It's amazing how long a move can put you out of commission. We moved a few weeks ago from our two bed duplex abode to a much larger three bed duplex abode that Jim and Marilyn bought recently and have been slowly chipping away at painting, unpacking and adapting to life as property managers. We've got easily 2.5 times the space of the last place and are no longer always in each others' way. Life is much more peaceful now as the kids disappear into their rooms or their shared play area downstairs. It's an interesting home design with piano room, kitchen/dining and garage on the main level, two beds, bath and shared space downstairs and family room and master bed/bath upstairs. It's almost like having a master suite for us with a good amount of privacy once the kiddos are in bed.
The other unit is a two bedroom with a young couple in it who we've met but haven't really had a chance to get to know as yet. They seem really nice and it's a totally different vibe than our last place where Alisa had the upstairs and we heard her all the time overhead and shared a basement. We never hear these guys other than when the garage door opens (their garage is right under our bedroom).
It's been an odd July in the biking category for me. I haven't been riding nearly as much as the last two months with moving, work, church, life..., but I have been commuting a lot more. We're just a drop down the hill from the bike trail and yesterday was the first time since we'd moved in that I didn't ride my bike to work. It winds up being five miles each way which is a little farther than we were from the old house, but I don't deal with nearly the traffic and stop/starts that I did before, so it's a much more enjoyable commute. I was able to hit some hills around Yankton last weekend, so I haven't totally lost my legs yet.
The Tour is in full swing and it's amazing that I haven't written a word about it yet this year. Things are shaping up for an interesting final week with a couple Discovery Channel guys in the thick of it. Saturday's time trial should really begin to sort things out, but they still have a few mountain stages and another time trial next week to shape the race even further. Even the typically uneventful stages have proved decisive with crashes hindering major players and unexpected gaps in the peleton forming on what should have been easy, boring stages. I still wish I could watch the Tour, but no cable or satellite means I have to settle for reading the live race updates on cyclingnews.com to get any of the nuance of what's going on.
Even though I've been bemoaning not getting to watch the Tour, our home entertainment options improved last week with the purchase of our first TV in eleven years. We sold a bunch of stuff before moving in and used the money to purchase a 26" LCD HDTV which tripled the number of stations that we receive and gives us high def picture quality making a lot of the channels that we already could watch crystal clear. I was watching Nature on PBS on Sunday night and drooling at the showroom quality picture that I was getting through our rabbit ear antennae. I love technology.
Things at Mercy keep plugging along. We're still growing into the roles that we are in at the church and are really pushing in ways new to us in free worship. The advantage of having a lead pastor with Pentecostal background and a young church still forging an identity is that we have a lot of freedom in worship expression. It has been a challenge for me to grow into some of that as a leader since I haven't really been able to do much more than scratch the surface of that kind of expression in the past. We're also looking to hire someone part-time for Children's Ministry, so we've been doing a lot more with Children's Worship over the summer. I get my first crack at it this weekend, so it should be interesting.
I had coffee with Aaron this morning at Caribou and we had some great conversation about life at Mercy, where the Worship Ministry is going and other general life topics. It still amazes me how much more creative my thinking is because of these kinds of conversations. I shouldn't be surprised that creativity would be birthed out of relationship since I've seen it in my time with Christer, Keith, Kyle, Erik and others over the years, but I think after being shut out of those kinds of relationships for a season that my conversations with Aaron are reawakening a creative drive in me that will hopefully lead to new expressions of worship and more creative efforts on my part.
I've said it before, but I believe that we are in a real season of blessing. Ministry is exciting, we have a new home, our jobs are providing more income and enjoyment than they have over the last two years, we're healthy and we're being challenged to grow. God is good and I can't wait to see what He's going to do next.
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