Phil’s a nice guy. A nice guy with a messy office. But nice nonetheless. He’s so cool he’s got generic shaving cream cans and aluminum pie pans in his office. So yesterday as I was sitting in Phil’s office looking at a terrible Lipscomb Backlog from 2000, in walks one of those Fisher girls. Megan? Mallory? Moca? Mecca?… ole whatshername. She didn’t exactly acknowledge me initually and the whole moment was sorta awkward. Phil and her made small talk while I acted interested. (Maybe I really was interested in Kenny Smith’s attempt to coach girls basketball, who knows?). So while Phil was trying to find out about some vagrant who had called in a grocery list to the church, I tried to make small talk with her. Not sure what I should say and in general it was just awkward primarily because we didn’t know each other.
It probably is just me. I can’t relate to the high schoolers at church especially if I just recently got to know them. Whereas someone who I’ve known since they were much younger is easier to converse with. This high school class I know very little about.
We’ve been hit with telemarketing with some girl scout from church. Apparently she went down the church directory and called everyone trying to push thin mints and samoas. (She should have used the electronic phone tree; much easier) When we tried to order “just one,” she got frustrated and pushed more of her paraphernalia…(baked goods, you know). We should have told her about the “Do not call list” and the absense of our “prior business relationship.”
Yeah, I got hit up for Girl Scout cookies last night at church. Thank goodness I like the powdered sugar sprinkled variety, or else I would have had to make a little girl cry. I kept asking “Are these made out of real girl scouts?” only to receive blank stares. Even “Are they made BY real girl scouts?” made even less of an impression. If these girls don’t know enough about their products, then maybe they shouldn’t be selling them. I bought 2 boxes worth ($6 bucks) which should be enough to fund any women’s empowerment league.
Then there’s this El Salvador dilemma. Are people leading me down the primrose path in rose colored glasses in order to see me fumble around like a fish out of water? David Shannon tells me to go, without any further explaination. Phil tells me to go…yet tells me how to go and how I should use nice soft Cottonelle toilet paper when I do go. Buddy Pickler says I should leave it in God’s hands. My dad may be going on this same trip, if he can get a decent passport picture. I’m making my decision independent of his. Although I figure if this were a game of Survivor: El Salvador, we’d need to be in separate tribes because I’d vote him out during the first episode.
What would make me want to go is my sense to see the world before I die. Helping people. A promise I made to myself to go on at least one mission trip. What would keep me from going is the inconvienence. Those terrible toilets that even Sissy Pickler is afraid of. The sense that I could never fit in fully with the El Salvador clique. Cold showers. Head lice. It’s all there. Like a bad sequel to Romancing the Stone.
Ugh. I’d rather not get caught up on yet another weeklong adventure that I’m compelled to do year after year. I already do 2 youth camps during the summer. Am I going to be forced always go to Latin America every year? I weened myself off of China after 2 trips. Will Latin America take the same?
So during bible class I asked a handful of the kids what they wanted for Christmas.

• Aaron: 4 wheeler. I later found out this 4 wheeler would be stored at his grandparents’ house in Memphis, so theoretically the corpse of Elvis would stand a better chance of seeing it more often than he would. Better luck next time, kid.
• Matthew: “Surprises.” Apparently Matthew has not learned the real value of asking for specifics. “Mom, Dad, I know I really want this remote controlled car for Christmas, but why don’t you just surprise me?” I did that one time and my surprise was tube socks. Ugh.
• Ray: He sang me a song to the tune of “All I want for Christmas,” which included what he exactly wanted. Apparently some type of Pokemon cards.
• Ryan: When I asked him, he stared at me like I had a 3rd eyeball. Never really found out exactly what he wanted.

It’s good for me to take a pulse ever so often to see just how out of step I am with today’s youth. Surprisingly I had a general idea of what they were talking about. Motorized vehicles have and always will be cool. Pokemon…? Well one of these days when he discovers girls he’ll drop these Pokemon cards all together. If he is lucky, his mom won’t trash his cards and he’ll be able to sell them on Ebay years later to some collector who wasn’t able to put away his childhood.

Pondering whether or not to install some better discussion board software on the church webpage. The current one is such a sad state of affairs. I’ve had problems in the past with bots coming along and posting undesireable links on it, I’ve thought about trashing the whole thing. Highland Heights and Tusculum seem to have very active discussion boards. Ours only has discussion when someone from the outside world asks some off the wall question like “Do I have to attend both church services, the late and early ones?” When I asked the HH minister how he keeps things going, he said he sends out emails and gets others at church to help spur discussion on it. I want to stay away from sending unwanted emails to members.
I’m tired. Tired of receiving automated calls from the congregation wide phone tree advertising the youth Bible study…something that only effects 30 or so people, yet we bother all 500+ members with this phone tree annoyance. There’s a way to put this type of stuff into groups and only alert the people who the activity will effect. That’s Joey’s revenge I guess. Our old minister Joey Davis was the only one who knew how the phone tree worked. Since he’s left no one actually knows how it works. We sit around like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyers trying to figure out the thing, never sure of how it works.

David Shannon told this story at the youth devotional last night. I haven’t been able to confirm or disprove it. Still, the story did keep the kids’ attention, which is most important. You have to be really careful of presenting things you get from the internet as fact. Sometimes it isn’t.
During the devotional, David asked the kids “What was the best part of today?” Some said “waking up.” Others said “having dinner with my family.” I was surprised it took me to say seeing a young person baptized Sunday evening. Apparently the kids didn’t understand the significance of that. Even though they might not be friends with the person being baptized, it really is the highlight of my day.
Here’s an update on the involvement minister search. Several applicants have applied, both internal to the church and external. It is too soon to tell where the applicant will come from. From talking to David Shannon, it sounds like he is looking forward to having someone carry the burden of ministering to the congregation. That’s reassuring. We certainly don’t want someone who will cause problems…stealing David’s thunder.
This is crazy, but I enjoy drinking out of decorative stemware glasses (a special holiday gift from your friends at Arby’s). Not just for formal Christmas dinners with family and friends. I mean during the holiday season they’re sitting out waiting to be used. I usually drink orange juice late at night out of them. Cool.
Speaking of Arby’s, Phil gave Marie Pickler a mission to pick up 30+ Arby’s roast beef sandwitches for the teen devotional Sunday night. And she did. She brought back a ton of horsey and Arby’s sauce for flavoring. Kenny Smith ate 5 sandwitches. Yes it was very strange and it wasn’t even fast enough for a competitive eating challenge. Look it up folks. Competitive eating – it’s an actual sport. Kenny has probably vomited by now. Either from the Arby’s or the rhino diarrhea story David told.

I knew things in Bible class was going to be off to a bad start when the kids weren’t even paying attention to prayer requests. There were about a zillion different conversations going on at once.
One kid I noticed was very much involved in reading his youth directory during class. At one point he even wrote something in it. Since I was mildly curious and for the very fact that I’m the one who actually helped put together the directory, I asked to see it after class. He had written some insults next to another student’s picture in the directory. I gave the kid the whole spiel about “How would you like it if he did the same thing to your picture…” then sent him on his way.
Was I wrong to invade his privacy by asking to read what he wrote in his youth directory? Or was I playing the role of authority figure? In any case he might have gone home and scribbled out my picture too. But I’ve found that most of the time kids have a short memory and probably don’t care if I read what they wrote, especially if they did it publically while they were supposed to be following along with the Bible lesson.
Then again some could say in some cases I’m doing the same thing here. Or am I? In this journal I do write negative things about people who do things that anger me, yet most of the time I don’t reveal their name. Is this just a more sophisticated way of griping about others, rather than the elementary way of just writing insults about a peer in your own elementary school yearbook?
Usually if someone angers me enough for me to write about it, then they’ve crossed a line. And I usually try to explain why I’m angry.
I thought this story about Steve Flatt, president of Lipscomb University, swapping roles with a student was amusing. Picturing Steve Flatt doing janitor duties is priceless. However I’m not sure why it was significant that Flatt was wearing a SID T-shirt. None of this is important unless you’re a SID member.
John Testa, Elizabeth’s boyfriend, has written a short, but very honest story about her. Elizabeth died in 2001 after a battle with a brain tumor. The story is thought provoking and shows that he really did love her.