Blessed Summer

Wow has it really been almost three months since I posted last, well I guess life as gotten ahead of me in those three months. The blessings from my last month have greatly continued and increased over the past three months. So let's start at the beginning.

JULY
In July I went home for two weeks, the first was to spend time with family and friends and the second was to help at MAC-D camp at Wesley Woods. The first week was great, it was good to spend time with family and friends in PA again, but it was the second week that was really a blessing. For those that don't know MAC-D stands for Music, Arts, and Creative Drama, and it is a camp that is co-deaned by my wonderful former mentor Alyce Weaver Dunn. I wish I could say that Alyce is still my mentor but as of July 1st she was appointed as the District Superintendent of the Johnstown District in the Western PA UMC conference. (I was sad and happy to hear about her new appointment, sad because she would no longer be 20 minutes away when I was at home and my mentor, but happy because I know that she is and will continue to be a great DS.) So helping with MAC-D was first a blessing because I was able to be with Alyce again, and we had some time, though not nearly enough, to catch up with each others lives. MAC-D was also a blessing because of the girls in my cabin. Almost all the girls that were in my cabin were returning girls, with a few newbies. It was wonderful to see these girls again, and to hear about their lives during the past year. (You can only keep in touch on facebook so much.) As last year my girls were wonderful, they love camp and that work hard all week for the performance on Saturday.
This year I was especially impressed by one of my younger girls Kori. Thursday night I did the campfire devotionals. My scripture passage was from Romans 5:1-5 "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." I struggled all week with what passage to use, when Thursday morning this passage came to me. I spoke to the campers about preserving through trials. After my devotional all the councilors and co-deans gather around the campers and we prayed for each other. When we returned to the cabin and I was getting ready for lights out I saw a group of my girls sitting in a circle at the back of the cabin. They were all sharing what was going on in their home lives. It is so sad what some of these girls have to live with and through (I learned some of their stories last year and many seem to have become worse). When the last girl was done sharing, Kori lead the girls in prayer, praying for each of their individual needs. It really touched my heart to see her caring so much for her friends, and let's just say lights out was a little late that night, because when God is moving you don't stop it.
Another amazing night at camp was when little Maggie came up to me while we were churning homemade ice cream. Maggie had shared a great deal with me that week, and on this night she told me that she wanted to accept Jesus into her heart! What a privilege to be apart of her decision and to pray with and for her. We talked for quite a long time before and after praying, and I was so excited for her. Maggie wants to do so much in and for the church, but is still very young. I tried to encourage her to enjoy her youth and take this time to study and learn, so when she is older she will be more prepared to help and serve.
The whole week was truly a blessing for me and I believe for everyone there. It was great to work with some wonderful ministers from the WPA UMC conference and the great staff of Wesley Woods. This week reminded me of how much I love my home conference and the people who are a part of it. I cannot wait to be in full-time ministry working along side these people serving Christ.

AUGUST
I was home for almost 3 weeks in August and to be honest, I was not that excited to be home this time, except to see my family and friends. Again I spent the first week catching up with friends, the best part of which was seeing my former pastor and his family, now that they are back in the area. Dennis' appointment also started July 1st and he was moved back about 20 minutes away from my house. Michelle and I went to visit him one Sunday afternoon and spent most a large chunk of the day with him and his family. It was so good to see Dennis and Deborah and some of the kids for more than just a few moments here and there (like Wesley Woods, where Caleb was a camper). We talked and shared what had been going on in our lives over the last few months and years and Dennis showed us around his new church, which is just beautiful. I am so excited that they are back in the area and hopefully some time I am home, I will get to hear him preach again. It's hard to say, seeing I'm usually only home for 1 or 2 weekends at a time.
But my main reason for going home was for licensing school, 10 days of classes required by all conferences for future local pastors and most recently my conference for future clergy. As I said at first I was not looking forward to going to licensing school and was even trying to find a way that I could leave early so I could be back in Kentucky for the first day of Worship Design Team Training. I am so very glad I did not make this plans though, seeing that those 10 days were some of the best days of my summer! There were 14 students there the whole ten days for licensing school and 5 were there over the two weekends for CLM training. The 14 of us who were there the whole time became very close, and again, I cannot wait to work with these great men and women of God. We learned a great deal in these 10 days from church history, to statics, to our personality types, and many other helpful tips for running a church. There were several nights were we would sit out in the lobby of Olmsted Manor and share stories of all shapes and sizes, starting with Punxsutawney Phil and ending with alligators, with mummies and worms, and other various stories in between. But there were two days from this experience that will stick with me for a long time to come.
The first was Thursday night, I had evening vespers (there must be something about me and doing Thursday night devotionals) which were early because we got through all our materials before dinner. So after vespers we had some free time (a rare occurrence)so I decided (in a way God told me) to go over to the labyrinth to walk and pray.

I had felt God speaking a word to me all week and so I went to explore what he had been telling me. When I arrived my friend Rob was walking so I sat down for a bit to let him finish his walk. He saw me and we started talking as he walked. He eventually stopped and I walked into the labyrinth to talk about what God had been speaking to me about all week. He shared his experiences with this same topic and I shared mine, and it was a blessing to hear from his experience and to receive his council. After we finished talking I went back to the start of the labyrinth and began walking it myself. As I walked I prayed about what Rob and I had spoke about and I truly felt God's presence through my whole walk and I felt as I was leaving the labyrinth that a burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Rob stayed after finishing his walk through and waited for me to finish mine, so I would not be walking back in the dark alone. We talked some more on the way back to the Manor, I greatly appreciated his kindness that day.
The other day I will not soon forget is the second Friday we were there. Earlier in the week I had heard that a dear friend of mine Marty, who went to Paraguay with me, was pastoring a church just down the road. So I emailed him and said I would love to get together with him some time while I was at Olmsted. So we set up for he and his wife to come and have dinner with us Friday evening and they would stay for part of our evening class. (Both Marty and Jan have been through licensing school as a licensed local pastor and CLM respectively.) After we set up that meeting I emailed Marty and told him I was preaching Friday afternoon, if he could pull himself away from his church for a few minutes. I never heard back from him about this, so I got up and read the scripture for my sermon and started preaching, when Marty came in the back door of our 'classroom.' I wanted to stop my sermon right then and there and run to give him a big hug, but I was being taped so I couldn't. As soon as I was done though I went over to him and gave him the biggest hug and introduced him to all my classmates. He and Jan came back for dinner that night and we got to talk and share for about an hour and a half. We even took some pictures up at Olmsted and once he email's them to me I'll put them up on facebook or on here. So all in all those 10 days were again some of the best of my summer.

Licensing School ended on a Sunday and the next day I headed back to Wilmore because Worship Design Team training started Monday morning. I arrived back around 3 that afternoon, finished that day's training and the 2 following (hurting my foot/ankle in a fall day 3 at the ropes course, it's okay now) and then helped with the NSO chapels. After that school started on September 7 and I've been on the go ever since. Life's been crazy, but I think I'm finally falling into a schedule (I hope/pray) and so things should slow down a bit. I'll be putting up soon another post about school so far, focusing mostly on this last week which was Holiness Week a great, long-standing tradition here at Asbury, which was very powerful this year. But more about that in another post. It's late and I must be getting to bed, I have a lot of reading in the morning plus a Worship Design Team meeting. Ministry never stops.

God Bless
-E

God never ceases to amaze me . . .

I cannot emphasize enough how true the title of this blog is for me. So much has happened in my life in the last four months, that I can hardly keep up with what God is doing. Really this all started a few years ago, and if you know my story then you can skip down to the next paragraph or so, if not this will be a short version. In 2006 I went on a mission trip to Louisiana to help with hurricane Katrina recovery. There I saw a great need and felt God calling me into ministry. I thought at first that I was being called into youth ministry, but when I returned the following year I was leaning more toward missions. In 2008 I was accepted to go on a trip to Paraguay through my conference, while preparing for this trip I spoke with my pastor and some friends about overseas missions, and eventually pastoral ministry (which is a whole other story). On the trip with the help of 4 great pastors from my conference I realized my calling was pastoral ministry as an elder in the Methodist church. I came back to the states and shortly after applied for seminary at Asbury Theological Seminary, was accepted that following January and now have finished my first year.

So now that you know the short version of where I've come from, on to how God continues to amaze me in my life here at seminary. I knew when God had called me to pastoral ministry that ATS was the place for me, I had heard great things about the community and the school, (my current and former pastors are both ATS grads) I was also warned about the slow drivers in Wilmore, but never warned about the heat, oh well, I'm surviving. ;) My first semester of seminary was a bit rough, going back to school after being out for 4 years isn't easy. But I managed to survive and have now conquered my first full year of seminary! :)

It has been in the last four months or so though that I have needed to rely on God the most and trust His leading, and oh boy the things He has taught me! As you probably know my grandmother fell about 4 months ago and was eventually put into a nursing home and later hospice where she went home on my grandfather's birthday, May 17, 2010. This was a very difficult time for me being 8 hours away and only seeing gram a few times while she was in the home, over Holy Week. But with the help of friends, great supportive professors (she died the Monday of finals week) and the comfort of the Holy Spirit I was able to finish off my semester and first year of seminary strong.

Since the end of the semester I have felt God putting on my heart a need for more outreach at the church I currently attend here in Nicholasville. The people of this church and our pastor Mike, have been a great support to me this semester and this year. And now that I have been attending the church for 9 months or so (has it really been that long?) I see that there are great ministries happening at NUMC, like Manna meals, which during the summer I have been helping with almost every Saturday. But I see so much potential for growth with this church too. NUMC is about twice the size of my church back home, both in space and in people and I know that God want's to do amazing things through the people of Nicholasville UMC. I wasn't sure if this feeling was from God or just my mission-oriented self, that is until I started seeing confirmation after confirmation. First I got confirmation from Michelle, a friend from back home who encouraged me to see this through, then I heard a great speaker from Southland (a mega-church here in KY) at Ichthus, who spoke about the ministries that their church does, and how churches of any size can do some of the same "projects," for lack of a better word. Last Sunday, the day after Ichthus was over, Sandy a woman from NUMC and I spoke after church about the UMW taking a fifth Sunday and dedicating it to Social Justice, which again is in line with what I have felt God calling me to, and finally today Matt Johnson, our soon-to-be-former youth minister and associate pastor (he's moving to north central KY to plant a church beginning tomorrow) preached on always being ready to move when God calls, and to take radical risks for Christ, even if that means failing in the process. Can you say WOW!!

The only other thing I have been so sure of before this is my calling, which itself got another boost in the past few weeks. On June 16th I had a meeting with the DCOM and was unanimously voted to become a certified candidate for ministry. That's now 3 unanimous votes in a row (Staff-Parish, Church/Charge Conference, and DCOM). Now tell me that God is not a good and awesome God. I cannot wait now to talk with Pastor Mike about starting some new ministries at NUMC and seeing God work through and with his people to (as our mission statement says) reach up, out, and over to those around them. Praise God for his amazing faithfulness!

Goodbye Gram

Well after being in a nursing home for about two months and in the hospital twice during that time, Gram crossed the river Jordan yesterday, to be with Pap on his birthday. It has been really hard being 8 hours from home during all of this time, but I am grateful that I was able to see Gram over reading/Holy week. I am also blessed to have great friends and professors who have been a great support through all of this. Over this weekend I was upset at God's timing, and that all of this was happening over finals week, but now that I look at everything, I am very glad that this happened over finals, because all of my friends are still here. Starting tomorrow several of my friends from the dorm will be leaving to go home for the summer,so to have their support now has been amazing. My professors have also been great, allowing me to take finals early, and miss our final Sems concert on Friday. I will be sad not to see several friends graduate, but I need closure now, rather than in June. Thank you all for your prayers and support during this time. I will be going home Thursday morning, and the memorial service will be Friday afternoon. I cannot wait until I get to see Gram again on Canaan's shore along with Pap. I love you and will miss you.

In Resurrection Hope,
Erica

P.S. Sorry for all the Gospel music references, it comes from the song set for our Sems concert.

Silence

So I went to the Sisters of Loretto's Mother House today for a prayer retreat. It was such a beautiful day. Today was a day just to enjoy nature and God and silence. We arrived at the Mother House around 10am and after hearing from Joanne (a sister living at Loretto) we walked out to see where the prayer labyrinth was and some of the hermitages. This was a silent area on the campus of 700+ acres. After seeing where the labyrinth was I walked out to the large lake on the property. There I read my morning devotionals and just laid out in the grass by the pond. It was so peaceful not having anyone around and just enjoying the beauty of creation, hearing the grasshoppers and birds that were all around the lake and watching the fish and goose (yes there was just one large goose swimming in the lake). Shortly before lunch I walked back to the chapel, where we were to meet and jotted down a few lines for my summer sermon, this was a great day to get some ideas for that sermon. I ate lunch with another "pilgrim" and two women who were living in the nursing home on the site. This was the only 1/2 hour of talking I had in the 4 hours we spent there (excluding the first meeting with Joanne and the debriefing at the end).

After lunch I walked over to the labyrinth and someone was walking through it, so I went into the small prayer chapel next to it and read. I came out of the chapel after finishing my reading and walked the labyrinth, praying as I went along.After that I went back and sat at the lake again, watching the goose and fish and thinking about the day.

We meet at 2:30 to debrief from the day. A few people from our group shared what they had learned and felt through the day. Eugene shared something very profound. While reading the story of Moses, he realized that by God asking Moses to remove his sandals he was making Moses unable to run away, or to be defensive or offensive in that encounter. I really liked that idea, who knows maybe someday it will find its way into a sermon.

It was such a great day though. It was so nice to spend such a long time in silence and just enjoying being in God's presence. I had even taken my music with me, thinking that I would be intimidated by the silence, but I wasn't. At times I didn't even have a song going through my head (which never happens), but when I did it was one of two songs Mercy by Casting Crowns or Be Still and Know I Am God by Steven Curtis Chapman. The lyrics from Mercy that kept going through my head were "Thank You for Your mercy Thank You for Your mercy" from the bridge and I had the beginning of Be still and know that I am God in my head all day. I did not want to leave the Mother House today, but when I did I knew that by going there I was ready to tackle anything that may come my way for the rest of the semester. Thanks be to God for his Great Mercy!!

Back At It

Well I got back to ATS Monday afternoon after almost a week at home. It was good to see family and friends again. It was especially good to worship with my home church family at CUMC Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. All of the services were wonderful and I was so glad to be home and be a part of each of them.

Now it is back to school and classes. I can't believe that there are only about 6 weeks left in the semester. This semester and this year have flown by so fast. I am still loving all of my classes and so far am doing well in all of them too. (Really Greek is the only class I have a grade in right now, but it's an 'A')Chapel as always is still fabulous. We had a great service yesterday praising our Risen Lord!

I have decided to stay at ATS for the summer, I am still looking at taking a class but we will have to see. I am going to be home quite a bit this summer for church/ordination related things. I'll be home June 11-16 to preach and meet with my DCOM, July 9-25 for MAC-D and my Birthday, which will probably be the day I drive back, we'll see, and then I'll be home in August for licensing school (another ordination process). I am going to try and work this summer whether or not I take a class. I can't wait. I am also going to go fishing with my Greek professor some time this summer too, but I must get my pole when I go home in June first. Well that's all for now, I must get back to reading.

God Bless,
Erica <><

It's been a while . . . again

Well the semester is almost half way over already. Things have gone so fast this semester and I've been loving, almost every minute of it. I am technically taking 4 classes this semester but they only equal out to 9 credits, and one credit is Singing Seminarians, so really I only have 3 classes for 8 credits. So far my work load has been very easy. I have to read about 300 pages a week, and usually do more to try to get all my Music reading done before Reading Week. I don't mind all this reading because it is rather interesting. Greek has been great too this semester. I do not feel nearly as overwhelmed as I did last semester. Though we are learning a lot, the pace seems easier to handle. I also like that I have only had to write one paper so far this semester and it was one page long. By this point last semester I had probably written 10 papers at 2-5 pages a piece. My next paper is due in 3 weeks, for Ethics and it's 5 pages, which shouldn't be too bad.

The last few weeks have been kinda stressful, because I have been sick and with stuff going on back home, but all that is getting better so things are returning to normal again. Which makes me very grateful. So I have 2 more weeks until Reading Week. I can't wait to go home and see my puppy dog again. I miss her so much. I miss my family too. I only have readings to due until then, but I have my Ethics paper and my Greek mid-term when I get back. That will be an interesting week. I hope to get my paper done before going home on Wednesday of Holy Week, so all I have to do while I'm home is read and study Greek. I can't believe I'm almost to mid-terms, this semester is going so fast, I hope it continues to go well, but it could maybe slow down a bit. Well that's all for now, I should get back to reading . . . the story of my life this semester.

First Day of Class

Well I made it back to ATS, snow and all. Southerners . . . 2 inches of snow and they cancel school and the seminary is on a one hour delay. Sad. Oh well. I made it through another first day of classes, Ethics at 9:30, Chapel, Sems at 12, Greek 2 at 2:30. So far so good, now I must start reading for Ethics and my Music class, which I haven't had yet, that comes tomorrow at 1. I excited for another semester and the joys and challenges it will bring. It as great to be back in Chapel today, Marylin (our Chaplin) did a great job and the music was wonderful. Well off to reading. I'll try to post a bit more this semester, but we'll have to wait and see.

Learning to better serve Him.
Erica <><