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
