Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
Taking a break after Easter has become a family tradition. It started before we had kids, but now, it’s more important than ever. We used to take off a few days after Easter, but with kids, we have to work around the school calendar. This year, we took two days off after Easter (school holidays), … Read more
In recent years, our holiday tradition has been to travel to Tennessee to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and to stay home, near Joleen’s family, for Christmas. Going to Tennessee gives the kids a great opportunity to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Willis and other family members! On Wednesday, we picked Ethan up from … Read more
It’s been a slow-blogging summer, but as summer comes to an end, I thought I’d post some photos from our summer vacation in York Beach, Maine. Back in July, we returned to the same place as last year. Our time there was very relaxing, and the weather was great. It was hot the day we … Read more
Our local United Methodist churches sponsored a two-day confirmation bus trip, hitting some prominent regional sites and ministries within our tradition. Yesterday, I wrote about our visit to Strawbridge Shrine in Maryland. From Strawbridge Shrine, we visited the historic Lovely Lane United Methodist Church and Lovely Lane Museum in Baltimore. Lovely Lane UMC, listed on … Read more
Earlier this month, the Clearfield Cluster of United Methodist Churches (churches from the Clearfield area) conducted a two-day confirmation bus trip for youth who are either preparing for confirmation, or have been confirmed since the last bus trip a few years ago. The trip, with 30-something people, included stops in the Harrisburg area (the Pennsylvania … Read more
A few days ago while in New York City, I wrote, Bracing for the Storm. A monster storm, which moved across the country, went through New York City dumping snow and ice. There were concerns about how the weather would impact the final day of our seminar, but we were, in act, able to complete … Read more
We just returned from New York City where we participated in a seminar at the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), whose motto is “Connecting the Church in mission.” We survived the storm; more on that in the next post. The three days were pretty intense, including two days at GBGM and one day visiting … Read more
The storm that’s headed this way has been a popular topic of discussion for our group ever since we met in Harrisburg on Sunday for our orientation; in fact, the intensity seems to be increasing as the hours go by. As we go to sleep Monday night, there is a winter storm watch here in … Read more
Today was our first full day in New York City. We are here for the Global Ministries seminar. We spent most of the day at the General Board of Global Ministries learning about what the UMC does around the world. It was a great day (we’ll reflect on what we’re learning later when we have … Read more
Yesterday, I wrote 4 Details About Our Trip to New York. Earlier today, we drove to Harrisburg to meet up with the group from our conference going to the General Board of Global Ministries seminar. We arrived in New York City this evening, walked to the subway station to get passes for our time here, … Read more