today i received an anonymous letter. it wasn’t about the youth ministry or about me. no it was concerning the school that is a part of the ministry of the church. we’ve been going through a span of rough feelings concerning some changes in the structure of the church’s and school’s relationship with one another. there are people with strong feelings on both sides. apparently a person on one side of the debate decided that the best way to get their view point out was to send an anonymous letter to the parents of kids in the school. what a coward! i hate it when people send anonymous letters – “grow some balls.” only a coward sends a letter without signing it. this letter wasn’t directed at anything that i have to do with and it still infuriates me. coward! if any of you by chance know the person who sent out this anonymous bulk mail letter please tell them that i think they are a COWARD!
the view – may 4, 2004
last night at “the view” jonathan, our minister of belonging, wanted to do a worship station on trusting GOD during difficult times. this seems only appropriate since he lives with type iii gaucher’s disease every day. he has experienced more physical and social suffering than i ever will (imagine having co-workers at old navy throw tennis balls at your hump). jonathan knows a thing or two about walking the hard road and he did a good job of conveying how GOD strengthens those who look at HIM.
jonathan volunteers two to three days a week within the youth ministry. there are somethings that jonathan can’t do because of the gaucher’s (heavy lifting is out, anything involving heights isn’t going to happen, and sometimes small print work screws with his eyes) but he is willing to learn new things, he’ll try all he can to accomplish what he can, and he will be there with you when you do the stuff that he physically can’t. pretty much every tuesday and wednesday he’s my buddy for the day and does everything with me. each day i grow more and more thankful for him being around.
taps
those who were at the view last night know this news already so i write this post for those who couldn’t be there last night. i have sad news … last night “the throne” was accidentally broken. i know you’re probably in shock. i promise it will be okay.
some of the readers of this blog live outside of the baton rouge metro region and thus don’t attend parkview and never have had any experience with “the throne” so let me explain what is so special about it. the beginning of the summer of 2002 we decided within the youth ministry to have a little fun before each week’s “view.” so every week we planned a series of odd games to take place before “the view” actually began. i wanted to keep the games separate form “the view” because they just didn’t fit the character of what we do on wednesdays (though we play quite a bit at other times). i didn’t want to turn the games into a big, major thing so we all decided that the reward for winning the games so be very large. the idea that came up was that whoever won the games each week would be declared the “king” or “queen” of the evening and thus be allowed to sit on a throne. so we went and got a new toilet donated to us which we quickly painted gold. “the throne” then just simply became a part of the youth ministry playing different roles within the youth ministry – it went on trips with us as a mascot, it served as a “candy jar” within the office, and it was an extra seat when ever it was needed. it last four years until last night someone got up from sitting on it and it feel backwards.
now it’s not a total loss though because the only part that broke was the reservoir (the back). thus we still have half of “the throne” that has survived. we’ll buy “the throne” a prosthetic reservoir and it should be almost as good as new. i’m just so thankful that we didn’t lose the whole thing. that would have been a tragedy.
if you have a “throne” story you might want to share it in the “comments”.
p.s. yes, i know that alycia will probably kill me for putting up this picture of her on “the throne” but i can live with that since she hasn’t been practicing guitar. now practice alycia, practice!