Embrace the Crazy

You know those moments when life is going full-tilt with things like people, meetings, family, old friends, new team members, projects, work, calls, food, groceries, painting, emails, cleaning, trying to rest, teaching, birthdays, laundry, texts, counseling, driving lessons, packing, repacking, school…and the list never seems to end? …

And then the power goes out and everything just… stops.

And you have a moment to breathe and enjoy the silence…

We love those moments.

And then we invite the whole team over to enjoy them with us.

Here’s the thing we’ve come to grips with: life is always going to be full. We honestly wouldn’t want it to be any other way. So when we have those God-given “power outages”, which are definitely needed, we don’t linger in them long, but rather allow them to ground us as we open the door and welcome the chaos in.

All that to say, Staff Training 2022 is in full swing. Jimmy’s days are filled with meetings, prepping and painting, answering questions upon questions, making coffee for all the groups that we have over, and-most importantly and challenging of all-keeping Lori slightly sane. Lori took over planning Seek Week (Life Action’s yearly ministry-wide conference) and is also working on team clothing, meeting with team members, cooking for all the groups coming over, and trying not to give into the impulse to feed the dog to the dumpster cats.

Cameron moved into team housing so he could get to know some of the new people and be fully immersed in the staff training experience – it’s like college… but not. He’s continuing to play bass with the band and has been very encouraged by the way the band is meshing already, despite the fact that 8 of the 11 band members are new.

Bradley worked all summer with Camp CREW and then jumped straight into Children’s Ministry training and driver’s ed. He’s not technically a team member since he’s still in high school, but he’s doing the job of a fully-trained CM and doing it well. We did give him a break from schoolwork during staff training, but that was mostly so Lori could commandeer his school teacher, Anna, for help with Seek Week–and boy are we glad she did!

Prayer Requests

1. We have a two open spots in October, and we are praying at 10:02 every day for these to be filled.
2. Seek Week planning has been pretty stressful for Lori.
3. Jimmy is learning to see God’s goodness and sovereignty in the day-to-day.
4. Cameron and the band as they continue to learn to play and worship together.
5. Bradley as he starts his driving class and balances it with CM training.