Life as an intern - week 12

This update is much over due for more than one reason. First because it is now Wednesday when it should have been up by Saturday or Sunday. secondly it is long overdue because of how much has happened in the last 72 hours.

We finally got the second intern here! He came in on Sunday. We were looking for housing and something finally came through just last week and now he is here. It is more than a blessing to have someone else in the office to do ministry with. I think I am going to learn a lot from him though. Jim has been a youth director for two years and has a lot more experience than I do, he was able to jump right in and start, whereas I still am having a hard time with all this. It is going to be fun working with him and hopefully a valuable experience for both of us.

I got paid for work on Friday for my work at the temp agency and worked again that this passed Saturday. More important that how much I got paid or what I worked is what happened to the money. Since I had a little more than I needed to survive the week I decided it would be okay if I bought some things other than gas and food. So I went out to Applebees with some friends Sunday night, and bought some new breaks for my bike Saturday afternoon and did my normal grocery shopping on Monday. Everything was still well in my budget with lots of room to spare, but then I got an email about an automatic renewal charge I had forgotten about that put me into over draft. In the end I ended up spending over $50 and nearly 6 hours fixing something that could have been done for free in 5 minutes. The moral of the story is pay attention to automatic renewals and make sure you have enough money before they come.

Throughout all of this God provided a way out, it cost me something, but I still had a way out of my overdraft situation. When going through this I thought of two stories in the bible, the first as you might have guess is would Paul is teaching the Corinthians that God never gives us more than we can handle, but will always provide a way out from sin. The second is the parable of the talents. The story goes that a master gave talents to his servants to be responsible for and rewarded them according to how they handled them. In my situation I would have been the wicked servant that wasn't responsible with the resources that he was given. And so, in response to this realization I am going to meet with my dad at the next earliest convenience and talk over my financial situation and get a budget together and talk about anything else I don't know concerning money and such. Honestly I am looking forward to it.

I called my friend Duane last night and found out that around the same time that I crashed my bike, him and his wife crashed their bikes. His wife isn't doing super good either, pretty beat up. She goes in for a check up tomorrow to see if they will have to do any surgery or not. She broke some bones and got a few stitches on her face. Pray that her bones recover and she doesn't have to get surgery.

Rachel flies home this weekend to be with family before school starts back up. I wish I was going with her. I like it here in Cleveland well enough, but I wouldn't mind seeing some friends from school or getting out of the city for a while. I don't think I am made for the city I am finding out. Yet, this is where God has me and I need to do my best to serve Him here. I have to think passed the machine aspects of ministry - doing retreats, playing games, etc - and think about how to use those to teach others and bring people to know Jesus. Because that is the goal after all. To "bring many sons to glory" and have one good time in heaven when we all get there.

My family is alive from what I know. I talked with my dad on Monday he seems to be doing okay. I haven't talked with my Mom in a long time, over a month I would think. The rest of the family other than my older sister are doing good. My family isn't as close as I would like, but they are doing okay. I pray that they would come to the Lord or at least their sense. It breaks my heart to see them so broken

Blessings
Later