First week under my belt.

Hello There Cyberspace,

Well, our first week is under our belt, and what a great week it was! We were at Mount Hope Christian School in Burlington Mass. This school was perfect for me, I love working with Elementary and Pre-schoolers, and this school was preschool through 5th grade.

We ran two chapels each day one for the elementary school (K-5) which Pam led and she worked through a theme titled “Shoes” where we talk about…you guessed it, shoes. With that week, we’ll spell out the word shoes one letter for each day and each letter associates with a different word.

Monday S= Salvation
Tuesday H= Healing
Wednesday O= Obey (Obedience)
Thursday E= Endurance
Friday S= Sanctification

Each day we had a different shoe as an object lesson.

I led the preschool chapel with the assistance of the ever awesome Hudson Taylor Wells. We talked about the parables of Jesus while using blocks, a stuffed turtle, and my Yankees shirt. I had originally thought of using a pair of bulls to talk about the parables of Jesus, but with Hudson coming to help, I didn’t need to have a puppet to talk to, because I had a real person.

Cutest thing I heard last week “God wants us to be snuggly with Him” one day we had talked about slippers and how God wants us to be comfortable and get refreshed in Him.

Most awesome thing I heard last week “Hi! Hi, my name is Rachel.” I say that’s the most awesome because that little preschooler was talking to me and the teachers told me that’s the most she had spoken since she had been there. She was a new student and hadn’t really said much for the week she had been there, but she called out to me from across the playground to tell me her name.

God is an awesome God!

I have all this week off, but starting next week, we have 2 weeks in a row, I’m really looking forward to it. In October I get to go back to 2 schools I’ve already been to, I can’t wait for that to renew those relationships with the staff and the kids.

Last night I went to a worship service at a small house church, the speaker was a missionary from Wales, that is currently stationed in France. He talked about too often we just pray out of our faith, but we need to more often pray out of our authority, or more rather, the authority of Christ in us. We have a great authority when we can use that name, but we only can when we have Christ in our life.

He also talked about ministering out of Christ and not just out of our gift. Ministering out of our gift means that sometimes we go where we’re not called, because we think that’s where our gifting has taken us (just to be clear, I don’t feel that way at all about coming to Coastlands, if I was going to go somewhere comfortable, it wouldn’t have been into the mission field!) and sometimes we get stuck, because we’re using our gift, but we’re so tied to it, that we can’t see when we should change something.

Well, I must be off,

Have a great day!

Parking Adventures and Feeling Convicted

Hi There Cyberspace,

Well, it looks like I’m gonna get blogs done every couple of weeks at least when we haven’t been to schools. I just don’t seem to have it in me to write one every week, I just can’t imagine that people will want to hear what I have to say that often.

Anyway…we start at schools next week!!! I’m very excited! I must admit, I’ve gotten a bit bored these last few weeks, I just haven’t had that much to do.

I did have a bit of excitement yesterday… I had to go to city hall here in Manchester to start the process of getting my car registered in New Hampshire and I had a run in with a meter reader. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they have a tough job, and I’m sure they get argued with a lot, but that does not give them an excuse to not be observant. Manchester has a new system for parking that has done away with regular meters, and you go to the center of the block of parking spaces to a little kiosk to get a receipt to put on your dashboard to show that you paid to park. Well, as I was finishing up at the kiosk (which wouldn’t take my quarters so I had to pay with my debit card) I noticed the meter reader walk past me, from the direction of my car. I was worried that she might have given me a ticket, but thought she must have realized that the car without a receipt might belong to the big guy standing at the kiosk, no such luck.

I got back to my car and saw a $10 parking ticket tucked under the wiper. Since I wasn’t going to stand for this, as I did exactly what I was supposed to, I found the reader and asked her why I got the ticket. She tried to tell me that I had parked, conducted my business and then, when I realized she was giving me a ticket, I went to the kiosk. After she insisted I left my car (which you have to do unless you park right in front of the kiosk) she then told me she didn’t see me at the kiosk. Now, when I try to hide, I usually do a pretty good job, but when I don’t try, I believe the only way I could make myself more obvious would be to walk around with a neon sign over my head and a marching band behind me. I’m 6’ 4” and a big guy, I wasn’t even wearing camouflage so I don’t know how she missed me. But eventually she did void the ticket, but not before I decided I really, strongly dislike the parking system in downtown Manchester.

To move on, God has recently been impressing on my heart that I need to be the same person in private that I am in public. Now it’s not like when people aren’t around I go out and set things on fire or boo the president, but I always want to be a genuine person and I want to honor God in everything I do, and that doesn’t always happen in my private life. Luke 12:2,3 tells us

“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

I know that God is always near and can always see what I think and do, the question is…does that convict or comfort me?

Have a great day!