Recently I noticed that there seemed to be an awful lot of these places. So yesterday I drove down the boulevard and counted. I discovered there is a whopping 13 of these businesses in just two miles.

I think that this is a sign of the economy we live in. The cost of my yogurt, milk and gas have gone up, but my earning power has not.

A couple months ago I was with my wife at a debate contest. We sat down at the judges lounge with an acquaintance of hers who travels with the team. I sat uncomfortably through his demeaning talk about the poor clients in his social work and how they take advantage of the system. But then he decided to minimize the pain of the recession by comparing it to the depression. I blew up. People who are comfortable don’t understand the pain lower income people are in as the economy turns south. They don’t understand that the working poor are becoming trapped by the cycle of credit at these predatory lending businesses. 13 of them!

There but by the grace of God go I. These institutions are preying on the working poor. We need to show more compassion for those who are working hard but having trouble making ends meet. I know I’m talking about myself here. But I have also fallen prey to the lure of judging the poor, thinking they are getting a free ride by the system. That they have control of their situation if they would only work hard. It’s not as easy as that. Poverty is a complicated problem. And part of the equation now are these yellow buildings with red trim offering temporary relief at a high interest rate.

But I have to say that the moments that make it all worthwhile are when I work with the youngest kids… the kindergarteners and 1st graders, and the special needs kids. Watching their excitement as they _get_ to play a shaker or bells. Seeing the joy in their eyes as I play the music they “wrote” by putting their M and M’s on a staff. You would think that in ministry you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you were changing lives. But the older people get the more they keep their cards close to their chest. I never felt like I was making a difference in the lives of the people I served for the last 2 and a half years. I honestly don’t know what they needed or if they needed anything at all. But today when I was marching around the room with 20 kindergartneres behind me singing “Bow bow bow belinda” I knew that I was bringing joy to these kids. It’s nice to be making a difference again.

This is really a forced, though fun experiment for me. Before you get all misty for me missing Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes and Numbers, realize that the networks make these shows available online to watch for free. Mind you the video is kinda crappy, there are still commercials and I have to wait the next day to watch the episodes my family watched the night before. And I moved the family’s Netflix account to my Nampa home. Really the only thing that I can’t watch legally for free is my scifi channel shows like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate Atlantis. For those I’ll rely on bittorrent which will involve a little more work and hard drive space. So really, I have just as much media opportunities as I had with Dish.

So, can I live without cable? Without rabbit ears? Yes. Could my family? Maybe. If we had a media computer like a Mac mini hooked up to the TV we could get by with our prime time shows online. The kids would have to watch cartoons and Disney programs on Netflix. So who knows… might have to try. In the meantime, I’m getting along just fine for those of you who were worried. <wink>

Back when we lived in Soap Lake, I was shopping in Walmart one day and discovered that they were selling video games that were nothing but a joystick. The video game was built into the joystick instead of in a console. But the cool thing about it was that the games were the arcade games I’d grown up with. We bought the first one which had PacMan, Galaxian, RallyX, DigDug and Bosconian. Then we got the one with Ms. PacMan, Galaga and Pole position. Mind you, these are not replicas of the games. These contain the original software that drove the video games. I never would have believed when I was pumping quarters into these games as a teenager that the day would come that I would hold in my hand two joysticks containing 10 of my favorite arcade games, never to pump a quarter again.

When I first moved to Idaho begin pastoring, I lived alone while my wife sold the house in Soap Lake. Having a lot of time to myself, I subscribed to Dish Network. Among other channels, I discovered the SciFi channel. Very soon Friday became SciFi friday when original episodes of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica were played one after the other. Then monday they played reruns of Stargate. Throughout the week there were movies. As a teen, waiting years for the next Star Wars or Star Trek movie, I never would have believed that the day would come that I would have an entire channel devoted to my favorite movie and television genre: science fiction.

I never would have believed any of these things. What a wonderful world.

I’ve recently discovered that one of something is never enough in a family of nine. In fact two is not enough. Take for example our TV remotes. When I am done with my day and come home and the kids are settling to bed nothing frustrates me more then discovering that both remotes are gone. Solution: I ordered two more from Ebay. Now one or two seem to go missing and eventually found… but never all three.

Sometimes one copy of a book isn’t enough. More then once I’ve ordered a cheap copy of a book that I couldn’t find. Sometimes I never find the missing book. Other times it reappears. And because I work both at home and at work, having two copies sometimes works well. I’d never purposely order a second copy of a book that wasn’t missing, but it is handy to have.

The past two times I’ve needed to cut my nails I haven’t even bothered looking for the clippers. I just go to Walgreens and buy a pair of toenail and fingernail clippers. I figure that the last pair I must have been put to good use by one of the children so another pair won’t hurt. Now, out of nowhere, there are three pair on my bathroom sink. I have no idea where they came from.

It seems that there are lessons to learn about being in a large family that no one ever teaches you. For one thing, there aren’t that many large families to learn from. So we are just left to figure these things out for ourselves. Don’t skimp. Buy that extra pair of fingernail clippers. Your wife will thank you.

Right now I’m in the soak-in-the-culture mode. I spend part of each day doing my pastoral study at the college library. In fact I am posting this from there.

I imagine myself as a missionary in a foreign country. Mission doesn’t work unless you first understand the people and the culture that you want to reach out to. So right now, I’m keeping a low profile and just observing. There is so much to take in. Looking at the election posters of students running for positions. The flyer for the anime club (which I might attend). And just observing students. How many of them in the foyer of the library talking on the phone. Some outside the building smoking. And overhearing conversations. Watching body language. It’s all just so much to take in.

Strange that in some respects this is a foreign culture to me. I just spent two years of my life in college getting my teaching degree. But many of us were middle age (am I middle aged? i’m 38. someone want to break the news to me?) and our classes were in an isolated part of the campus in the evening, so there was no interaction with the campus culture. And I have 3 friends that were students of mine at the high school I worked at and a friend who is a student at the University of Washington that I know solely from the internet that I am in contact via instant messaging. So it’s not that college is totally foreign to me. But it is definitely different from the high school I worked at in rural Ephrata and the farm culture church I pastor in Filer.

One of the things that’s helping me to understand student’s spirituality before I begin trying to make contacts is a study that Deana pointed out to me about a year ago that I only recently rediscovered. It is a study called “The Spiritual life of college students.” You can download a copy by clicking this here for the final report or here for the executive summary. What is useful about this is learning how students are seeking spirituality. Not necessarily Christianity. But what are the questions that they are asking. The trick then is to learn how to communicate Jesus to the issues that they are facing. I would appreciate some of you reading the study and offering me your thoughts on this approach.

I plan to chart my journey here as I launch out into this ministry. Outreach is my passion. It is good to be back in the saddle even if I am only an observer at the moment.

An example of this is that a few weeks ago he asked to take a shower with me. So we did. Now I can’t shower alone. Anytime I shower, he has to be there. It took awhile for me to adjust to needing to share the steady stream of hot water with his little body. He’s kind of cute. When I’m hogging the hot water while I rinse, if I take too long he sidles up to me and says in his broken 3 year old english “daddy scoot!”

Another example is when I make my morning latte. There are rituals involved. First is getting the coffee beans out of the freezer. Then grinding them. Followed by scooping them into the holder. Microwaving the milk (my steaming wand doesn’t work and is really noisy anyway). Finally, pushing the button to start brewing the espresso. Of these, he has to be involved in getting the beans out of the freezer, shaking the grinder when the beans get stuck, patting the ground beans into the holder, and finally pushing the button. If he doesn’t get to do any of these, he goes into fits.

This really bugs me. And today it hit me why. I want to do these things. Making my espresso is my ritual. He has forced me to share this ritual. In many ways, he is just like his father. I have many different rituals in my day that if they get disturbed cause me to sweat (not really, but you get the idea). So, I guess there could be worse things then sharing them with my son. And we all know how quickly these years pass by, so I am going to try and make use of it as a time to bond with him.

We are in our new house. I don’t think I mentioned that previously. It is amazing to have all this space. Our back yard is huge. The really amazing thing though, is that we have an entire garage full of stuff that was packed up and came with us that we apparently aren’t using. What to do with it all! Stuff is always hard to part with because you often hold sentimental value to it. Right now we have bigger projects to tackle and it is safe and sound in the garage. But eventually I’m going to have to go in there and figure out what to do with all of this stuff.

The really remarkable thing is the boxes of books. In the old house in Soap Lake, I had some books in boxes, but the rest were on various book shelves around the house. Like 4 or 5 of them, each in different rooms. So I’d never seen them all together. When I moved by myself to Idaho, I brought the books that I felt were my essential pastoral library. Some got left behind and were salvaged when the family moved. But now I’ve got all my books together in one place in the garage. A huge collection. So again, I have to figure out what to do with all of them. I’m contemplating putting them all up for sale on Amazon. I’d be my own little used bookstore.

I’m excited that after our cell phone broke the model we got was a picture phone. We got a really good deal on a used model that I would never have been able to touch brand new. So if I can figure out how to do it I can photo-blog and show people some of the things I experience in Filer and Twin Falls. I look forward to sharing my life again with you all. Thanks for your patience while I took a break.