Outing with sister; Tony Oliva

I just had a fun-filled day with my sister Kristin and 4-year-old niece Riley. It started out with me calling my sister at 8:15 this morning to ask her about helping Riley and I put together a May Day basket for her sister who had a baby 2 weeks ago. We picked up my sister at 10:00 a.m. and went to Wal-Mart to do some shopping. 2 hours later, we, along with my brother-in-law, went to McDonald's for lunch. During lunch, my sister was commenting that I needed a new profile picture. As we were walking out of the store after eating, I stopped my sister and said, "That's Tony Oliva." My sister, who has her camera almost everywhere, said we should take my picture with him. Me, being too embarrassed to ask, didn't want to, so my sister approached him and indeed it was Tony Oliva eating lunch. My sister took a picture of me and Tony Oliva at McDonald's. 30 minutes later, we were all standing in a line at Hy-Vee waiting to have a baseball bat and a newborn's onsie autographed. The best part is that when it got to be our turn, Tony Oliva remembered Riley from McDonald's. That is when Riley got her picture taken with Tony Oliva. After that, we stopped out at the bowling alley to say hi to another niece at a birthday party. We then went back to Kristin's house to put together the May Day basket to deliver it to her sister's house. Fun-filled day that I won't forget for some time to come.

May the Mind of Christ, my Savior

These are lyrics to a hymn that I saw posted on a friend's blog. The fifth verse spoke to me because I want nothing more than to run the race and follow hard after Jesus. I'm reading a book called the "Journey to the Mountain of God" and it is totally speaking to me these days as life and the economy are completely up in the air. These are not days to trust in common sense because as we can see, common sense only gets us in trouble, at least according to the world's definition. I want nothing more than to fully trust God to provide for my daily needs, even in these days of being unemployed. So far, He has. He's provided me with a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and funds that I have saved over the years to help me continue to pay off my seminary debt.

More to come.


May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

May I run the race before me,
Strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus
As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

More pictures from the State Golf tourney

Here are more pictures from the state golf tourney. Some of these pictures are not of my family, but the pictures of Maxton and Betsy are my family. Maxton finished in second place with his team while Betsy took home the individual state championship trophy.

http://mediamn.net/svmanager-flt/g21/

A State Golf Champion I'm proud of

http://www.twincities.com/prep/ci_12514563?nclick_check=1

It's been two and a half months

How did I go through the entire month of April without posting anything? I have no clue.

Anyway, I'm very heartbroken that Danny Gokey was eliminated last night. Yet I'm privileged, as a viewer of American Idol, to have walked on this journey of healing with him. He grew leaps and bounds since losing his wife and I was glad to hear him sing every week.

This year has been an interesting year, so here's the highlights of things I've been glad to be a part of while living at home.

Christmas - We were supposed to go to Bloomington on Dec. 21 for the Kelly family Christmas, but that didn't happen due to weather, so we found ourselves at home having our immediate family over instead. It was a huge blessing because we didn't know when we would be able to have our own Christmas.

Hockey - My niece's hockey team made it to the section final game. They ended up losing 4-0, but it was exciting to watch them knock off the number 1 team in the semi-finals.

Graduations - This year my oldest niece graduates from high school. I attended her awards banquet last night as she was honored for being in the top 10% of her class. She also received a few scholarships, so that was fun too. My youngest niece graduates from her first year of pre-school on May 21 and I couldn't be more excited about attending that.

Concerts - Band and choir concerts are always fun for me to attend, but never more fun than the Jefferson Connection concert on April 26. My grandparents asked if I would drive them up for that Sunday afternoon concert and I said I would. They told me Uncle Jeff was getting awarded for something, but weren't exactly clear what for. It turned out to be a whole family gathering as my folks, my sister and brother-in-law, my nieces and nephews, and my other uncles, aunts, and cousins were there to help honor Uncle Jeff on 20 years of teaching at Thomas Jefferson High School in Bloomington.

Lessons learned - Living at home has allowed me to reflect and unwrap some of the lessons I learned while doing CPE. The big one for me was the question, "Who Am I?" Not so much who am I as a person, but who am I as a chaplain, or more importantly, who am I as a teacher. Having to figure out who we are as whatever title we hold is not something I had thought of before CPE. As that lesson unraveled for me, I started to consider going back into teaching. Also, this year I've been able to get back to my other love, music. I'm playing with an orchestra right now and playing a bit at the United Methodist Church in Albert Lea. Combine this with my CPE lessons, and everything came to a head when I sat in the auditorium at Jefferson High School. I realized that day that I was created to teach music. Now I just have to get to work and pray for a school to take me on even though I haven't taught for 3 years and have a seriously out of date credential file.

I guess that's it for now.

In mourning

Today, I am mourning the loss of my great aunt. She was a woman who was very strong in her faith. I'm thankful that she was able to celebrate her birthday with relatives just hours before she died. Her homegoing service is Thursday morning.

interview next Tuesday

A couple of things. First, the girls hockey team lost in their section final to Red Wing by a score of 4-0. No state tournament. Second, I have an interview with a church in Forest Lake, MN next Tuesday. They are looking for a Director of Christian Education. If this works out the way I hope it does, I might be back to taking a class a week at seminary, but who knows.

Is it possible?

I know I haven't blogged in a ridiculously long time, but I'm very excited right now. The Albert Lea girls hockey team will be playing on Saturday afternoon against Red Wing for the section 1A championship and a spot in the state tournament. Why is this exciting news? Well, I have a niece who is a senior on the team.

GO TIGERS!!!!

CPE is coming back to bite me

Sorry for those of you non-seminarians out there, but this post is mainly for my fellow seminarians who have been through CPE or at least know what CPE is. Let's just repeat my title line. It's coming back to bite me. One of the things I struggled with during CPE was keeping personal and professional separate while at the same time understanding how they can unite as well. It's something I still struggle with to this day. For those of you who want to hear the story which awakened this in me, please let me know and I will gladly send off an email to you.

As for everyone else, my MN teaching license is renewed and I have found an opening in Waseca for a junior high band director. I'm really excited to apply and hopefully interview for this position. I'll be close enough to Albert Lea that I can still go to church there and drive down for concerts and sporting events if possible. I'll be sure to keep you posted.

I hope you all have a

Happy Thanksgiving! I will be spending the day in Eagan with my parents and my mom's brother and his wife and whomever of my three cousins will be there. I just finished a bible study this past Monday at one of the churches I attend here in Albert Lea. It was definitely an awesome opportunity to take stock of my relationship with Christ and set some goals for the future as I continue to walk with Christ. Hopefully I'll post more about that study later, but until then, I'm praying that you all have reasons to be grateful this year.