My schedule this semester is pretty brutal. I work 4 nights a week, and am at church with the Jr. High Student Ministry on Wednesdays. I get to see my lovely Banana on Fridays and Sundays if I am lucky. I have class 4 of 5 week days, church staff meeting every Tuesday, plus a handful of other meetings and responsibilites on a weekly or monthly basis. June 11th can't get here fast enough! Adding to this is the stress of studying graduate level Greek. I am terrible at languages, especially Greek. I'm praying and hoping for a "C". I am not normally a "C" student, but if I can pull that off it will be a victory. "C" is the minimum acceptable grade to allow a student to move onto the next course. Anything less will require my re-taking it. I really don't want to do that both because of time and cost.
I am taking a course at the seminary called "Understanding the Congregation" and am amazed at the information and ideas it is blessing me with. One of the best things so far has been a book by Kennon L. Callahan called "Twelve Keys to an Effective Church". The first segments of the book called Introduction, Part I: Planning and Hope and Introduction, Part II: Mission and Success are solid gold for ministry. The rest of the book is outstanding as well. There are a few parts I would update/revise, but those are only very minor points that do not take away from the wonderfulness of this resource.
This past Sunday Miss Banana and I completed our pre-marital counseling at Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, MN. The pastor we have been meeting with actually married 2 of our friends Saturday night at the beautiful Northwestern College wedding chapel. We talked about our finances and our future plans for finances. I believe we can make it work with a lot of effort and grace.
Our friend's wedding was a great wedding. Banana was a bridesmaid, and I was the "do whatever needs done guy." It was nice to see how things went for them, since our wedding is coming up December 30th 2005. I think my beautiful fiancee got some things to think about from it, and some things to do/not do from observing up close. We have been working on asking our special people to be groomsmen/bridesmaids and participate in the service. So far so good. I need to talk to my long-time best friend "Cook" to be my best man still, but I'm confident he'll say yes.
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