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As part of our ordination process, we were required to attend a seminar at the General Board of Church and Society, which took place earlier this week, Monday through Wednesday (more on that in a later post). Sunday morning, we drove to Harrisburg where we joined the rest of the group and a bus transported … Read more
One of the books I finished up during Lent, as part of my Lenten Growth Plan, was Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book (which I wrote about a couple times after I started reading it last year: Eat This Book 1.0 and Eat This Book 2.0). Peterson also wrote The Message, a paraphrase/translation of the Scriptures, … Read more
Last fall, about two weeks after we brought Sarah home from Korea, went went to Parker Dam for an afternoon. While there we snapped this photo. Back then, Sarah, at 8 months old, wasn’t very mobile. But she, as well as Ethan, has grown a lot in the five months since then. It was especially … Read more
Six months ago today in Seoul, Korea, one day after meeting Sarah for the first time in her foster family’s home, we welcomed Sarah into our lives. The six-month mark is a milestone because it’s only after this point that we can legally file our petition to finalize the adoption (although, for legal purposes, the … Read more
One of the main benefits of the Virgin HealthMiles activity rewards program is that it provides a nice incentive for healthy living. Part of the program encourages the use of “challenges” where participants can challenge one or more others in the program to a friendly competition. In addition to the participant-initiated challenges, the plan sponsor … Read more
If you read my post about the 2010 HealthFlex HealthMiles Challenge, you may know why I’m looking for creative ways to get my steps in each day. My newest experiment is a temporary workstation on our treadmill (pictured below). I tried it out for about an hour this afternoon and it worked pretty well, although … Read more
I wrote several posts last year about the Virgin HealthMiles activity rewards program, including last year’s first ever HealthFlex HealthMiles challenge (see my preview and recap posts). HealthFlex is our UMC health insurance program. Last year’s challenge started in July so I was caught a little off guard with this year’s challenge which begins Monday … Read more
Ilearned (via various United Methodist sources) about an 8-week series of blog posts that Mark Beeson, senior pastor of Granger Community Church (Granger, IN) is writing, called “Methodist Mondays.” In Beeson’s first post, he explains the rationale for the series as well as the process (i.e., a new post each Mondays for eight weeks). In … Read more
One of the biggest problems that I’ve tried to confront throughout my ministry is complacency. From the beginning of my journey as a Christ-follower, I have said that complacency is one of the biggest problems we face! Complacency is a temptation for all of us and perhaps the temptation only gets stronger as we grow … Read more
If you’ve been following our journey (i.e., most recently, welcoming Sarah into our family), you may recall that Ethan has struggled in this process, especially in the early days and weeks. Now that Sarah has been with us nearly six months, we’ve noticed recently that, while Ethan still has his moments, he is starting to … Read more