June udpate

I know we have been very bad about updating the blog - just so much going on. Here is the article that I wrote for the July newsletters at both our home congregation and our seminary partner congregation. It will give you an idea of what the past few weeks have been like and wat we will be up to for the next couple of weeks.

It is time again for another installment of “Internship with Ray and Ruth Ann.” This time, though, Ruth Ann is out of town, so don’t blame her for anything I write.

We are beginning wind down mode at our internship site, but in some ways it feels more like windup mode. We are still doing Congregational Preparedness presentations for LDR, but we are trying to only finish the ones we have scheduled and then pass this job along to someone else. Winding down means a lot of presentations in the past few weeks. I have traveled over 1000 miles doing presentations in the past week, and Ruth Ann spent the weekend in Hickory, North Carolina presenting for the NC WELCA annual meeting.

In fact, we have traveled so much that we had to send our dog off for his summer vacation. Smokey spent the last few weeks with our daughter so we could travel without having to find someone to keep up with him. Now that we are down to a couple of presentations, Smokey is on his way home, traveling back with Ruth Ann. We will just about get settled in a routine, and then it will be time to pack and move.

The difficult part of winding down internship will be saying goodbyes. We have already heard members of the congregation here talk about missing us, and we still have a few weeks. I am sure we will hear a lot more of this as we closer to July 29th, which will be our last Sunday. We will certainly miss them, as well.

In the meantime, our supervising pastor is on vacation, and it is time to see if we have really learned anything in the past 10 months. For three weeks, Ruth Ann and I will preach, lead worship, visit shut-ins, make hospital visits, and anything else that comes up (plus 2 more presentations). Our supervisor is only a phone call away, and we certainly have pastors in the area that would help us out, but for the most part, we are on our own – a chance to see what our future ministry might look like.

We are very grateful for this year – all we have learned and the many experiences we have had. We are very much ready to go back to seminary, though. Not because we want to leave here, but because we are ready to finish seminary and be in our first call. In the meantime, I just have to remember where I put all those boxes…