So, hopefully this link will work.  I’ll post this and then check it and then I’ll know.  But here’s the link:  CLICKY.

And it looks like they’re off by a week because I was hoping to listen to the one I missed on Sunday (Justin was sick and I was “helping” by staying home and sleeping, too).  But they’ve got 3 of the sermons up for listening:  “Introduction,” “Compromise,” and “Communication.”  I just listened through “Communication” again and I’ll have to go back and listen to the other ones sometime again, too.  But while it’s all fresh, let me help clarify a few things that Pastor Michael mentions in the sermon.

He’s been using videos from “Everybody Love’s Raymond” for examples, which aren’t on the podcast because of copyright laws.  And I can’t find a copy of it on youTube, either.  But if you can find a copy of Season 4 Episode 3, the “Can Opener” episode, it’s in the middle of that.

He mentioned Jim & Nick’s and that’s a is a barbecue restaurant and if you ever come to visit us, we will take you there because it is AMAZING.  Delicious ribs.  Amazing nachos.  I’m drooling over here….

This is what he puts up on the screen at the end of the sermon:

• Timing is everything
  • Ecc. 3:1,7
• Think before you speak
  • Proverbs 16:23, Proverbs 15:23
• Don’t send mixed messages
  • Matt 5:27
• Listen, listen, listen
  • Proverbs 18:13
• Encourage
  • Eph 4:29

If I find time in the next couple days, I’ll try to go back and listen to the others, too, and give some notes on those, too.

Anyway, give them a listen!  They’re good!

Yesterday at church, a reporter from the local newspaper came to the service and took photos so he could write an article about the “Shoes for Soles” project that we did.  It was “Barefoot Sunday” and everyone was encouraged to bring a pair of shoes to donate and go barefoot for the rest of the service.  The church collected over a thousand shoes to send out to people in Haiti and Rowanda.

The front of the newspaper today is 2/3 covered in a picture of the piano player’s foot.  And I’m standing in the background—blurry, but still vaguely recognizable as me.  The article that’s supposed to be on page 10 – 11 isn’t actually anywhere to be found in the paper, but maybe it’ll be out tomorrow.   I really don’t know what’s going on there.  But hey!  I’m on the cover of the newspaper!

I was invited to the 9:00 meeting that the director of my department holds on Mondays.  I was invited to this meeting once before and it turned out well, but it’s always a little scary being invited to a meeting with the “big dogs.”  This meeting turned out well for me again – I was given an award for my hard work on my projects lately.   There are three levels of awards:  bronze, silver, and gold.  Bronze awards come with a set of free tickets to a movie theatre in Savannah.  (Not terribly useful to us since it’s about an hour away from home.  I have four of those tickets in my purse right now.)  Silver awards come with a $50 voucher to the Wal-Mart close to the company grounds.  (And it really only works at that specific Wal-Mart.)  And Gold awards come with a $300 bonus check.

I was awarded a Silver award at the meeting.  $50 to spend at Wal-Mart!  It’s pretty exciting.

As a side-note, I received a Bronze award in January and again in February.  I was thinking I’d work on a trend and see if I could get one every month of the year.  (Who deserves a promotion?  I do!)    I didn’t get on in March, but I figure getting a Silver award makes up for both March and April.  Don’cha think?

On my way back to my desk from the meeting, I passed my lead.  (Or co-lead?  I’m not totally sure where he fits on the current chain-of-command, actually.)  He took a double-take and said, “Kylene, you’re shrinking!  Is that from Zumba?  I almost didn’t recognize you!”  It made me laugh, especially because he had to back-track and explain that he meant it in a good way and not at all badly . . . he’s very concerned about being proper to women in the workplace.  I have no idea what I’m doing differently from Friday when he saw me last, but made me feel really nice.

By the way, the scale on Saturday said I weighed 213.5 pounds, with shoes on.  That’s down 3 pounds from last week and about 19 pounds from my starting weight.  And I’m on day 29 of logging my food in a row!  If I can make it all the way through today and tomorrow (and really, why wouldn’t I?) then I can call and schedule my massage.  How awesome is that?!

But I’ve run up to the end of my lunch hour so I’ve got to go ahead and post this.  I hope you’re all having a fantastic Easter Monday!

It’s a pretty wide rotation, currently.  Every two weeks, one or the other of us goes in.  Last week was my week on the rotation.  She did it two weeks before that and she’ll do it again the Friday after next.  I’m waiting to hear back whether we should clean more frequently than that, but so far, it seems to be working.

The head pastor is really excited that we’re doing it.  He came in on my first Friday (Friday and Saturday counts as the weekend for the church staff, since they work on Sunday) and told me that he was so thankful for the work.  And he said so again that Sunday when I ran into him after church.

I’m glad that he’s happy about it.  But his appreciation isn’t why I’m doing it.

The reason I’m doing it is because it needed to be done.  There was a need and no one was filling it, so the two of us stepped up and we’re taking care of that need.

But also because it should keep me humble.  I’m starting to get recognized at church because I sing with the band sometimes.  Even when I’m not singing that week, people still come up to me and mention it and tell me that I sound good.  It’s easy for that to go to my head.  But it’s a gift that I’ve been given (cultivated by my mom (thank you, Mom!)) – my ability to sing and harmonize with a group and feel comfortable enough to stand on stage and share it with other people.

But I’ve also been given a talent for cleaning and organizing.  And if getting on my knees to clean the toilets at the church office doesn’t remind me of how important it is to do the behind-the-scenes dirty jobs that no one wants to do, then I don’t know what will.  If I can get the same sense of service while I’m singing as I can while I’m cleaning, then I’ll know that I’m not doing it to get the praise of people watching.

I cleaned the offices on Friday for four and a half hours.  It was hard, dirty work, but that place sparkled when I left and it felt wonderful.  I was tired and sweaty and I smelled like dumpster, but I left a bouquet of flowers in the conference room and a clean coffeepot in the kitchen.  And how can I not feel happy about that?

Someone finally came and towed away Justin’s old Infiniti, giving us $150 for it.  It would have been nice to get more money for it, but just having that parking space back is enough.

Beautifully sunny 50-something degree weather all weekend long with the windows open and fresh air blowing through the house.

Yoga class on Saturday morning.

Mail with boxes and cards and presents from my mom and brother.

Ordering my present and a few other fun things online and the excitement of anticipating all those wonderful boxes in the mail.

Going out to dinner for my birthday, even if it wasn’t exactly what Justin had planned, at a restaurant that I’ve wanted to explore for a long time, where we’re definitely going visit again.

Having such a great time singing at church that I almost sang my voice out and had to go home and sleep for an hour and a half to recover.

Watching a clever little squirrel perch on the top of the shepherd’s crook holding the bird feeder, climb halfway down, stretch across the space, push the top off the feeder, stick his whole upper body into the thing, and then go back up to the top to munch on what he had grabbed.

Watching that squirrel almost fall off his perch when a large bird shadow blocked out the sun, followed by a flailing leap into a nearby tree.

Justin fixing the laundry room light so we actually have full light in there for the first time in a year instead of this terrible flickering nonsense.

Watching a friend stand on the top of a ladder holding a broom with a dustpan duct-taped to the end trying to scrape sticky Halloween eyeball toys off their living room cathedral ceiling.

Chatting and laughing with my sister on the phone while her daughter hummed.

Curling up in bed and laughing with Justin until it hurt about funny things we saw on the internet.

And several other things, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

I finally found it and it’s going to take me a few days to finish it, but I actually have until NEXT Friday to finish it!  It’s amazing!

That’s the kind of week I’ve been having.

The good news is that the presentation that I had to do this morning seemed to go over pretty well.  I was given the assignment to do this presentation last Wednesday with the mandate that it be “no longer than 30 minutes.”  THIRTY MINUTES?  Like, half an hour?  And you think I’ll talk longer than that?  Do you know me at all?

And I was supposed to find someone to help me present the topic, and even though I begged and pleaded and offered cookies and got permission to get people excused from other projects by the DIRECTOR, I still got zero support.  So I did it by myself.  I put together a PowerPoint presentation and got the document printed out that I was presenting (86 pages) and prepared to talk for 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left over for Q&A.

I spent Monday preparing the document in between running around like crazy doing my regular job (the document was already written and mostly put together, but it needed formatting and other changes).  I spent Tuesday working only on my regular job, trying to support the schedule and getting my actual job stuff done.  I spent all yesterday putting together the PowerPoint presentation and figuring out what I was going to say for 25 minutes, while also supporting the overall activity in my group and regular job.

The presentation was this morning.  There was an hour allotted to me and another presentation from my area.  The presentation before mine took 45 minutes.  I was quietly asked by one of the event coordinators if I could do mine in 15 minutes instead of 30. 

Sure!

And I did.  I watched the clock carefully and abbreviated the things I was going to say and talked more quickly than I should have and glossed over one topic altogether, but told them where they could read about it in the document I handed out to them.  And I ended at 13 minutes so I could have 2 minutes for Q&A.  And they were impressed with the amount of information I could give them in 15 minutes and they loved the document that they were able to take with them for reading later on.

All in all, I think it went over really well.  And my actual job project was submitted on time yesterday, supporting the schedule.  And the other project that I’ve been working on is right on schedule.  I’ve been running around like a crazy person, but I’m apparently making a good impression to people watching me.  It’s encouraging, but I’m ready to slow down a little bit.

Which is why I’m excited that this new project isn’t due until next Friday.  I can actually breathe!  And think!  And go home and not feel completely burned out.

Though, you should all be proud of me:  Monday and Wednesday, even though I’d had a long, exhausting day, I still went to Zumba.  I worked Zumba so hard yesterday that I was drenched in sweat and not thinking coherently by the end.  Tuesday, I admit, I sat in my chair and watched TV, after working an hour later at work than normal.  But I’m thinking about hitting the Yogalates class at the gym tonight and a girl is allowed a break now and then.

Anyway, that’s where I disappeared to the last several days.  I’ve been working really, really hard.

Oh!  And I sang at church again on Sunday and I had an echo part all by myself on one song and I was really nervous about it, but a lot of people told me that I looked really comfortable and that I sounded really good, and Justin said I didn’t look nearly as much like I was going to faint.  Yea!

I showered, I found clothing to wear, I went downstairs to pull together the pieces of my lunch.  I made time to load and run the dishwasher to try to eliminate the smell emanating from the sink.  I went outside to start my car, warming it up to clear the frost from the windshield.  Then I went back upstairs to dry my hair before curling back up in bed behind Justin, waking him up and enjoying some time together before I left for the day.  Yesterday I skipped drying my hair because I was running late – my hair would dry on its own, but the cuddles could not be made up later.  Even if it’s only for a minute because I’m running late, I find time to curl up for hugs and cuddles and good mornings with my husband.

I drove to work, walked in from the parking lot, and clocked in to work.  I put my lunch in the fridge and microwaved my oatmeal.  I filled my water bottle and put water in the tea pot.  I ate my oatmeal and checked my email and went over projects that I finished yesterday.

I started the week with four documents to review and several projects.  I completed reviewing three of those documents – one for initial submittal, one for future review by coworkers, and another for immediate coworker review.  I may receive changes to the documents at any time, but at the moment, they are as complete as I can make them.

Today I intended to complete reviewing the remaining document to get it prepared for coworker review early next week.  But halfway through the morning, I was assigned a new document. It’s a lot more complicated than the documents I usually edit, and I’m writing it from scratch, following a template.  It’s going to take me several days, and that’s without taking time out to work on updating the calendar of tasks for my department and making changes to that schedule, and the other many projects that land on my desk every day.

Unfortunately, this means that I did not start preparing for a presentation that I have been assigned to complete next Thursday.  I have a lot of work to do there, but the schedule must be upheld!

During my lunch-hour walk, I got distracted from my exercise by a bat on the ground.  A bat of the furry, nocturnal kind, not the wooden, baseball kind.  It was curled up on the ground next to the walking trail, and I thought it was dead until I moved a pine needle off its back and saw that it was breathing.  I don’t know how the poor thing ended up on the ground, but I couldn’t just leave it there.  So I tried to get it to latch onto a stick so I could put it on the top of the nearby fence, from where it should be able to launch.  It didn’t want to hold onto the stick, so I ended up picking it up with two sticks and moving it, and then it didn’t want to hold onto the fence, either.  By then, it had hissed at me several times and we were both getting agitated, so I left it at the bottom of the fence, in the hopes that it could figure out how to climb up by itself once dusk fell.  And I covered it up with a few leaves so hopefully it wouldn’t get too hot in the sun and hopefully no passing wild animal would snack on it.

When I got inside, I looked it up on the internet, and apparently I was on the right track, trying to get it to latch onto a stick.  I should have moved it to a leafy spot on a tree instead of a wire fence, but since it didn’t want to hold onto the stick, it doesn’t really matter.

The rest of my afternoon was filled with trying to understand my new project, completing other tasks assigned to me, emailing people to invite them to a meeting, trying to see if I needed to reschedule that meeting, receiving the notice that we would not be rescheduling it, emailing more people to find out what was wrong with my source data, talking with people to figure out what I should do with the incorrect source data, and puzzling and puzzling and puzzling over what was different between one document and three others and why that was the case.  And thinking about that bat and trying to decide what to do about it.

At 5:00 I clocked off from work.  I walked out to my car, pulled out a pair of leather gloves from my toolbox and a shoe box from my trunk, and walked back out to where I’d left the bat.  It wasn’t there.  I poked all over looking for it but I couldn’t find a single sign of it.  It didn’t look like there had been a struggle, so I’m holding onto the belief that it crawled or climbed off somewhere and found its way home.  I haven’t got a clue what I would have done with it if I’d managed to get it into the shoe box.  I’m glad I didn’t have to figure that one out.

I went home and turned on my computer to listen to the music for band practice, something I should have done before then, but hadn’t managed to do.  I was still doing that when Justin got home.  We chatted for a while about what was going on with our day before I went to go finish listening and poking at my computer.  He went and did the same.

And then I went to band practice.  I really enjoy getting to sing with the band.  I missed being able to enjoy music with other people in that way.  We went through our songs, a couple of which were familiar but I enjoyed the refresher, and one of which was completely new and I have a lot of practice on my own to do before Sunday morning.

I left, got gas on my way home, and made it back to the house and to my computer, to now.  And I don’t know why this is the post that I’m doing today, but I’ve been working on it all day long, trying to keep track of my day.  I found it an interesting exercise.  Obviously, my afternoon got a little away from me, but it got really complicated there for several hours where I was doing several things at once, one of which was really stupidly complicated.

But there you go!  That was my Thursday.  Now, I’m going to go downstairs, where I think Justin is making dinner, and then I’m going to go to bed.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thursday!

You know, right now it’s about 6 degrees colder in my hometown in Wisconsin than it is at my home in South Carolina.  That just isn’t right!  Especially because it’s an hour later here so the sun’s been up longer and it’s still this cold.  And just for the record, we’re talking about 27 degrees F. compared to 21 degrees F.  I’m cold!

If you don’t hear much from me here in the next couple of days, this is why:

This morning, I have a meeting.  And then I have a lunch with my department.  This afternoon I have a 1 minute presentation for a bunch of  VPs from corporate-level.  (Yeah, that’s ONE minute.  It’s a little odd.)  I’m leaving work early so I can make it to a dentist appointment.  After that I have a chiropractic appointment.  And then I have band practice from 7 – 9 o’clock.

Tomorrow I’ll work my usual Friday hours of 7:30 – 11:30 and then I’ll head onto the island to have lunch with Justin.  At 3:00 I’m meeting friends and we’re going on a women’s retreat with the church.  I’ll be there until very early Sunday morning when I’ll drive the 1.5 hour trip back home so I can be at music practic at 8:00 before the service.  (The rest of the ladies will be back in time for the 10:15 service.)

And Sunday afternoon will either be collapsing into a chair and not moving for the rest of the weekend, OR I’ll take care of all those things that I didn’t have time to do over the rest of the weekend.  Like send out checks for monthly bills and balance the checkbook and tidy the house and all those other things.

Sometime tonight, I need to pack.  I don’t know when I’m going to find time to do that, but it’s got to happen tonight.

So there’s a lot going on!  I’m not too stressed out about all of it, meaning I must be getting used to this sort of thing, and there are several things that are actually exciting (like getting to know a bunch more ladies from the church), but if you don’t hear from me, it’s because I’m off doing stuff.  You can feel free to call me, but you might want to wait until Sunday afternoon.

I hope you’re all having a fantastic week!

Cheers!

I keep completely failing to call you and thank you for the encouragement cards! 

They arrived on Saturday, and then we were rushing all over the place trying to get the laundry done and errands run.  Sunday, I got to sing with the worship band for the very first time in front of the church, so we had practice from 8:00 until church started, and then after church, we were decorating the house for Christmas and making our Thanksgiving dinner (instead of being at 10:00 at night on Thanksgiving, we were a whole three days late!) and other randomness.  Monday, I started my day dark and early at 4:45 with my workout, followed by work, and then a chiropractic appointment, and then Zumba.  So I didn’t get home until after 8:00 and then I was SO TIRED that I pretty much collapsed.

But thank you!  They’re wonderful!  And they’re going to be SO HELPFUL on those many, many hard days. 

I’ve got a cold today.  Sneezing a lot, coughing a little, the back of my throat is really sore, so I’ve got some Chlorasecptic drops, a big box of Kleenex, and a mug of tea.  And I’m tired.  I was tempted to stay home from work, but there are only 14 days left of work for the year.  I’ve got stuff to get done!

So I’m sitting here wrapped in my zippered sweater that Grandma gave me for Christmas a couple years ago.  It’s WARM.  And I’ve got my space heater running at my feet.  My new coat is hanging on the wall behind me but I’m settling for just petting it now and then (because it’s so soft!) instead of wearing it (because it’s warm and just so dang cute!).

And my lead sat down a little bit ago and asked if I’d be interested in working my way into a position that’s higher up on the ladder than where I am right now and doing EXACTLY the sort of things that I enjoy doing.  Would I?  Oh YES, I would!

I can’t believe it’s already the 1st of December!  And I still don’t have tickets to fly north.  I’ve been looking at tickets since the beginning of AUGUST.  Difficulties with Justin’s work schedule, really.  But we’re doing it this week!  Maybe tonight?  SOON.

And I haven’t started doing my shopping!  And Justin hasn’t put up a wish list, but I know he’s been thinking about it.

I wish I could breathe out of my left nostril.  Stupid cold.  I’m not sure this box of Kleenex is big enough . . . .

I’ve got to run.  But I wanted to let you know that I got the cards and I think they’re great!  Thank you so much!  I hope you’re having a fantastic week so far!  And I’ll call you as soon as I know more information about our travel plans over the holidays.

Love you!

Kylene

How about random happenings from the last several days?

Last night Justin and I went to look at a car.  We’re not sure about it yet; the owner isn’t sure if her daughter isn’t going to snatch it up yet, either.  So we’re waiting to hear back from the owner on whether or not it’s actually for sale.  And then trying to decide if it’s worth buying.  We’re still thinking.

Tomorrow night I’m going to my first practice with the music team at church.  It’s been a long time since I’ve sung with a church group (and even longer since I sang with a group other than church or family) so I’m a little anxious about it.  They’ve got me on a sort of probationary thing, where I’m joining them for practices for 4 weeks so they can decide whether I fit in or not.  I’m excited about the opportunity, but I’m also nervous about it.

Monday I brought brownies in for a meeting about 5S and had a frustrating meeting with not enough people about the problems going down.  There’s been a lack of communication and a whole lot of frustrations and it’s not been handled as well as I would like.  It’s still not great, but I’m (possibly blindly) hoping that things are going to get better soon.

I’ve worked out most of my macro problems in my Lean project!  I’m still not clear on how some of it works, but I’m getting a much more thorough understanding of it as I go.  I’ve gotten through 2 of my major milestones (with some minor tweaking still needed there, but it’s mostly set) and now I’m onto number 3.  And it’s different and a little more complicated, but I’m hopeful to have it worked out before too long.

Except it’s tabled right now because I have a project that’s actually in my job description to do so I have to finish that one first.  And it’s a very long and boring project.  Long.  And boring.  And I have to finish it before my deadline, so it’s what I’ve been spending most of my time on the last couple days.

I heard a good idea lately about how to get past a writing block.  Two good ideas, actually.  But they fall under the “Draft Zero” concept.  Anything you write is going to have to be edited several times, so the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect.  In fact, it can be absolutely awful.  And if you rewrite the whole thing, that’s fine.  But some of us get stuck wanting to have the first draft be something great!  To have what’s on the page reflect what’s in our head.  For it to be this fantastic piece of work.  And it’s just not going to happen.

A zero draft is a draft that you know without a doubt that you’re going to rewrite.  It’s very freeing because you can write absolute crap and go “Meh, whatever, I’ll do it better on my first draft.”  And a great way to make sure that you have to rewrite the whole dang thing is through a couple of options.  You could write the whole thing in the wrong tense, write everything in present tense when it should be in past tense.  Or write it by hand.

So I finally have a great reason to write in this notebook I’ve been holding on to since forever.  I have something like five journals sitting on my bookshelf that haven’t been written in because I just don’t write in a journal very often lately.  If it’s something really heavy on my brain that I can’t write about here, then I’ll head there.  But it’s just not something I feel the need to do very often.  But I *love* journals.  They’re so pretty!  And I wish so often that I had a reason to write in them.  And I’ve had this idea for a play rolling around in my head for a couple years.  I’m writing my zero draft in one of those journals.  And I’m scribbling and jumping around and making notes and writing dialog and having a grand old time writing a lot of really awful stuff.  And I’ve made more progress in a couple days than I’ve made in years of thinking about this project.  It’s so freeing!

And then I pulled out another journal this morning and brought it to work so I could log my food, since I can’t go online and do that.  I want to log my food and start losing weight again, but I get stuck on how hard it is to remember exactly what I’ve done during the day.  Eventually, I’ll get back to pre-logging my food and all that, but right now I’m at square one and just trying to figure out what the heck I’m stuffing into my mouth all day long.  Hopefully this journal will help with that whole project, too.

But I don’t want to talk about my weight or my eating right now.  I’m not ready to do that yet.  There’s been too much negativity about that in my head for so long that I can’t handle approaching it yet.  But I’m making steps to get beyond that and hopefully things will be changing there soon, too.

Anyway!  Did you know that those fingernail decal stickers that you get at the store are just about the perfect size to put at the end of push-pins?  It takes them from blah to fantastic really fast.  And I took a length of ribbon and hung it on my cubical wall to hold all my binder clips because they were just jumbled in a mess before and now they’re easy to get to and cute to boot!

And that’s enough of my randomness.

Have a great day!

When we moved to the area, we visited a handful of different churches trying to find one where we were both comfortable.  This is always a challenge, especially when one half of the couple grew up with a contemporary service and the other grew up traditional Lutheran.  There’s a pretty big gap in expectations when it comes to the service.  So it’s good when there’s at least one major requirement in mind for both halves of the couple—well-thought, intelligent Biblical teaching.

We visited a handful of churches near our new home and found ourselves returning again to Live Oak.  We were hesitant at first.  They meet in the high school.  The idea of this kind of weirded Justin out and I was worried about the stability of the church.  But we very much enjoyed the teaching and the people were very friendly.  It felt comfortable.  It felt like a place where we could stay.

We kept coming back to the church for a handful of months after that.  The pastor kept on giving good sermons.  The people stayed nice.  I started seeing ways that I could get involved.  We decided we’d go in January to the once-monthly Starting Point class to learn more about the specifics of the church.

There were five of us in the class, plus Pastor Michael made six.  And one of the first things he said was that Live Oak is a plant from a church in Savannah called Savannah Christian Church pastured by Cam Huxford.  The church where Justin and I had been attending before the move.  Suddenly everything made so much sense!  “No wonder it feels so comfortable!”

The rest of the class was a lot of fun.  We walked through the curriculum the pastor had prepared and asked as many questions as we liked.  The other people in the class were a lot of fun to chat with and the conversations were very interesting.  I knew when we got out to the car after the end of the class that I was perfectly happy to become a member of the church.  But I wasn’t sure about Justin.

Imagine my delight, then, when he turned to me in the car and told me that if I wanted him to, he’d become a member of this church with me.  “Even though you’d have to get rebaptized?” I asked.  The church insists on baptism by immersion and he had been baptized by sprinkling when he was 12.  “Even though,” he said.

I about hit the moon I was so excited!  I understand and accept that my faith is stronger than my husband’s, so it’s absolutely thrilling to hear him interested in getting involved in the church.  And something as serious as this?!  Just about knocks me over.

We talked about it a handful of times after that, about the implications and our thoughts about it and everything.  Finally the decision was set and we decided to talk with the pastor.  I made cookies the night before church, both because Justin and I wanted cookies, but also because at the end of the service the previous Sunday, there had been some discussions mentioned about the financial problems the church is facing.  It seemed like maybe the pastor could use some encouragement and cookies are so good at that.

Pastor Michael was surprised and happy to get the cookies.  And also happy to hear that we’d like to become members.  He said that we could do it the following Sunday at the same time as two other families who were coming forward to join.  We’d gone through the class, which was one of the requirements.  And after the service the next week, he was doing a baptism for one of the other families becoming members, so Justin could come at the same time for that.  We were surprised, having throught that we’d have much longer to wait, but also delighted to do it so soon.

The next Sunday, last Sunday, February 1st, 2009, at the end of the service, Pastor called us all down to the front of the church and introduced us to the congregation.  And that was it!  He asked us to stay up at the front so people could greet us, and we shook lots of hands as people walked out.  Lots of smiles, a couple hugs, lots of very happy welcoming.

After the service was the once-monthly Gathering where people bring food and sit around in the cafeteria chatting and munching on food.  Justin and I sat at a table and a handful of people came up and introduced themselves and sat to chat for a while.  I think I talked to more people that one morning that I have the entirety of the last six months.  So many friendly people to talk with!

We were some of the last people to leave since we were waiting for the pastor and all the rest of the staff who were coming to the baptism.  Since the church doesn’t have its own building, baptisms take place at all sorts of different places.  This time, the other family getting baptized lived in a housing community with a full athletic complex.  We followed the children’s pastor to the community and, wow.  It’s a beautiful place to live.  The homes are breathtaking and the lots are enormous and the property is wooded and beautiful.  It must be an expensive place to live.  The athletic complex has a huge pool outside and lots of weight-lifting machines and rooms for Pilates and aerobic classes.

And a spa.  Complete with a heated pool.  Not just a hot tub because those tend to be kind of small.  This thing was about five times the size of a hot tub.

We all crowded into the spa pool area, trying not to be too loud for the sake of the other people in the spa.  Pastor baptized the father of the other family, Mike.  Then his daughter and his son were both baptized by the children’s pastor and the youth pastor.  And then Justin went in and was baptized by Pastor Michael.  Poor Justin’s half-blind without his glasses and, lately, a light-sensitive eye infection in one eye that makes him keep that eye closed most of the time, so he couldn’t see me beaming at him and trying to take pictures.  The whole thing was very exciting to me.

We all stood around hugging and taking pictures for a little while until we couldn’t stand the heat in the room anymore.  The pastors and Justin went to change in the lockers in the fitness center, the other family ran home to change, and Mike, the father of the family living at the community, invited us all to stay for lunch at the restaurant next to the gym.  So about a dozen and a half of us went over and ate lunch together.

The food was really delicious and we got to get to know Mike and the youth pastor and his wife.  I think I could be friends with the youth pastor’s wife if it wasn’t that the church can’t afford to keep them on and they’re looking for a new church, probably in Indiana.

When we left, around 3:30 in the afternoon, Justin said that he’d never done that before.  I asked him what he meant.  He said he’d never been involved in a church group before.  He’d never been a member of a church before.  The whole thing was new to him.  I hadn’t really thought about it before, since the whole thing is so familiar to me.  I’ve always been involved in church groups and events like these.  And I’m so tickled to be able to share it with Justin now.

(Check the gallery for a few pictures of it all.)