Orientation Finally Here

Yes, it finally got here, Orientation. It was a great day of getting to know the staff and faculty. We had worship at 10:00 as we do each weekday morning except Thursday because we have Eucharist at Chapel at 6:00pm on Thursday evenings. We probably had 150 people in chapel, which by the way is beautiful with a grand looking pipe organ. Roger, pictures will be coming your way. The feeling in there when we sang and responded was incredible. It is the kind of thing that gives you goose bumps. To worship with 150 people who are so enthusiastic and projecting their voices, was amazing. The only other time I had an experience like this was worshipping at the Synod Meetings in Orlando and I think we had about 600 people there. This will be a great thing to go to everyday.


I finally met the IT Manager so I guess I am officially on the “geeky squad”. I guess I can’t use geek squad since Best Buy has that tied up. With some of the questions that were being asked about getting on their computers I think we will have plenty of work for the first week at least. But we are here to serve. The IT Manager is even helping Peter with his laptop since he is having some virus issues.

As a Junior we are also assigned to a mentor group. We met today and I think this is going to be a great thing. They used to have one on one mentor assignments, but they feel we will all get to know more people, more quickly by doing the group idea. You know the mega churches are very big on the small group concept and as I was visiting their churches I felt the small groups were one of the reasons they are as successful as they are. You are part of the bigger church, but you get your smaller more intimate feeling from the small groups. We went through getting to know each other and our faith stories. We will probably have to tell our faith stories thousands of times according to them. I will put mine up here one of these days.

With all that was thrown at us today it is real easy to over commit to things. I am very aware of that and am at the limit of my commitments at this point without backing something else out.

We already have received our first reading assignment and we have not even been in the class. We only have that class on Mon and Tues so we end up not starting it until next week. My academic advisor has asked the group of new students that we have to get together for lunch next Monday to get to know each other. Sounds like a good idea. She seems like a neat person with lots of energy. We will see what kind of academic advice she has. Our Dean is new in her position this year. She seems great also. Such a great demeanor and she is my Greek teacher. I think Greek and other subjects where you have a high chance of not getting it the first time through are very impacted by the teacher you have and their approach. I can already tell she has a great approach and that I am better off having come to Fall full year Greek than to have tried to cram it all into Summer Greek.

I have an appointment with my Field Education advisor tomorrow morning to find out what congregation I will be joining to worship and do field education with this year. We meet for 15 minutes or so with a questionnaire filled out and he assigns us over the next week or two. As I said before, I think there are already two seminary students at the congregations, one from each year of school. I am sure the Holy Spirit will be working to get me to the place I am supposed to be.

Well, time to get ready for bed and get a good night of sleep before classes tomorrow. Take care, God bless.

Steve