Sabbatical Summary - Week 4

Pastor’s Log - Sabbatical Date 3.2.7

Continuing to catch up on my Sabbatical updates.  Week 4 began with the last day of our marriage retreat weekend to the Grand Hotel.  To see more about that, check out the separate blog post on our weekend.  Week 4 ended with a gathering of our Bluffton friends.  For more on that, see the separate blog post coming on our weekend together.  Here is a recap on the middle part of week 4 following the retreat and before our friends arrived…

On Tuesday (May 21^st), I got the kids up and off to school.  I did a little cleaning and bid my parents and sister farewell after their extended stay with us and watching our kids while we went to the marriage retreat.  I mowed the lawn, took a nap, did laundry, and picked up the kids from school.  Silas and Josiah had soccer games that evening, and Silas even scored a goal!  While I was at the soccer games, Beth attended the Laker music awards night with Elam and Maggie.  I also did a little more reading in the book, You Lost Me.

On Wednesday, I got the kids off to school, and did a little cleaning before heading into the school to attend the high school underclassman awards in which Elam received a few honors. 

I cleaned out the white van so that Beth could do a deep cleaning on it and I got new tires on the camper in preparation for our trip out west in July.  I worked on the forms for Elam and me to go to Puerto Rico in July with Mennonite Disaster Service, worked on flower beds and watched Matrix Reloaded with Elam and Beth.

On Thursday, after getting kids up and off to school I dropped off the black van for repairs.  Beth and I conferred on schedule and I worked on cleaning up the basement for our weekend company.  I repaired and reinforced the ramp on our playground and got cans together for Beth to reclaim our deposit.  She took them with her on her shopping trip to Wal-Mart.  I worked on finances before picking up the kids from school and doing our final online Burkina Faso training with Maggie.  That evening I also went over some of the Puerto Rico information with Elam to begin preparing him for that trip.

On Friday, I got the kids off to school and continued cleaning and doing laundry for the weekend.  I dropped some things off at the church, picked up 20 some prayer squares to take with us on our trip to Burkina Faso, and saw a couple of turkeys in the parking lot… no literally there were turkeys in the church parking lot. 

I repaired a window screen in our downstairs bathroom that had a small hole in it until one of our children ripped it into a hole large enough for our cats to go through (yes, I found one of our cats on the outside of the screen one day perched on the window ledge). 

Beth and I set up our pop-up camper for the Michaels to use while they stayed with us over the weekend.  I attended the High School guys soccer team meeting at the end of the school day and hosted the neighborhood kids at our trampoline while I watered the flowers.  Dale dropped off their camper for the Mussers to stay in for the weekend and Elam went to play in the band for the Laker graduation ceremony.

The album of the week was DC Talk’s Jesus Freak. To learn more about our weekend with our Bluffton friends, go to the upcoming blog posting in which I cover that in greater detail.