Wondering what is going on in peoples heads!

I have the feeling that no matter how long I work at the church people's thoughts and opinions about what is going on at the church is never going to cease to amaze me. Like the other day. I was talking with a parishioner who mentioned that she knew of someone who was going to apply for our financial administrator position at our church. We recently cut the number of hours from full-time to 25 hours (due to budget reasons) and well our current administrator needs full-time (it is a crappy situation for her). Anyway I mentioned how the whole situation was to bad. This is when the parishioner informed me that our financial administrator spent more time working on other things for the church that she did finances. Hmmm Last time I checked our financial administrator did our finances first. And the other duties she does we told her to do. At any rate when I told the parishioner that she did indeed spend most of her hours on our finances, she was a little surprised, but glad to hear it. I mean really who did she think was doing our payroll, budgets, reimbursements, paid our bills, etc. It certainly is not me!

Then as the week progresses I got hear all about how dirty our kitchen is by another parishioner. Now granted there was things that need to be cleaned but he and I were cleaning them at the time. What was interesting to me is as he is complaining about how dirty things are he chose to focus on the floor and never wiped down the counters nor cleaned the grill. Since the parishioner cooked in the kitchen earlier, used those things, and was complaining how dirty the kitchen was, I thought he would also take care of the rest. I assumed wrong. I guess this is all a part of being in ministry. Listening to the gripes and wondering what is going on in their head.

Always think twice

I chose to house sit for parishioners at my church. And they are a lovely couple. But I have learned something. I would never want to live in a really small old house with two dogs and 4 cats. All indoor animals. Not to mention that every time I see them all I am going to think about is their small house with all those animals. Really I think part of what it comes down to is I am not an indoor cat person. I do not like cleaning their litter box and nor do I like the kitten attacking my foot every time I move it at night. All I am trying to do is sleep and all it seems to want to do is bite and scratch my foot. It has definitely taught me to think twice before saying yes to things.

How do you get them there???

So I have a MS beach trip tomorrow and in the true tradition of my church I have 1 count them 1 MS that goes to my church coming. She is bringing a friend so that brings my grand total to 2. I am planning on going to go and have a good day with them but man it would be nice to have more coming with me. The good news is when there is less of them I get more one on one time with them. Someday I will have many, many youth on an event with me but at the moment I am happy with 2.

Plus I love the leader coming with me. She is the nicest person ever and the youth all seem to like her too. Yeah for Mother Hen filling in for me! She thinks that she is getting the better end of the deal by having me house sit for her and I get to have her on my beach trip. Trust me I am getting the better end of the deal!

So while I have not found the recipe for getting 100's of youth at an event with me but tomorrow I am going to go have fun with 2 and my leader.

Camping with the youth

Recently I went camping with some boys from my youth group at Beverly Beach. It was a fun time but full of some firsts for me. I had never been camping in a campground before, been camping without my parents present, cooked a full meal in a cast iron pan, set-up the Coleman stove, built the best fire of the bunch, and been in charge of the whole camp trip. Overall I would say that it was a successful one. It rained the first night and most of the next day. I spent the night trying to avoid the drips in my tent. (Time to get some new tents) But when I got up in the morning I realized I had it lucky. One of the boys was drenched on his backside. Little did I realize he did not have a mat and as water ran into the tent he just got more and more wet. For the second night my other leader gave him her dry sleeping bag and extra pillow. I made sure he had a mat under him and that he would stay dry. This meant my other leader and I got to snuggle all night under my sleeping bag. Let me tell you Kristen and I know each other really well these days ; ) Good news is everyone was dry the second night. Next year I am going to make sure everyone has a mat, there is an extra sleeping bag packed, and that I learn to put the tarps under the tents better!

I did it!

Yesterday I did it! I got up and preached at three services. It is the first time I did that. My only downfall is that I could not seem to talk slow enough. Although if I did it might have lasted 10 minutes. There was a lot of good feedback for me and I did what I set out to do. I managed to educate my church on what the HS mission trip is really about. That while it is about the fun it is also about the connections you make with God, each other, and getting that chance to be the hands and feet of Christ. This year more than other years I think that the holy spirit was working through us. It was the best YouthWorks staff and the other groups were the best that we had. All of which helped it to be one of the best trips. So when I got up to talk to the parish I held my head high and told them how much God has blessed us with amazing youth that went on an amazing mission trip.

Sermon

So I opened my big mouth and told my rector that I wanted to speak in church about the HS mission trip I was just on. Here I was thinking I would get to talk for about 3 minutes or so. Something brief and people could ask me more questions later. Little did I know that my rector was thinking of giving me the sermon slot. Wow the whole sermon slot?!?! So it is not as bad as I thought. I am only getting about 8 minutes of the sermon slot and he will talk for about 4 minutes before that. Still that is a lot to fill. The good news is that I was a communications major and at times I have the gift of gab. Especially when I am passionate about something and I am definately passionate about this.

Bulletin Boards and Spiders

Today was a productive day. Not only did I manage to redo my youth bulletin board but I managed to kill the big, huge, ugly, gigantic, brown spider in my house. I am not sure which one I am more proud of. While the bulletin board is more showy I think I am more proud of the spider. I already have like 4 bites on my foot I do not need more. Granted there could be more in the house but I am pretending that is the only one in the house. That there is no more to be found because otherwise I would not be able to sleep. It was tough though. The first time I tried to kill it I was not able to. I had to move around furniture and everything. Not to worry the bulletin board was not harmed in the killing of the spider : )