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Back home and finals are OVER!  I am sure I passed them all, (okay there was grace on the History final), but all is done and I am confident I passed everything.  Given I was on probation the first semester because I did not have an undergrad degree it is great to get past that and be under normal status.  I know, I know, all of you are saying I will never be considered "normal".  Don't worry, I live my life outside of normal. 

Of course it is pretty crazy trying to get everything done for Chirstmas in just a few days.  I think we pulled it off though.  Now we have to wrap everything. 

I had a meeting with Tampa General yesterday.  This is where I am going to do my CPE this summer.  CPE is Clinical Pastoral Education.  While it is about ministering to people in time of sickness and crisis it is more about me getting in touch with my issues and things that have happened as I grew up so that I can deal with them rather then them coming out at a later date while I am ministering to someone. 

Danielle moved out recently.  She moved in with one of her best friends.  Hope they stay that way. 

Lucky passed away on Tuesday.  We knew he was heading in that direction, but it is still hard when it happens.  Lucky and I always had a contentious relationship as he thought he was the alpha male of the family and of course I was not going to give that up, so we agreed to disagree.  Deb and the girls however are pretty hard hit and still dealing with it.  I told the vet she could do a necropsy if she wanted for edcational purposes and she did and let us know that he had a huge tumor on one of the lobes of his liver.  It was about the size of a softball.  Looks like there was nothing we could have done.  Still it is hard to say good-bye to him.  You become used to having him around.  I hope we are able to hold off getting another dog until our lives settle down and we are going to be somewhere for a while. 

Our family wishes you a blessed Christmas and holiday season.  "for unto us a savior is born..."

Two weeks left.  I almost wish there was an additional week as there is still a lot to do.  4 Papers, and study for finals.  We have had a cold streak or it is supposed to be this cold up here, I don't know.  30's to 40 at night and upper 40's to low 50's in the day.  Been 7 years since I experienced cold every day.  Feels pretty good actually, so far.  We had our Lessons and Carols service here at Christ Chapel last night.  We have it at my field church on Wednesday night this week.  The music director is bringing a 60 student choir from the school where he is the music director.  We are serving dinner afterwards.  We normally have 150 per week between two services.  We have been told to expect 180-200 total.  The church will easily handle this many as it is never even 1/2 full, other than the ordination that was celebrated for the son of the congregation. 

I did the rough edit to piece our video of our homeless project for Pastoral Care and Jason and Tom did the polishing, which is where it really came together.  It turned out very good.  I am excited to show it in class.  As I understand things, our IT director makes copies and puts them all on a DVD and gets them to all the class members so we have a copy of each teams video to keep.  I look forward to having that.  

I know the Christmas season is always so stressful.  I hope we all just take a step back and stop listening to the retailers and the marketers that try to tell us how Christmas should be celebrated if you want to be "really happy".  I have really come to try to simplify Christmas and focus on the celebration of the coming of our Lord.  However, I am totaly out gunned and out spent by all of the marketing.  We get so caught up in having to make everything TV perfect.  Life is not that way and it causes many people to become depressed and stressed because they can't live up to the picture perfect Christmas.  Please just do what you can, don't commit to what you can't, enjoy the company of your friends and loved ones, and praise God that he gave us His one and only Son to save us from sin.  Who cares if your Christmas dinner came from Publix or Sonny's or Bob Evans.  It is about enjoying the love our God shows to us and through us. 

Have a great week.  I need to get back to Greek.  I leave you with this thought:

"The spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.  There is no law against such things as these."  Galatians 5:22-23

Back in the Saddle Again

Back from Thanksgiving break and back into the swing of things. This time I got right back into school. Good thing too, plenty to do with only three weeks left. Back to my field church on Sunday. They offered fruitcakes for sale a while back. They came in and I picked mine up. Yum, yum. I think I am one of the four people in the world that like fruitcake. There is a real chill in the air up here. It got down into the upper 30’s last night. Cold! Got done with Greek tonight and got an 88 on my quiz. I missed the translation form on one set of verb endings.


We are done with our Worship Practicum class. Good to have a class passed. One down, five to go. I did finally get registered to go to Atlanta for my Cross Cultural experience in January. I have also been able to work things out to go to Tampa General over the summer for my CPE for 11 weeks. I have not even passed all of these courses and we have to register for next semester. I did that taking 20 hours, but only getting credit for 17. The Greek I am taking is a non-credit course as it is a requirement for getting into the program. That is why they offer the summer Greek so you can have it out of the way to start your first year. I am taking a heavier load then usual to catch up with what I will have fallen behind not taking Greek readings and Hebrew this year. I don’t want to be trying to catch up next year as from what I hear Hebrew is worse than Greek and I will still have Greek readings on top of the Hebrew.

We had a presentation of the pro side of the Church-Wide Assembly decisions today from one of the professors. Good presentation and included some things that I had not heard before. Mostly that while the Bible says that God blesses one way of life it doesn’t say anything about condemning another way of life, such as single, or married and childless for example. Interesting approach that I had not heard before to refute the scriptural approach so often used to speak against this way of life. We are supposed to have another professor speak to us in the same manner but against the decision of the CWA. This is very informative as speaking to both sides of this will be required I think to minister to everyone in a congregation. At this point I am still in the middle and don’t know which side I will move to IF I move to a side. It will be interesting to see what the Council tasked with developing the HOW all of this will happen comes up with. That might alienate even more people or it might allow some people to say, “I think I can live with this”. To me it is very interesting to be in the middle of this as it plays out. Of course my human impatience wants to know all of the answers now rather than wait for them to play out. For me this continued dialog is valuable. I hope others see value in it and I hope it continues.

If I don’t get back here before then, root for the Gators on Saturday afternoon against Alabama. They win and they go to the National Championship game.

I leave you with: “When they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Friends, what are we to do?” “Repent” said Peter, “and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah; then your sins will be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:37-38