Q & A

Some questions and comments we have heard lately:


“If we flunk you, can you stay another year?” (from members of our internship committees)
“Get ordained and come back!” (from LDR staff members)
“Aren’t you packed yet?” (from a friend in NC – you know who you are – almost two weeks ago!)
“It’s nice outside today. It’s only 88…” (this quite seriously from Ray, who hates hot weather – can you guess how hot it has been on other days recently?!?!)
“We miss you already!” (from many members of the congregation this last few weeks)
“How is the packing coming?” (from many people we have encountered this past week)

The answers (or retorts, depending on the situation) are something like this:

"No, we must return to school for our last year of studies."
"We’ll have to wait and see where God needs us to be next."
"NO, we haven’t even gotten our packing boxes out of the church attic yet."
"Yeh, at least it’s not over 95!"
"We will miss all of you, too!"

And finally:

"Well, we have really been busy with Red Cross disaster training courses, final internship evaluations, and other work to wrap up at the church and at LDR all week. We finally – this morning – retrieved our boxes from the attic at church.

AFTER worship and a farewell lunch tomorrow, we will finally begin actually packing boxes. Fortunately, we have been working on sorting out some things to donate to a local charity, cleaning out our desks at church, finishing up things in the frig, cleaning out the pantry, etc. I think what is left actually needs to be packed and loaded on the truck. We may just have to sort it all out at the other end of the move…"

Beginning of the End

This is a time of transition for us as our internship year comes to an end. The schedule for these last couple of weeks in Mobile is very full! We need to finish a project or two at LDR and the church, write our final internship reports, have our last meetings with internship committees and other groups, preach our last sermons here, and hand over our files both places.

Some classmates told us they had deliberate time for “disengaging” before they left their internship congregations and returned to school. We, on the other hand, are running full tilt until the last possible moment. Another event for LDR this weekend, two Red Cross disaster volunteer trainings next week, etc. (Never mind the lengthy approval essay which still needs to be written by early September.)

After our last Sunday here, we will need to pack up our office and our apartment, so that we can load up the truck and move back before the school year begins. We already have our class schedules – now it is time to buy our books and settle into a different routine for the last year of our studies!

It has been both an exciting and challenging year and saying goodbye is difficult, because in many ways it feels like we just got settled in. But we know these transitions and farewells are part of the internship experience – preparation for arriving at a new call and practice for leaving well from one in the future…

Random Thoughts on Sunday evening

Well, it seems it might be time to catch up. Rather than try to remember (and find time) to post multiple times on multiple topics, I’ll try to do several topics in one post (he says, trying to remember all the things that could have been earlier entries).

Summer – yes, it is summer in Mobile, and very hot. Looking at the temperatures for Mobile and other southern cities, they don’t seem very different, but if you can find and compare heat indexes, the true story comes out. We are coping, but I think acclamation would take a number of years.

Vacation – not only does this week bring us a holiday, but also vacation time. We will leave on Thursday for an escape to the mountains of North Carolina. Hopefully, cooler temperatures will prevail. The reason for going is my grandmothers’ 96th birthday. We hope there will be more, but we get together each year just in case there are not.

Internship – what a busy time! Our supervisor has been on vacation for the last three weeks, so we have been in charge. It has been a wonderful opportunity to experience ministry together, and to put to use the many skills we have accumulated. It has also been a time of finishing our LDR presentations and beginning to wrap up our Congregational Preparedness program so we can hand it over to someone else. Our last two presentations were to the Mobile District Attorney’s disaster response task force and to the South Baldwin Amateur Radio Club (SBARC). Both of these were interesting, as they were not congregations and were not presentations we instigated. In both cases, they invited us after hearing about us elsewhere.

One of the most interesting things out of the presentation and interaction with the DA’s office is that they have developed a preparedness program called Erik’s Shoebox. It is a great program to help people have important documents in a safe place and ready for evacuation. We are going to help LDR set up an Erik’s Shoebox day in Bayou la Batre later this month. Staff and volunteers from LDR will help residents photocopy and/or scan to CD important documents such as Driver’s License, Social Security card, titles to cars or homes, and other important papers that could be lost in a storm or that are needed to apply for aid after a storm.

Sunday after-the-sermon thoughts – today was my turn to preach, and Paul’s letter to the Galatians played heavily in my sermon. Various discussions this week played off the idea that our freedom in Christ (Gal 5:1) can somehow be tied to our freedom as Americans (being the Sunday before the 4th of July and all). I had trouble with this, even though I did write one version of a sermon that attempted to address that issue. The problem is, even though we are called to be radical disciples of Christ, and Christ has set us free so that we can be radical disciples of a radical Gospel, it has nothing to do with the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Needless to say, my sermon focused more on being free in Christ so that we can be radical disciples. Someday, I will go back and explore the other sermon option, but on internship, while the supervisor is gone, was probably not the time to pit patriotism against discipleship. Or at, that was my decision on Saturday night.