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 :-)