especially right now. I had a wonderful year at college, and am looking forward to going back in the fall. I spend so much time looking forward to it that I sometimes check out of my present life.
Even while I am doing something, my mind wanders to the exciting future. I lose focus on what is in my hands and dream about what can happen later. I am especially prone to do this when life isn’t easy and I don’t like what I am doing. This is a bad habit to get into. I don’t want to train myself to simply skip out on the hard stuff. Doing hard things is when you learn.
Live now. Take advantage of everything you are doing today. There are many lessons and skills that can be learned by what is happening right now. Why short yourself on life? It only happens once.
Heh, they said it would snow before Grad, and it did. It is pretty much cold here.
Only five more pages, 2 more quizzes, and 1 tutorial left. Oh yeah, and the CMFX final exam. 8 days until I am home.
Each person on this planet is unique. Everyone has their own idiosyncrasies and preferred manner of doing things. God has gifted certain people in different ways. My goal is to use my gifts and values in such a way as to maximize my effectiveness in a business or ministry. In this paper I have identified five core values: (1) Family, (2) Integrity, (3) Team, (4) Solo time, and (5) Mentorship. I want to incorporate these into my life within the context of a business and or ministry. These are values I have observed in myself over a period of time, but most of them have become more clearly defined over the course of the past year.
I value family. I value both my current family (parents, siblings, extended family), and my future family (wife, children, grandchildren). I have known for a very long time that I want to be able to work from home, or have some type of job that allows me to interact with my children on job time. This value become my own one day when I was painting my uncle’s house. My uncle is a graphic artist and works from home. He and my aunt have two children, a girl who is 5 and a boy who is 18 months. I was staying at their house for a week to paint the exterior of the home.
While I was painting the area outside my uncle’s office, I witnessed an event that stirred my heart deeply. As I was painting, I heard my cousin’s gleeful 5-year-old voice pouring forth from the house as she rushed downstairs into my uncle’s office. My uncle stopped what he was doing, turned to her and lovingly lifted her up in his arms. “How is my beautiful little girl,” he said as he tossed her up into the air and caught her. She giggled and hugged him as tightly as she could. As I witnessed this scene through the window, many chords were struck inside me. I realized at that moment I wanted to work from home so I too could be available to my kids in the same way as was my uncle.
No matter what career I have or what ministry I participate in, I want my family to be able to be involved and to be with me. This includes my parents, siblings, and kids and all my extended family.
During one of our practicum planning meetings it hit me how much better this practicum was going to turn out because a team of people was working on the project. The combined gifts and talents of everyone in the group could produce something so much greater than what I could have done on my own. One meeting we were discussing how to incorporate spiritual lessons into the wilderness survival training we were going to be teaching. While my strength is not in thinking of creative ways to accomplish tasks, some of the people on the team are very strong in this area. My strength is in the execution of clearly defined jobs with specific tools. I have a hard time thinking “outside the box”. Nonetheless, the group was able to come up with some great ideas.
In addition, I tend to think of the quickest and easiest ways of doing things. If it had been up to me to do all the planning for the practicum, it probably would have been very boring, but very efficient. Sometimes efficiency is not what is needed; quality and creativity are very important. I realized I needed other people with different ways of thinking to help curb my efficiency mindset and to add flavor and spice to the planned initiatives. Through this practicum I saw the need and value in having a team of people involved in planning for a ministry/goal/business.
While I do value having and working with a team, I am also an introvert. I am energized by spending time alone or with a very small group of friends. I lose energy when I am in a large crowd or have to deal with a lot of people for extended periods of time. I value and need time spent alone to recover after going to a party or large gathering. This is something I have seen especially this year in Explore. I love the solo times, and tend to leave early from our impact group meetings. I don’t go to the movie nights and often chose to do things by myself. My actions show the value I have in solo time.
During one practicum meeting, a couple members of our group became involved in conflict with each other. The meeting lasted for several hours while these two people attempted to work things out. Even though I had no part in the conflict and was just an observer, I was exhausted after the meeting. I was so exhausted that I went straight to bed and skipped dinner even though it was pizza night, which is my absolute favorite. I skipped because I needed time to recuperate after this ordeal. Whatever business/ministry I end up involved in, it needs to provide time for me to be alone. I can handle intense interaction with people, but just need time to be by myself also.
I have grown up with a very strong influence coming from my father to keep my word. Dad set the example for me of coming through when he said he would do something. This was passed on to me by osmosis. I didn’t really realize it as one of my core values until one day when I got an email. I run a website about my hobby of model bridge building. I offer tips on my website, and also have a contact form for people to send me additional requests. One day I received an email from a man who had said he had given a pledge help a young student build a toothpick bridge, but then realized he didn’t know very much about the subject. This man then spent time researching on the internet and had come across my website. He read everything on my site about toothpick bridges, and then contacted me for further help. This man felt so strongly that once he had said he would help this student, that he would do everything in his power to fulfill his promise.
Because I get a lot of requests for help from my website, I have been in the habit of not answering them because I don’t have a lot of free time. But when I read this man’s story, I admired what he was doing so much I made a point of helping him as much as I could. I realized the reason I decided to help him is because I valued integrity, and wanted to honor people who were trying to keep their word also. Throughout my life, in whatever business or ministry I find myself in, I want to exhibit integrity. If I say I am going to do something, I am going to do everything in my power to fulfill my word.
During our practicum leading a troop of boy scouts up a mountain to learn winter camping and survival skills, I saw that I value a mentorship approach to teaching and ministry. One of my jobs was to teach the art of making quinzhees, which is a type of snow shelter. A quinzhee is made by piling a large amount of snow in a dome shape, and then hollowing out the inside. The walls have to remain thick enough, and it is easy to dig too far. To avoid this, I made sure I was on the inside helping the scouts dig the quinzhee out. There was only room two people inside the quinzhee at a time. I found that I really enjoyed this one-on-one time with each of the scouts, and I was able to connect with and teach each student easily in this type of setting. Because of this, I want the ministry I get involved in to include mentorship and keep the student to leader ratio low. The more I can invest in people one-on-one the better.
These values make up the basis for my vision for ministry/business: to develop a team, starting with my family, to mentor others into Godly lifestyles. The scriptural background for these values and my vision comes mostly from the second chapter of Titus. Titus 4:2 says, “that [older women] may train the young women…” Verse 6 states, “Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.” 11-12 says, “For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world.”
The chapter begins by instructing the older women to teach the younger women, and the men to do likewise. This implies several things. One, that Paul is promoting the use of mentorship for growth in a Christian community. In addition, Paul implies the older people of the community are working together as a team to accomplish the goal of leading and teaching Godly lifestyles. These are two aspects of my vision for ministry.
Another important part of my vision is that my team starts with my family. My wife and I will be mentoring our children. In turn, once our children have reached a certain level of maturity, we will begin as a family unit to reach out to others and develop mentoring relationships. This does not mean that every single member of my family is mentoring the same people, but rather each member could be mentoring a different person. I see my family unit as a base of operations from which the various members branch out for ministry. The family will be a place of encouragement and accountability in this.
In I Corinthians 12 Paul spends a considerable amount of time talking about how Christians should relate to each other. The conclusion he comes to is that everyone is different, and we all need to recognize the value of each other. We all need to work together and tear each other down. In this passage is found the concept of team. The Christian Church should be one big team. It is my hope to follow this model on a smaller scale, working with my family and a few other Christians.
Family, Integrity, Team, Solo time, and Mentorship are five core values I consider vital to any ministry or business I participate in. These values stem from my individual talents and experiences. I hold to these values because I believe incorporating them will help me to be more effective in business and ministry. At the root of these values is a deeper value, a value center to the Christian faith: love. The values I have listed are aspects of love and help define love. The ultimate value and goal in my life is to share and show the love of Christ with everyone I come into contact with.
Winter skills were hard for me. Winter is simply a harsh environment. One must be very proactive to survive. And to survive well is another matter. It takes skill and knowledge to be able to enjoy the winter wilderness for very long.
One of our winter skills was telemark skiing. Telemark skies are different from other skies in that they have grooves on the bottom that allow you to travel uphill as well as downhill. Interestingly, despite having to fight gravity, I found it easier to go uphill than downhill.
I had an extremely difficult time staying balanced on the skiies going downhill. Every time I would attempt to do even the basic turn I would fall. Sometimes I would fall simply going straight down the hill. To make matters worse, because there was so much snow getting up was difficult. In addition, I had a 30 pound pack on my back.
Typically I tend to dislike things I am not good at. Telemark skiing included. My attitude towards telemark was pretty bad. I hated every minute of it. Despite my inability, everyone on my team, especially the instructors, were extremely patient with me. Indeed, by the end, I was almost overwhelmed by the love that I was shown.
Then I had a chance to show that love back, but I almost missed it. On mountaineering specialization, one member of the team was not as physically capable as the rest of this. Because I knew this beforehand, I allowed myself to get annoyed that this person was even doing mountaineering. I thought my fun would be hampered by having to travel slower, and not being able to do super intense things because one member of the group wasn’t able to.
Then I was struck at how selfish I was being. I was thinking that life was all about me and what I wanted to do. I was beginning to dislike this person and allow myself to get more and more annoyed at the slow pace.
But somewhere along the way I realized I needed to show the same love to this person as I was shown during skiing. Then I further realized I was being given an opportunity, not just an obligation to show this love. My focus changed to being all about me to attempting to love this person the way I knew how. I don’t think I was perfect in my attempts, but I did try.
Interestingly enough, the leaders of mountaineering specialization chose I John as the text for the 4 days. I John deals a lot about loving our Christian brother. Ironic almost. I learned a lot of things on mountaineering specialization, but this is probably the most important thing.
Some photos + the destruction of our quinzhee.
Eternity. Time. How do they relate? Perhaps this image can help explain. Time, which is what we live in right now, did not stop eternity. Time is defined as when God first created the earth and will end when Jesus comes back again? Maybe we don’t know when time will end, but we do know it had a beginning. The end doesn’t really matter for this illustration, but I do believe that time will have an end someday.
God exists outside of time. Because time has an end, and eternity doesn’t, God knows the end already. This is hard to comprehend because everything we know as humans is confined by the dimension of time.
Revelation 13:8 “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
This is how Jesus could have been slain from the foundation of the world. In a sense it already happened before the time act of Jesus’s death. All our past, present, and future sin was covered by the death of Jesus because of this.
Another interesting thought:
What is the opposite of love? Most people would say hate. However, what is the opposite of hate? Love and hate are not opposites. Apathy is the opposite of both. Thus, is it possible to love and hate at the same time?
Explore started 4 months ago. Now it is the end of the first Semester. The dorms seem eerily empty. Only a few remain. As Brad and I were talking last night, this place has become our home. Explore is one big family. I am sad to leave them. Brad and I decided that the most ultimate road trip would to visit everyone in Explore at their home.
I do feel a sort of sadness about this day, even though I am excited to be going home. I wish I could bring home as many Explorites as possible. Thankfully Chupp and I live close and do have plans together over the break.
It is neat to look back over these past four months and see where I started, and where I am now. I have been through a lot. I have been pushed to my breaking limit in so many ways, physically, spiritually, intellectually, relationally.
I have learned a lot of skills over this semester. I know how to safely belay a rock climber. I know how to guide a raft down class 4 rapids. I know how to *cough* wet exit in a kayak. I can facilitate a ropes course. I have a greater understanding of how to ride “bike” in various settings, as Dwayne so aptly put it.
I have spent a lot of time studying the Bible more deeply than I have ever before. I have been challenged to think well. I know how to ask questions.
I have had a ton of self-realization moments where I discover a facet about me or my understanding of life. Sometimes I have realized things that are good, and sometimes not so good. I have so far to go.
I have had many debates of Mac vs. PC, American vs. Canadian, Skiing vs. Snowboarding, Jetman vs. Pacman, rafting vs. kayaking, toques vs. beanies, pants vs. shorts, hot and humid vs. cold and dry, and others.
Explore is an excellent program. I hope to see all my Carrollton friends here next year. I write this as I await to load up in my shuttle to the Calgary airport to fly home. It will be interesting to see what “Bike” looks like back in redneck Georgia. I wonder how well I can truly ride.