24

  That’s how many years Pearl and I have been married now. Of all our years together , this has been a tough one. With Pearl’s Dad’s health failing and money being tight. Yep things have been tough this year. But we’re still here, still love each other and are stronger than before the pains of the last year.

   This year we need to take more time for ourselves. With our kids almost grown it’s time for us to rediscover each other. We’ve been parents first and lovers second or even third for a long time now. We need to change that. I’m looking forward to the challenge of rediscovering us. Don’t get me wrong we still have fun and laugh together, it’s just becoming our time again. Before we know it, we’ll be empty nesters and we’ll be alone together again.

  This blog isn’t the most romantic thing I’ve ever written, but it is honest. I love my wife, she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

I must be a better husband. I’m looking forward to a better year 25. I guess wanting to know my wife better is kind of romantic isn’t it?

Heavenfest 09…My Life Lesson

 On August 8 Heavenfest happened without my help. How was that possible? I mean I’m was supposed to be involved but wasn’t. It was almost painful for me to not be. I’m supposed to leave the event exhausted from work not just exhausted.

 OK I had a really good reason for not being involved. God told us we couldn’t. My Father-In -Law was really ill. Pearl and I were happily making plans for the entrance and other stuff. I was collecting foam for the cutouts that would be placed over the scaffolding, it was going to be spectacular. When one night we were in bed about to fall asleep, Pearl sits upright and says,” We can’t do Heavenfest!” I at first thought she was just having doubts on our abilities(something we do pretty regularly).  But then she started talking about her dad and how he was doing. I could tell God had spoken to her because she was right in everything she said. It turned out that Dad died the weekend before Heavenfest. We spent most of the week before Heavenfest running around to the point of exhaustion trying to make a nice memorial service for him. The running didn’t stop until the the Sunday after. We wouldn’t have had time to give our best effort and our hearts would have been heavy the week of set up.

 That having been said, every time  I walked by this it hurt a little. This was our project. We have never not completed something like this before. I can still see the finished gate in my mind. The swirly borders from Heavenfest.com  up the sides with the wings and logo across the top, all the scaffolding covered with black cloth. It was going to be SOOO COOL! But God said no.

 The lesson for us was this, Obedience. Plain and simple, Obedience. We didn’t have the time and God knew it. He wanted us to listen to him and to honor our father. Which we did and wouldn’t change what we chose to do. Pearl got to spend her father’s last days with him and not building the gate. Those days were priceless.

 I need to thank Tara and Dave( love those guys, two better people you could never meet). Tara gave us our passes, even though I didn’t feel like we had earned them. Dave drove by us with someone on his cart and said ” There’s some great people I know” right after we had walked past our unfinished gate( I was feeling a little discouraged). I was lifted   just by that comment. I also need to thank the people who were praying for us, we wouldn’t have made it without your prayers.

 Our hearts were still a little heavy from the week and our bodies were exhausted. Pearl and I had to leave before the end. We just ran out of gas. We were asleep on the couch at about 8:30.We missed out on the Sacred Assembly , so wanted to be there for that.

 I can still see the gate in my mind. NEXT YEAR! I still have foam. Did anyone happen to take measurements of the scaffolding???

  p.s. I must earn my passes next year. I loaned my truck to my friend and it had better access than I did!

That’s just not right!!

Pa-In-Law

Well, Pearl’s  father passed Friday after a long fight with what can only be described as old age. One which everyone loses in the end. Pearl was at the house when it happened and got to say one last” I love you dad” before he died.

Dad and I had a rocky start to our relationship, he didn’t want me to date his daughter, but I was determined to. He tried to intimidate me and I wouldn’t be intimidated. Eventually we sat down and talked and he reluctantly let me date her.( a conversation witnessed by Pearl’s brother and sister and still lives in family lore)  I think all he really wanted was someone to look him back in the eye and tell him they weren’t  going to hurt her.

I owe a lot to him . He didn’t think I was good enough  for his daughter , he was right. I needed to change some things in my life. A couple of years later while Pearl and I were dating I was losing my job. I tried to apply at Sysco, but they wouldn’t even give me an application. He got an application for me and hand carried it to the superintendent that hired me.  He got me the job I now hold twenty four years later. So he helped Pearl and I provide for our family.

In the past twenty seven years Dad became a man that I loved with all my heart , a man that helped me become the father I am. A man that I am proud to have been told ” I love you hito” by. I loved him to. I really feel that I became one of his kids. I miss him.

What Were They Thinking?

Last week at work we had a couple of incidents.

Incident# 1

One of the guys on nights took it upon himself to throw away a dumpster full of shipping blankets. The day shift janitor found them and reported it to a supervisor just like he’s supposed to. He pulled them out of the trash compactor and counted 30 blankets. Now, we do throw away old, torn and extremely dirty blankets. We use them to protect the produce from freezing in the back of our trucks on cold days. These blankets were in good to excellent condition so there was no cause to throw them away. You can imagine the management was less than happy at 2 to 3 hundred dollars worth of blankets in the trash. The guy who threw them away says he was told to. There are somewhere around 70 cameras at work. The video of the incident shows him dump the dumpster and return later to see if they are hidden by more trash yet. My question is this, if he was told  to throw them away by a supervisor why was he worried about hiding them in more trash? He received a 10 day suspension and was almost fired. He is now angry at the day shift janitor for ” Ratting him out”. The day shift guy did nothing wrong. The guy on nights shouldn’t have been  doing something wrong and he would not be in trouble now. He has no one to blame but himself.

Incedent # 2

A friend of mine I’ve known since 1982 decided to try and take an $80 dollar case of meat. The company was trying to determine when another employee had left and noticed my friend walking out with a 30lb case of meat. The management then reviewed the videos and they saw where he picked it up, threw it on his forklift, drove it to the door, and walked out to his truck an hour before he was supposed to leave{ like I said there are 70 cameras}. He came back in 10 minutes later and finished his shift. He of course was fired. After he was fired the company posted a notice on the bulletin board  that talks about how they understand that times are tough but stealing is wrong. It also talks about an employee assistance program and how they are there for us if we have problems. I seriously doubt he was having hard times. I think he was just stocking up his freezer.

We make, with our pension and health insurance, easily in excess of 50,000 a year and I know his wife has a good job. So for the price of $80 dollars he gave up a 50,000 dollar job that is very recession proof. Like I said before there are cameras everywhere in and around the building. How did he think he wasn’t going to get noticed? How do you go home and tell your wife that you were fired for being stupid? The company is missing 6 cases of the same meat. They think there is more than one thief now.

The sad part about this is that these are not new employees. The first guy has been there about 15 years, the second was there 19. They know what is expected of them. They know how to keep their job. Oh! and one more thing they were both Union stewards. They represent me to the company.  When I was steward I felt I needed to be an example of a good employee and did my best to act accordingly. Maybe they should have tried to do that to.  The people on their shift elected them to their position. Those two let them down.

P.S. People were unhappy about how I did my job as steward and were putting me to a vote of confidence, I did nothing wrong, and I didn’t want to fight for a job that I wasn’t getting paid to do. I resigned. I still don’t get what I did to make people want to remove me from the position. Too honest for them I guess.

My Civic Duty

Day 1:

I got the dreaded jury duty summons and had to go today. Guess what? I got sent right to the jurors box for the third time in a row. Of course I got selected to stay also. They didn’t even ask me enough questions to get myself kicked out of the jury. So two out of the last three times I’ve gotten called I have had to serve on the jury. I listened to a guy behind me fidget and fumble for words until he found the right thing to say for the judge to excuse him. The judge and prosecutor grilled him for probably fifteen minutes to see if he could be fair. I guess the judge decided he couldn’t and sent him home. I got asked one question only because I raised my hand in response to one of the generic questions they ask the whole jury pool. Another guy was asked if he could be fair and said ” I’m kind of racist” with the defendant being black he was out of there in seconds. Not me I’m honest and will treat the defendant fairly . I’m there for probably two more days. Well at least it’s a different kind of boredom than my normal job.

Day2:

Back at the courthouse again. We got to go in at 9 o’clock instead of the normal 8AM. That was nice. We { The jury} were whisked into the courtroom and proceedings began almost immediately. The prosecutor presented his case and evidence stuff like detectives, bank investigators, hand writing experts, and forged checks etc. The defendant { who represented himself} at the same time was presenting his rebuttals with stuff like catalogues and pictures of stuff he said he owned but was confiscated by the sheriff’s department, claiming they were basically repossessed. He had presented forged checks for the COD amounts drawn on accounts that didn’t exist any longer for the stuff . So he never owned the items in question.

After the prosecution rested it was his turn to call witnesses. He called the property manager for his rental space whom he had also given a bad check. How he expected her to help him I have no idea. He complained that they changed the locks at the request of the sheriff, it was either change the locks or they broke the door down. He said he couldn’t get his stuff. Of course they changed the lock the space was full of stolen property. So basically he presented absolutely no defense. When we were given the case to deliberate there was no doubt of his guilt. We took maybe a half an hour to decide his guilt. It was that clear cut.

After we returned the verdict the judge came in to speak with us. He told us that this guy had fired three attorneys before and I quote ” He decided to shoot himself in the head” by defending himself. He also said that if he had taken the original plea deal his first lawyer had gotten for him he would probably be out on the street now. The crime happened in 2004. The judged said he would have gotten about 2 years.They had been trying to get this guy tryed for about three years now. Now he would receive about 8 years. I once heard a saying that went something like this. Anyone who represents himself in a court of law has a fool for a client. I guess this guy proved that.

Quiet Dignity and Grace

As you know I’ve been having trouble with my truck and this video shows how I’ve been handling not being able to get it fixed{ the truck is Frankenstein}, with quiet dignity and grace. OK not really. At first we thought it was a bad oxygen sensor so I replaced it. Eighty dollars later the truck was still doing the same thing, it would run great as long as the outside temperature was above sixty degrees. When it got chilly the truck would die. Next I replaced the fuel filter, another ten dollars down the tube. I got my neighbor to come look at it and he brought a fuel pressure gauge so we could check the fuel pump, it was OK. We poked around under the hood a while and found a vacuum leak. We fixed that but no help. While we were under the hood we unplugged the vacuum line on the MAP sensor and the truck would run. So I replaced the MAP sensor. The next morning the truck still wasn’t fixed. Another eighty dollars wasted. CRAP!! By this time I’ve pretty much decided that I know absolutely nothing about cars.

I decide to take the truck to a real mechanic so they can put it on their diagnostic machine, that will surely tell us what is wrong. They tell me that I have the wrong plugs in and the is a vacuum leak under the throttle body. OK I let them change the plugs and put a new gasket under the throttle body. They keep the truck overnight to make sure they fixed the problem. I pick up the truck the next day when its warm outside and the truck runs great!! The following morning when its chilly again the truck is acting up again, they fixed nothing! Three hundred and fifty dollars gone. But this actually restores some faith in my mechanical abilities, two mechanics have now looked at it and they can’t fix it either! I call them that morning and they tell me to bring it back in and ask permission to leave the truck outside. What? The problem only occurs when it’s cold outside and they left it inside at night in a nice warm garage. I doubt they ever actually saw the problem and were just guessing. So I take the truck back and they leave it in the cold for the night. The following morning they find the problem, one of my fuel injectors is sticking when it’s cold. When it warmed up the injector would start working. They cleaned the injectors and it seems to have worked the truck ran this morning when it was forty five degrees outside. If it turns out that I need a new injector. My neighbor says he will “pop it in” for me The shop quoted me a price of $450 just for the injector. I found one at Autozone for $98. I wonder if they were exaggerating the price a bit?

Soooo to sum this up. It cost me about five hundred dollars to find out what was wrong with my truck. When a thirty dollar injector cleaning kit seems to have fixed my problem. Yeah, I got taken but I’m handling it with quiet dignity and grace.

Politics

I thought with the DNC in town it would be a good time to talk about politics. I hate them. Can’t we all just get along?  We’re all Americans here, why do we all go crazy every four years?  I know choosing a president is a big deal but I’m tired of the candidates bad mouthing each other by twisting theirs and other people’s words to make it sound like the opposition has no idea what they are talking about. I’m not that naive. I think both sides have valid ideas and concerns. Throwing mud at your opponent does nothing to instill confidence in your leadership abilities.

Now about the conventions. Do they have to be a week long? I would much prefer to watch America’s Got Talent to some talking head telling us what Hillary is going to say before she says it. Can’t we just fast forward to the part where Obama gets Crowned king of the Democrats and McCain gets Regent of the Republicans. What’s the point of drawing it out for two weeks? We already know who is going to run against who.

Since we know who is going to run I think we should, instead of elections, decide ala the WWE. I think maybe a tag team steel cage match. The Flying Obama-Ramas against The McCain Maulers. OH WAIT, WAIT!! Maybe like Thunderdome instead you know ” Two men enter, one man leaves” after all we want a STRONG president.

Christians Without Grace

I have a friend that was pretty much born in the baptistery and he was complaining about one of the candidates. (which one doesn’t matter this blog isn’t about that) One of them has admitted that he made mistakes in his life as a teenager. My friend pretty much stated that that was all he was and all he would ever be. Now the mistakes weren’t dissimilar to the ones that I’ve made in my life. So that made me feel that he was saying my salvation was a waste. I had to get up and walk away because I KNOW I’m not who I was. Isn’t that why Jesus died on the cross, to forgive us of our sins. Shouldn’t we extend the same grace to other sinners? This isn’t the first time I’ve heard him say stuff like that. He was once reading about a teenager that was killed by a classmate because he was gay. My friend said something like it served him right for coming out of the closet. Huh? How does being gay mean you deserve to die. How does a statement like that show him God’s love for him? How does that show God’s grace? I think the best way to show God’s grace is by trying to show someone God’s love other than using God as a blunt instrument. Bashing someone to pieces until he repents. I know sometimes some people need that but I think more often than not that chases people away from God. Thinking they are not worthy of God, so why try?

I guess I’ll extend grace to my friend even though he occasionally offends me with his ” Us four and no more attitude”. Showing him the grace he doesn’t show God’s people. God sent his son to die for everyone’s sin. EVERYONE’S! Not just the people my friend likes. Maybe if my friend had experenced some of the the problems that people not raised in the church had, he would be more forgiving.

By the way isn’t it possible that the candidates, both of them, aren’t perfect unlike my friend. And maybe, just maybe, they aren’t who they once were?

The Fashion Police

I recently read an article in Newsweek magazine about kids with their pants sagging ( here’s a link http://www.newsweek.com/id/146803) . The Police Chief of Flint MI. has told his officers to arrest on sight anyone showing their underwear. Evidently seeing someones band on their underwear warrants a criminal record, 93days to a year in jail, and a $500 fine. Now I’m not a big fan of the look, but my son sags and I don’t see it as criminal. His butt is covered.

O.K the guy on the right I can see getting a ticket, but I have seen worse on a plumber. What about the girls with the tops of their thongs sticking out of their jeans that are so low that they barely cover their privates. How about arresting some of those models that wear shirts cut down to their navels. Or the fat guy at the pool wearing a Speedo.

Or maybe me?( I told you before I don’t have a butt.)

I personally would rather my police department spent their time on other things like, ohh… I don’t know catching real crooks, terrorists, the punks spray painting the neighborhood. You know maybe patrol my area once in a while. We pay them to serve and protect not to accessorize.

Heavenfest Highlights

Well it’s been here and gone. Heavenfest is done.What a day, 12000+ people worshipping God, WOW! What a sight to see. So much as a matter of fact it took me this long to compile this blog. Here are some of the highlights for me.

The Prayer Interactions:

Pearl, Amyjo, Steven and I made interactive displays that would hopefully make people think about and draw nearer to God. All of which were Amyjo’s ideas, she has an amazing heart for worship.There was a couple of communion stations, one on spiritual growth, one about how the blood of Christ covered our sin, and others. My favorite was the prayer labyrinth. It was a lot of work outside in the 95 degree heat( Steven and I 6hrs, Pearl and Amyjo 12 hrs) but it came out well.  

Hours to build minutes to take down.But I think it made an impact on many people.

Besides it’s still there sort of.

The Brob..uh Brodig…Oh shoot, the graffiti wall thingy:

The graffiti wall was a cool idea. It was in the middle of the open field with a bunch of open paint cans so people could write whatever they felt on it, or themselves it turns out. Near it was an artist doing a large mural of WALL-E.

Dave’s Snack Shack:

I’ve decided that he was the smartest vendor there. He set up on the hottest and busiest side of the building right next to the misters , which he provided, and sold ice cream. Not only that but he undersold the Dippin Dots vendor by a couple of bucks an ice cream. He was running all day long, serving huge amounts of people on the verge of turning into puddles from the heat.

The Main Event:

After the last band had played a nameless and faceless worship band took the stage. I was right in the middle of the crowd taping the event for the nameless, faceless parents of the band. I was praising with one hand and taping with the other. There were a few thousand people on their knees worshipping and making commitments to God. One of which was my son. Praise God. He thought the main event was awesome.

Gods Provision:

While the bands were amazing, what I remember most is how God provided for the event. Right from the begining when we were asked for a donation for the seed money for the event. For us it was a huge amount of money to give but God provided the means to give it earlier than what our commitment was. Later he allowed us to work with one our favorite people, Amyjo, which calmed some our fears about serving. God provided buildings , stages, materials, and some amazing volunteers for the event. We met one who volunteered for a second shift helping park cars( The hottest, dirtiest job I think) before doing his shift as security. I love Dave Powers story of how he was praying for the funds for the emergency access road and God showed him he was standing on road base materials. I’m sure there are hundreds of stories like that.

 

 I think God provided so well because people in the event were so faithful. I’ve been asked if Heaven fest will happen again next year, I say I hope so but if God tells Luke and Dave not to do it then they won’t, they are that faithful. But if they do, I’ll be there doing my part, watching for God to move again.

 p.s Here is a link to the official Heavenfest media http://www.heavenfest.com/Media_2008/ There are tons of pictures there.