Changes

So I've been back from training 1 week now and have a lot of changes I want to make. I learned a whole lot at this seminar and found everything very useful/practical. One of the best things I took away from it was the book How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. It doesn't claim to be a christian book, but the conversational and communication methods taught in the book seem exactly like what Jesus talked about: considering others better than you, using affirmative words (being nice), actually listening, etc. I think every human being should read this book. If we all read it and tried to implement its methods, the world would be a much nicer place.

The training basically taught me lost of the stuff I didn't learn in college because I majored in Bible. See, I could have majored in Christian education and learned all kinds of teaching techniques and leadership skills. Instead, I choose to learn the complex, theological material. I studied the Bible instead of teaching. So, this training is greatly filling in the gaps. Some other changes I've recently made to my job are office hours. These are already helping me get more stuff done. In fact, I've made an entire database (using openoffice base) from scratch. I'm going to use this to keep track of information I need to remember about the students, like which sports they play, their attendance, and the topic of our previous conversation (another thing I learned at training). I'm also forming two leadership teams: one made up of students, the other of adults. These teams will help me run youth group, make decisions, and give me feedback. They will basically be like my cabinet, if I was president of the youth group.

However, my home life skills are still lacking. I still can't cook well at all, laundry piles up, and my house is almost always messy. Oh, and don't get me started on my ugly yard. I just bought a weedwacker and weed killer today. However, my ferrets are keeping me great company!

Other things of note include a large tax rebate coming in the mail soon. Since I bought a house, I'm getting a very large check, in fact, it's more money that I made in all of 2009! (I only worked 2 months in 2009). God continues to bless me with more money than I need, so I'm saving alot of it.

Anyway, things are on the up and up at work. Now if only I could do the same at home! Then maybe, I'd consider looking for a wife :-)

Training

So, I'm at an airport right now, getting ready to fly off to glorious Minnesota! I'm going to a week long training session about ministry. I'm not sure if it's a youth ministry seminar, or just ministry in general. I'll be stay with a host family, which is always fun. Sometimes, host families are awesome and fun to hang out with, other times, they have big dog childs whom they fight over. (I'm referring to a band tour trip we took once. Dmoore, you should remember this.) As I sit here near the gate, I'm trying to figure out who here might be going to the same minstry training. I see some definites, but also questions. For example, there is an older guy with a goatee (a dead give away for youth minstry!) who is wearing chucks and sipping a starbucks, looking bored like a teenager. He's leaning his head on his hand, which is on the arm rest. I think he's a youth pastor, or at least in minstry of some kind.

Then there's a hippie guy who is covered in tatoos. I didn't see the tatoos, but he could be one of those hip youth pastors. Or, he could just be a rebelious dude who happens to be going to Minnesota. I'd probably rebel if I lived in Minnesota. Anyway, the pastors have recently changed my job, and I feel for the better. They're going to have me fill out some daily time logs and break down how I spend my time. There are 6 categories of minstry they want me to work in, and after I've done the logs for a few weeks, we'll see where I'm falling short and change accordingly. Also, we're establishing office hours, which I'm all for. That means I'll have time each day where I can dedicate to working on youth ministry stuff, rather than "just get it done before sunday".

Also, I've been trying to loose weight. I'm right at the point of becoming fat and need to do something. I tried p90x and it worked well, I just always had something that forced me to stop for a week (like this trip I'm going on). Once you stop a workout, it's tough to start back up. Then I tried the p90x diet. It was rediculously hard for me to cook and prepare. Currently, I'm trying nutrisystem. The food is pretty OK. It's not good, it's just ok. Also, there is apparently alot of protein in the diet and... well, just look up what happens to people when they have too much protein in their diet.

Also, there is stereo crying going on right now. A kid to the left and right just crying like someone killed their mom.

Also, I miss my ferrets already.