365 Days of Service

Day 189 - Dec 19

If you haven’t heard much from me about my health here, it’s because health problems are so routine, that I don’t consider them worthy to talk about. But, today was one of those days every now and then when I wake up and know that I am sick. Usually it’s not a small “ugh, I don’t feel good” kind of feeling. I have those days too, but when I am sick, my entire body responds. It hurts, my throat is raw, I can hardly get up and I just know that an infection has kicked in. My husband, Ryan, is amazing. Fridays are his day off from work, but when I mentioned that a doctor appointment was definitely in the schedule for the day, he took the time to drive me to the appointment, get me juice, pick up my prescription, and then take care of things around the house so I could rest. It’s so helpful to be able to forget about everything and just rest.

So, although I wasn’t able to accomplish much else today, I want to take the time to thank you, Ryan, for putting up with my complaining, allowing me the peace and quiet to rest, and to let you know that you really are a hero in my eyes. I love your ability to make me feel loved and to help me laugh even when it hurts. You’re the best husband I’ve ever had.

Day 188 - Dec 18

I never really know what is going to happen on a Thursday. It is one of the unscheduled days of my week where I go to work at LifeChurch.tv and wait for God to move me. Sometimes it is during work, sometimes it is afterwards, and sometimes it is serving my family at home.

Today was a rather unusual day as we were preparing as a team to spend time together in celebration of Christmas and what we’ve accomplished together over the past year. Andrew Statezny has most recently joined our team and is heading up the Network/United side of Partnership Exploration. If you’re curious about any of this, you can read more here: http://www.lifechurch.tv/free-church-resources. It is sometimes difficult to explain what exactly it is that I do all day, but for the most part I make LifeChurch.tv-produced resources available to other churches worldwide for free.

Brian Ahern, who is the coordinator of most of my efforts, is an amazing man of God and I started serving with him a year ago. At some point, we decided on metrics (goals) for the year and we came up with two: 16,000 OPEN users, and 500,000 total resource downloads by the end of 2008. I can tell you that we were able to blow those goals out of the water. We’ve been awed repeatedly by what God is doing through LifeChurch.tv and the OPEN web site.

Tonight we spent the evening eating dinner together and getting to know our families (our spouses joined us) better and honoring the awesome work that God is doing through our team. I’m honored and humbled that I can serve the Lord in such an amazing way with such a selfless group of people. Thanks team!

Day 187 - Dec 17

Our LifeGroup gathered tonight to celebrate Christmas together. Our amazing leader, Holly, had the idea to give the gift of SERVICE (I love it) to each other this year, and to play a round of dirty Santa. We each created a certificate of service for another person in the group, and we took turns selecting one or stealing one from someone else. I elected to steal the Christmas wrapping certificate from a friend.

Ryan and I are so excited to be spending a week of Christmas with my family in Nashville, Tennessee this year. But, we are booked solid from now until we leave with work, service, parties, and 2nd jobs. I was beginning to wonder how I would solve my Christmas present wrapping dilemma - and then God delivered! I am so excited to have my gifts wrapped by Holly this weekend. What a blessing.

We all made food to share at the party and we had so much fun with the kids all together. I have to count… but I believe there are 11 kids in our 6 families - and TWO more on the way. It’s nothing but chaos to get them all together to eat and play but we had such a good time and ended the evening with our good natured dirty Santa game. The service certificates were impressive - house repair, cleaning, 4 course meals, poop scooping and artistic talents were among the pickins. I had no idea we were so versatile!

Day 186 - Dec 16

You saw my post Monday about the weather. This has been the coldest day recorded in Oklahoma City weather history - and it didn’t warm up much today. The ice on the streets was making travel dangerous for everyone and the city was closing schools. I’d originally arranged with Jules, the Mercy Ministry director, to head to Mercy for some special activities that day. She called me early to say they had to be canceled because of the condition of the roads.

Later in the morning, I got a call from my friend saying that Mercy was going to be open afterall. When Jules arrived at Mercy she saw freezing cold people (with babies!) standing in a line wrapped around the building to get food. She knew God was telling her to get busy. Jules had contacted volunteers and said not to come because the roads were so bad - but now she knew she needed volunteers. The men from the LifeChurch.tv Digerati Team recruited me to join them to serve at Mercy. I drove down and spent the first few hours of my day bagging groceries, stocking shelves, and most importantly, praying with lots of hurting folks. For the first time, I was also able to share the story of Jesus with a non-believer. It was an amazing morning. Weather or not, we are doing what we can to feed the hungry in this city.

Day 185 - Dec 15

I usually end the week (or begin it, for you Sunday-starters) serving at the Oklahoma City Campus playing with toddlers. It’s a fun way to serve and play before I have to get up and start a new week. Monday mornings are tough for me. I usually sleep in on Saturday and Sunday and adjusting to the earlier alarm is a stretch. The thought that gets me out of bed the quickest is knowing I have an opportunity to serve built in to my day. Serving at Mercy Ministry every week has not become mundane, instead it has become a part of me - a large chunk of my spiritual identity.

I had an opportunity last week to go to the Mercy Ministry Volunteer Christmas party where clients and volunteers gathered to eat some extremely tasty hand prepared Mexican food (thanks, Rosa!) and to share our hearts. As we gathered in the “living room” to wish each other a Merry Christmas, Jules, the director, asked us if we wanted to share what Mercy means to us. There weren’t many dry eyes in the room. I was amazed, awed, inspired and truly blessed to hear all that God has done and continues to do through that ministry. He is using it to impact the poor, the needy, the lost, the faithful and the affluent in indescribable ways. We did our best to put it into words. At the heart of it all, it’s best said with God is Good.

This post is about our “sometimes” cat, Chewy (Chewbacca, because he talked incestantly, as if we could understand every word), and unfortunately, we think he’s met his end. There is a cat (I drove by a few times to be sure) lying in the road outside our neighborhood on the busiest street around. I’m fairly certain it is Chewy. I tried to get him into the adoption program where I volunteer, but they eventually decided he wasn’t a good candidate. Ryan and I talked about it and decided to care for him as an outside cat. (He did not get along with the two inside - even getting in a fur flying fight with one). He visited us often and kept me company while I worked on projects in the garage. He spent the entire winter last year cozying up to Burrito (our other outside cat) and then did his own thing all summer and fall. He visited us for a couple of days last week when it was really cold, sleeping in the garage like last year.

I am sorry we weren’t better able to give him a home where he could live out his days in safety. Getting attached to an outside cat is tough. We will miss you, Chewy. Thanks for the good times buddy.

Ryan woke me earlier than I usually get up on Monday mornings to tell me that his keys were locked in his car… at someone else’s house 3 miles away… and it was running.

I had to ask how he got into that predicament, but really he didn’t have an explanation. He was serving - however - getting the trash cans from the street for his friend, but wasn’t sure why the doors locked. It was an interesting start to the day.

Anyway, I got up and dressed VERY warmly because this is the temperature out there today (by the way, the “feels like” temp was 2 deg):

External Temp: 14

Day 182 - Dec 12 - Day 184 - Dec 14

It was a busy weekend beginning Friday afternoon when we arrived at the Edmond Campus to finish setting up the Lobby. After we hung garland on the new stairway, we went inside and were assigned hanging ornaments on the 15 foot tree. We were given 1000 glass ornaments to take out of the package, hook and place on the tree. It was a loooooooong afternoon. But, the tree is awesome and the lobby looks great!

I worked at the bookstore for a few hours Saturday. When I left the bookstore I headed over to our friends’ home to babysit their one year old. This is a cute baby. He was so much fun and so good. We played and watched Christmas movies until he got tired. Then he went to bed without a tear. I am one lucky babysitter.

Sunday I spent the entire day on Christmas presents. I shopped online, I shopped in about a dozen stores, I even MADE a present for Ryan. So all in all I basically spent 12 hours on Christmas presents. Now, before you say, where is the service? I’ll tell you that I was shopping for a few kids of a friend. I have a close friend who will remain nameless (for now) that gave me a list of gifts her kids would like to have for Christmas (I asked her for it). I spent the day going from store to store hoping to find exactly what they were looking for. I cannot wait to give these gifts to my friend to put under the tree for her kids!

Day 181 - Dec 11

The Edmond Campus of LifeChurch.tv (where Ryan has recently joined the staff) has been under construction for a few months. The people in charge were looking to increase space, light, and to create an overall feeling of welcome at the campus. They received good news this week about obtaining a temporary certificate of occupancy. That’s fancy talk for moving in to the space. I stayed late after work today and helped the volunteers and staff unbox, put together and light 25 Christmas trees. It was a long evening and we worked really hard, but didn’t see much completion. We will return tomorrow to finish what we started.

Day 180 - Dec 10

The amazing people on the LifeChurch.tv LifeKIDS team made each Central team a tray full of delicious goodies for the holidays. It was darn tasty stuff. We could not possibly have eaten it all ourselves (There are only 4 of us on the team!) so I took the tray to LifeGroup tonight to share with our friends. It was a great night of fellowship and got me thinking about ways to serve those people closest to me, those in my LifeGroup. I think we are going to see big things in our LifeGroup in the near future.