So, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this post happen and I got a good excuse for it today. Heavy stuff like lies and vows didn’t interest me so I thought I’d talk about something better, honor.
I want to take a moment and show love to my former bosses Chuck and Steve. I recognize that honoring your boss is unheard of in “the real world” but I don’t adhere to that line of thinking. I'm a Kingdom kid and the value of honor is something I hold dear and a member of this transcendent culture.
Chuck was my direct supervisor for three years at my old job and he’s the best boss I’ve ever had. We had a big boss (Steve) who had a couple few managers under him (Chuck) who looked after the couriers (me) on the job. All the drivers were divided between the managers and every time we had a workgroup meeting Chuck always told us how he treated (and meant to treat) everyone the same. In my opinion he was as good as his word, he never contradicted himself on this. Chuck told me what I needed to hear whether I wanted to hear it or not. I owe a lot of me "growing up" to him. When I was convinced I couldn't do anything right or was acting like a child he called me to a higher level, he even did it patiently. :) My favorite memory of Chuckie is every time he asked for my date of birth and I told him he would shake his sadly and tell me he was graduating when I was born. He ran the box sort after we got off road like clockwork, worked well with everyone, delegated when appropriate and never was above doing some of the hard jobs himself. Needless to say he commands my respect. Every year all the managers are rated by their employees and Chuck has consistently had one of the highest scores in the country. It is well deserved, they don't pay him near enough. I always felt respected and heard by him. I guess there’s a lot to that. If given the opportunity to work for him again I’d be there.
Our station manager Steve is a kind man. Wise too in my opinion. He transferred to our station about a year before I left. He has a pretty open door policy with his people. During the summer when I couldn’t work due to my wreck injury he (and Chuck) was very supportive and patient with it all. It was an honor to be told by him that they would miss me at the station when I submitted my two week notice in January. He seems to operate with the values of respect and no favoritism along with Chuck, the fact that our station’s personnel is doing well compared to many other places proves it.
So, many thanks to those men who acted like and modeled how to be a man. I learned a few things from them. I feel pretty safe in posting this because I don't think they read my posts. :-P
Here in Cape Town I had a fun moment where I could honor those in authority over me. I was originally slotted to go to Zanzibar with seven other people for a two month outreach but God had other plans and it is good. I didn’t really feel any clear direction when we were praying about where to go on outreach some weeks ago so I arbitrarily signed up to go to Zanzibar. I trusted that if I had just missed what God was saying He would get me to the right place. I was not wrong in that assessment. Two of my leaders met with me after class and lunch and said that they were reallocating me to another team; that I will not go to Zanzibar. Was it a little disappointing? Maybe, Zanzibar is a beautiful place I'm told. But there was such joy in being able to obey. The leadership has a pretty good feel on the spiritual pulse of the students and they are here to facilitate God moving in our lives as much as possible. It was explained to me that when the leaders were praying they felt that 1) God is doing big things in me right now 2) Zanzibar is faraway and spiritually an oppressive place and 3) having learned from previous experience they did not want to risk sending me to a hard place when, as they said, the growth that’s happening needs to be guarded. They seemed a little nervous in telling me this, hoping I would not be crushed. Contrary to their expectations I think I felt very loved and honored that they would spend the time to hear from God and act on the direction to put me in the right place. It was very easy to say as much and tell them that I’m totally down for going to Ocean View. The team with is pretty awesome too. My buddy who wants to go to Japan also, a dude who did prison ministry for years who has an amazingly tender heart and the parents of the awesomest 1 year old girls ever, there might be others on the team but that’s all I know of right now.
Prayer points:
- That I and the Red Hill team would end well in that community
- That Red Hill team would end things together well
- That the Ocean View team would receive all the plans and dreams on the Father’s heart for the next two months
- That the Ocean View team would bond and gel quickly and have unity of mind, spirit and purpose
- That my health would hold up
- That I would continue to be open to the change the Holy Spirit is bringing in my life
- Lots of hope, love, peace and joy in me
- That our team would find a building in Ocean View to base our operations out of
I think I have a small backlog of photos I still need to post here and on facebook. The internet here can be very very slow so it is difficult to get stuff like that up but I will make an effort to this week.
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