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If you’ve had a chance to read my post about the World Help Children’s Choir, whom we heard and experienced in Tennessee last November, you’ll understand why I was thrilled when the opportunity availed itself to bring a similar choir to West Side UMC. The Watoto Children’s Choir will perform a “Concert of Hope” at … Read more
While visiting Randy’s family in Tennessee over Thanksgiving we had the privilege of hearing one of the World Help Children’s Choirs (YouTube Channel). Randy’s family was also host to two of the girls from Uganda (Ritah and Juliet) and a chaperone. It was a wonderful experience. One of the things that touched me most was … Read more
Today is our 15th wedding anniversary so we thought we’d take this opportunity to share a bit of our story, specifically about how we became a clergy couple. We met at the Church of God Theological Seminary (COGTS) in 1992. Joleen had been there over a year and I had just arrived. Students were required … Read more
One of the things that I particularly became aware of during my first season of fantasy football was the value of individual players. For example, when choosing a wide receiver, ideally I wanted to choose one who was considered the quarterback’s primary go-to receiver (which might change over the course of the season, depending on … Read more
As we wrote about last year, we enjoy participating in Operation Christmas Child each year around this time. In our new ministry settings, the youth groups from Centre Grove (who has been active participants in the outreach for several years) and West Side are both leading efforts in the two churches to assemble gift-filled shoe … Read more
Today is Blog Action Day. Thousands of bloggers are focusing on the issue of poverty from many different angles perspectives. In this post, I want to highlight a few words from the Scriptures that indicate that helping the poor was a core value in the first century church (the decades following the death and resurrection … Read more
We’ve listed several causes that are important to us, causes that we support financially (either occasionally, annually, or monthly). One of the recent additions to our list is the Central Conference Pension Initiative (of The United Methodist Church), which according to the website … is a long-term solution that provides retirement financial security for dedicated … Read more
There are several organizations, or causes, that are close to our hearts. We’ve written about a few of them before (see posts categorized as causes). One great cause is the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), a disaster response effort on behalf of the United Methodist Church. UMCOR is an impressive organization, one that’s well-respected … Read more
Ethan completed his first mission project just before leaving Manor Hill, with the help of the Manor Hill congregations. At Dave and Jean Norris’ retirement dinner, there was a Mission Central “relay baton” at each table. Because of his birth date (the baton went to whose birthday was the closest at the time), Ethan received … Read more
Looking at our blog now, you might think that posting pictures of Ethan has always been *easy* for us. 🙂 Truth is, we struggled with whether or not to post that very first referral picture last September. We ended up posting one (of the 6 photos we received) in the It’s a Boy! post. When … Read more