Not for Lack of Trying - - -

I haven't posted in over a week - and it's mostly because fall has reared its head. Confirmation started this week, and this weekend I had services with my mission trip kids. It was a full week - and my mind felt like it was going 20 different directions at once. I had so much running through my mind that at times, I had to ask people to repeat themselves because I couldn't hear them over my internal monologue. Teen CBS had its first official meeting last Monday, and I am still working on putting together the final pieces of a band. We play on the 22nd. :)

This week is just as crazy...although in a different way. Council on Tuesday night, 6:30am presentation and 7:30am meeting on Wednesday plus Confirmation and everything else, meeting in Byron and meeting in Owatonna on Thursday, football game and weekend event Friday night thru Sunday, rounding out with an afternoon at an apple orchard Sunday afternoon. Despite all of that, I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the fall schedule, slowly but surely.

I got a chance to go on a long bike ride with my crew on Saturday morning in the rain. We rode to Ceylon and back - took us about two and a half hours. We were soaked by the time we got to Ceylon...but luckily it was warm enough that it didn't matter. No lack of excitement during the trip...I was riding with one of the guys up ahead of the other three, and I had just commented that I was getting tired. Not two minutes later, we rode past a farm that had a german shepherd sitting in the yard, who, upon seeing us, started barking and running down the ditch. My friend said, 'You got anything left? Because you had better find some gas...' to which I replied that I thought he'd just run along with us in the ditch. No more did the words come out of my mouth and the dog started running up the slope and on to the road...after me. I took off like a shot...and after half a minute of chasing us, he finally backed off. I think he was a couple feet from me at one point. So, I learned that even when you're tired, you can still go real fast if you've got the right motivation.

Today, amidst all that was going on, was a lot of fun. Seeing and hearing the kids talk about the mission trip again, seeing kids around at church again, and thinking about the mission trip again...made me think.

When we take part in mission experiences, when we take time to get to know the stories of others, when we listen to the hearts of the people we encounter - we begin to put names with faces...and we can no longer claim ignorance about the situations that present themselves around us. We have to act...we need to act. By then, it's all we can do. ~