deepbrew

Today was my last day at LCC.  3 weeks and 1 day ago I officially resigned my post in the bench room.  I’m going to Thailand for four month of missions training and experience with a program called IGO.

It’s hard to leave LCC.  I was there about a year and half.  Learned an awful lot about the IT world.  Besides my growing up on the farm and my two years at FB, it’s probably the most valuable experience I’ve ever had.  (guess that covers about everything I’ve ever done).  Not only did I become acquainted with a few of the ins and outs of small biz technology, but I learned an awful lot about relating to people.  I will definitely miss you all–Mark, Marcia, Josh, Byard, Jeff, Alex, Ron, and Mrs. A, the customer who sent in a pound cake once and freshed baked macadamia nut cookies another time, and who called about once a day with yet another problem on her aging PC.  Wow.

A word about my phone.  I don”t have cell phone anymore, cause it was a company phone, so don’t call me at 540-***-7351 anymore.  If you do you might get to talk to one of the above mentioned ppl.

At the risk of succumbing to unmanly sappiness, I am going to gush about a few people I really like. I love my friends, and just got back from a wonderful weekend with them.

First of all, a photo of my recently married cousin Brian and his wife Melissa, whose wedding I attended in mid January. I’ve got a lot of “best” friends, but Brian is definitely the one that goes back the farthest, starting from that momentous night as a thirteen year old with him and Loren in Brian’s dad’s haymow when we revealed to each other our deepest secret–who we liked. Turns out he liked the same girl I did, a fact I wasn’t particularly thrilled about, especially since he was always a couple steps ahead of me in the race to win her heart, but being able to talk about that sort of thing with other guys was definitely a big moment for all of us. Anyway, he’s happily married, as of January 13.

Going on to more recent friend events, this past weekend was a big one. SMBI’s Night of Music, the premiere conservative Mennonite event of the year, was Friday night. My little bro Eric was singing, and did very well on a solo. It was lots of fun meeting lots of people I hadn’t seen for ages.

One of the highlights was meeting Marlene, Kyle’s brand new girlfriend. They both seemed very happy, which is awesome!

After hanging out at Denny’s with a million night of music refugees, I had a great ride up to Lancaster with Karen and Sheri, who were nice enough to take me all the way in to the middle of Lancaster city to Jordan and Robin’s house. Michael came the next day, and in the evening Vince and Lydia and KrisAnne came over for supper and we had a totally wonderful evening. As we feasted around great food and conversation, I felt perfectly happy. Perfect happiness is not something I experience every day, that’s for sure, so I definitely notice it when I do feel it. I could go on, but to do so might be desecration. I don’t want to spoil it.

God is pure goodness. Take the love he pours into you this week and lavish it on someone in your life. Be happy.

God has been teaching me things lately.  He’s been showing me that the most important thing in the world is loving him (Jesus) and loving people.  Of course this is one of the foundational things we’ve been taught since we were babies, but somehow it’s one of those things that is easy not to do.

I’m always evaluating the way I relate to people.  Sometimes it seems very difficult to attain satisfactory “performance” in the way I “handle” people.  I get very frustrated with this at times.  And of course there are lots of people in my life that I wish would change, that I wish would start caring more about certain things, and less about certain other things.

Helping people is the #1 calling of Christians, as I understand the gospel.  And the primary way we are to help people is to help them find the grace and purpose of God for their lives and align themselves with that grace and purpose.  To get to this place requires change, for most all of us, and for most all the people we care about.

But pressuring people to make changes in their lives is almost always a disaster.  We hate when people do it to us, and other people hate when we do it to them.  Getting people to change and conform to the way we think they ought to live is very difficult, and probably the most persistent problem people-helpers face.

God is showing me that I need to quit trying to change people.  Stop.  Cease.  Desist.

My job is very simple.  Love them.

Love with every ounce of love that God gives  Love sacrificially.  Love kindly. Love earnestly.
Love being with people.  Enjoy them!  Delight in them!  Listen to them, and treat every word they say with utmost respect.

One of my favorite people in the whole world is Menno Kinsinger, my neighbor and an outstanding brother in our church.  He is one of those people who warmly claps me on the shoulder and gives a kind greeting whenever we meet.  Yesterday in church during testimony time he spontaneoously sang a song (very unusual in our church).  This man loves the Lord, and loves everyone he meets, and everyone loves Menno.

Menno tells a very moving story about a time when he was on the brink of “giving up on it all,” a time of deep despair and rebellion, from what I understand.  He was a teenager; the year was 1951.  One day after church he was standing out in the church yard thinking morose thoughts about his life, when someone laid a big warm hand on his shoulder and spoke kindly.  “Menno, how are you doing?”  For Menno, that was the Turning Point.  His life took a decided turn for the better, and ever since I’ve known him he has been the kind of person that gives just this sort of encouragement to everyone he meets.  It’s an amazing little episode.  Love is so powerful.

Menno has since placed a stone in the ground at the spot where this life-changing encouragement happened.  I was up in that church yard this afternoon, and took a picture of it.

The Turning Point: 1951.

Love as Christ loves.  This is what I want to do in 2007.  So help me God.

Happy New Year!

Since I wasn’t the real photographer, the best I could do was this from behind photo.

It was a good wedding.  Hard to believe that my good ole buddy Vince is married.  Man.  Back in the day, at CBS, we used to stay up really late in the prayer room, hashing matters of importance.  When I was a second year student at FBEP he was a first years student, and that’s where he met and fell in love w/ Lydia, who was my classmate for both years.  Lydia is a good friend, a good lady, and definitely a great catch for Vincent.

Vince & Lydia, Congratulations! The world is better because of this union.  The world is waiting for you.

Yeah, I don’t think I told you I was going.  It was a quick trip, but wonderful in every way!  I went to see my brother Lavern as he was being ordained as official pastor of their new little mission church.  It was so good to be with him and Lolita, my sis-in-law, and with Hadassah, Annaliese, and Caleb.  I got to surprise my friend Robin Soukup, who is there as one of the English teaching volunteers.  Wow, was that fun or what?  He’s got a picture of us on his blog.  (can’t remember the URL).

I took hundreds of pictures.  Here’s another of my totally adorable, sweet, charming, intelligent nieces Haddasah and Annaliese and nephew Caleb.

I just turned 24 recently.  Some of you that knew it remembered.  Thank you.

24 seems very very old.  I hardly know what to do with myself.  I’ve been trying to act more grown up the last couple of days.  I don’t think it’s working.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life.  I plan to do more, tomorrow, for an extended period of time.  I don’t have to work tomorrow so I’m going to try to invest in some solitude.  I want to think, pray, and reevaluate my life goals, and think about where I am, how I am actually doing as a follower of Jesus.  They taught us how to do this stuff at FB, the school I went to once.  I’m glad for that.

I was going to post a pic I took yesterday morning, but the more I look at it, the more I think it’s not all that great.  But I do want to get back to doing a few photos.  If only I had an SLR….

Life is good and full.  Too full, I think, for doing the things that are really important (like writing on this blog and taking pictures).  In my solitude tomorrow I’m going to ask God to tell me how to do all the things that are important in life, namely people related things, yet get something done and be a competent and productive person.  I will let you know if he lets me in on the secret.

I think I might like being 24, though, because it’s such a nice even number.  I never did like odd numbers for ages.  They never seemed very friendly.  24 is two beautiful even numbers right beside each other.  You can’t lose with that deadly combination.

I think blogging must fill some kind of deep subconscious primal urge.  I need to write, I need to tell the world what’s on my mind, even if it’s nothing more than telling the world that I feel like telling them what’s on my mind.  So there, I’ve told you.

I cannot comprehend the amish school shooting in Lancaster.  What an unspeakable tragedy: loss of life for 5 innocents, loss of innocence for many more, and the tormenting mystery of a seemingly good person gone horribly wrong.  God, what is going on?

Dallas Willard says that saints are separate from normal Christians only by the fact that they consume huge amounts of grace, about as much grace as a 747 consumes jet fuel on takeoff.  We must position ourselves to receive that grace, we must “grow in grace,” and this growth comes through effort on our part.  We often think grace and effort do not belong together, however, this is mistaken.  Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.  It is through our small effort of positioning ourselves to receive that God is able to pour huge amounts of unmerited favor into our lives.

The gathering of mennofesters is over.  It was a huge success.  Michael’s paper was about 25 pages long, and had it all been typed it would have been well over 30, and it was as brilliant a presentation of Christianity as I have ever seen, almost.  Jordan’s treatment of discipleship was thorough and true and scriptural and compelling.  They both said they liked my story version of basic Christian truth.  We are going to make the changes we want then send them off to Peter G to be compiled, eventually.  I don’t know if I will post mine on here.  Thank you for wanting me to.

Kervin’s wedding is this weekend, and I am in charge of the vocal music, and also doing a bit of snapshot photography.  Speaking of photography, I haven’t posted a photo in an age.  I am almost ready to remove the “photos” from the tagline of my site.  Maybe I should make it Ocassional coffee-induced musings and occasional spurts of photography, or something.

I’ll stop.  Later.  D

Lonnie and Evie were here for the weekend!  It was so great having them around, unfortunately, I had to work Saturday, but last night we went out to the Peking something Chinese Restaurant for supper, and had some very nice shrimp and stuff.

This picture was actually taken in May in Meadville at Atlee and Racheal’s.  I don’t know why, but I didn’t take any pictures this weekend.

It was beautiful being w/ these friends, because they’re God-touched people, with beautiful spirits.  Plus, they left a bag of coffe M&Ms on my desk.   Now that’s what I call real friends.

And btw, I’m done w/ the Mennofesto.