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It’s been froggy here.

14 Mar

The fog has rolled in around Dawson nearly every day for the past week.  Combine the fog with the rain and the melting snow and it’s been a bit miserable in terms of vitamin D.  Worries of flooding have surfaced.  Maybe this will be my first opportunity to sandbag?  We’ll hope for not but the spring will tell.

another summary.

7 Mar

Say you were to approach me tomorrow.  Say you asked, “So, Lindsay, how was your weekend?”  

I would say, “Hey!  Thanks for asking!  It was pretty good.”  
If that answer wasn’t long or detailed enough, here’s how I would proceed:

– I saw Avatar.  Finally.  It was wonderful and I may or may not have shed a few tears behind my 3D glasses.
– Buttercrunch almond toffee.  Success.  The first candy I’ve made that required a candy thermometer and fancy things.  Packaged and ready for the mail tomorrow.
– New fabric for one yard wonder constructions.  To begin with grocery totes.  Excited.
– A good part of my weekend was spent wearing these around my apartment, trying to convince myself that they’re not too big for my head and that they weren’t a stupid purchase.  This picture is for you, Emma.
– A Sunday of two baptisms.  Beautiful babies welcomed into the body of Christ.
– I ran two miles.  Like seriously.  Two miles without stopping.  I impressed myself.
– New biscotti recipe.  Epic fail.  Added chocolate on top.  That makes everything better.
– Watched Thursday night’s episode of The Office twice.  Props to the show; it was better than I have come to expect this season.  (“Wrong baby!  Wrong baby!”)
– Saturday night quilting/chatting.  Perfect.

This week’s wisdom.

27 Feb
1. Teaching fourteen third graders to make paper cranes is not a walk in the park.  I found a youtube video online that went through it s-l-o-w-l-y step by step.  As we watched the how-to instructions, they screeched at me, “pause it!  pause it!”  “I don’t get it!”  “I need help!”  Needless to say, we ran out of time.  Looks like I’ll be doing the beginning steps of fourteen paper cranes to catch them up when we continue on Wednesday.
2.  Using a prop such as a banana dog will become the talk of the town.  After using Webster as a key part of my sermon on Wednesday evening, he was mentioned at a women’s circle study the next afternoon and a Pampered Chef party I attended the following evening.  I’m thinking people will now associate me as the owner of the banana dog.
3.  Egg coffee.  Never had I heard of such a thing until the women of Mary Circle educated me.  I think it sounds rather disgusting but they emphasized over and over how “pretty” the coffee is when made this way.  That’s what I like to drink – pretty coffee. 
4.  “Don’t worry, Sweet Pea.  I’ll find you a man.  A rich man with one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel.”  This is what H. told me while I visited he and his wife at home.  Always a joker but also a gentleman.  He helped me put my coat on when I was ready to leave and made sure I had a Little Debbie cupcake for the road.

mi amor.

19 Feb

Spanish conversation hearts.  De nada.  Mi amor.  
and Linda?  Unda?  (the yellow one in the bottom left)  
Any other clue to what that might say?

Stolen families.

21 Jan
Once a month, the pastors in our conference of the ELCA gather to check-in, worship, and hear some sort of presentation before eating lunch together.  Our presentation today was by Paul Hill, one of the brains behind the former Youth and Family Institute, now called Vibrant Faith Ministries.  A great presentation about the role parents and home play in the faith of a child and what the church can be for youth.  And for lunch was a variety of hotdishes; tator-tot hotdish with corn and a burnt layer on the bottom included.  I probably sound ungrateful – not trying to be – but just find it funny how it is such a classic church dish.  Anyways –
Lori pointed out this picture to me, hanging on the wall of the small country church we were at about 20 miles from Dawson:
An illustrated, old-time Lord’s prayer.  Cool beans.  Now check out the dedication plate —
There were many Stolens in this area years ago … I don’t think so much anymore.  When I first arrived, many people asked me if I was related.  I’m thinking not … but it’s still intriguing to have the connection.  But just because the last name is familiar to people in Dawson doesn’t mean they still don’t make fun of me for it.  One congregation member tells me that he thinks it would be a great idea to open an auto parts store — Stolen Auto Parts.
har har.

Haiti.

17 Jan
Honestly, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention until Thursday.  I heard what had happened and may have even turned on the news Wednesday morning as I prepared to go into work.  I listened to conversations about the devastation and the tragedy but I was void of much emotion.  I had no idea.
Wednesday evening it started to haunt me little by little.  The stewardship board at Grace (the last in a string of many, many meetings for me that evening) moved to create a new line item in the budget, so people could give to Lutheran Disaster Response through the church.  (Or something – budgets are still beyond me.  There should be an accounting class at seminary.  Seriously.  I would take it.)  Rumors were also circulating on facebook and amongst friends that a college classmate of mine was in Haiti at the time of the quake and unaccounted for; his cousin and wife who were there with him hadn’t been able to find him.  Prayed.
Thursday I went skiing and focused my energy on not falling down; I don’t think I thought about what was going on outside the ski hill once.  I arrived home and the floods of emails and information regarding Ben Larson‘s death began.  A prayer service was being organized in Minneapolis the next night.  I didn’t even really know Ben – I would not call him a close friend – but suddenly the devastation and tragedy had a face, a face I knew.  At Luther, pretty much everyone knows everybody.  Ben and I were involved in college ministry activities together and had religion classes together.  I didn’t know much about him but his music leadership at FOCUS worship each Sunday evening and the fact that, really, if anyone was ever called to be a pastor, it was him.  
I didn’t know if I should go to Minneapolis.  Could I afford the three hours to get there and the three hours in the car coming home when I had a sermon to write for Sunday?  Maybe a responsible person wouldn’t have gone but I was in the car by 8:30 Friday morning, heading to the cities and I’m glad I did.  It was wonderful to gather as a Luther community and a greater community, to sing, to pray, and to lament together.  Though not under wonderful circumstances, it was great to see a few Luther people that I haven’t seen for a long while, including my roommate from freshman year.  It was where I needed to be.
Keep reading onto the next post for the sermon that flowed through my fingers when I arrived back to Dawson on Saturday afternoon.  I received many positive comments regarding it after service.  I actually made people cry!  (I consider this a small sort of accomplishment.  Not that I want to make them cry but it’s a validation that my words meant something and that the Holy Spirit used them.)  I managed to make it through both services without crying myself, though there were moments where it was difficult.
After attending the service on Friday and preaching this morning, I feel filled with passion to do something about this.  If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to donate financially to the Red Cross or Lutheran Disaster Response.  Right now, financial aid to Haiti is a lot of what we can do but in the months and years ahead, there will be so much more.  I also hope to start a drive to collect items for Lutheran World Relief health kits at Grace.  Build your own kits or send some band-aids or washcloths my way to add to the piles that will hopefully grow here at Grace!

badges of honor.

14 Jan
I went downhill skiing for the first time today with the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders of Dawson-Boyd. Kendall invited me; he went along with his fourth grade daughter. He suggested that it might be a fun activity and, since I had never skied before, it would be a good opportunity to learn before the Grace church ski outing. I went back and forth – I wanted to go but yet, I didn’t. Not being athletically inclined, I was worried that I would make a complete and utter fool out of myself while by myself, that I would have no friends by my side to laugh along with me when I fell down or tripped on my own feet. And it’s true – my worries were a very accurate foreshadowing of my day.
Because I had never skied before, I took a lesson. When taking the lesson, I discovered that I cannot stand back up once I’ve fallen down. Some people could without removing skis; I was not one of these privileged few. In order for me to stand back up once falling down, I had to release one of my boots from the skis. I also learned that I was not so great at forming the “snowplow” position with my skis and stopping. For the first hour or so of my time on the bunny hill, I stopped by falling over. It’s the best I could do to not run into people. But then, because I can’t stand right back up, undo the ski, stand up, reattach, etc. Ugg.
Thus began my two hour stint on the bunny hill. The fourth graders and I grabbed onto the tow rope which pulled us to the top of the “hill” and then we skied in and out of cones, practicing our turning, leaning forward, and stopping. Occasionally, the fourth graders and I would exchange tips. The conversations would go something like this:
Lindsay: How’s it going?
Fourth grader: Okay.
Lindsay: This is really hard, isn’t it?
Fourth grader: Yeah.
Lindsay: I have trouble stopping.
Fourth grader: Yeah.
Lindsay: I fall over a lot!
Fourth grader: (insert advice here)
Lindsay: Okay, thanks!
Typically, a while after this conversation would take place, the fourth grader would then smile at me, show me the smiley face on their lift ticket (which meant they could move on to the bigger hills), and say, “I’m going to ski with my friends now!” all sorts of excited. Then I would grab the tow rope again and hang on until the top of the bunny hill. I was not good. I had no smiley face. I had no friends to laugh along with me.
But the story does not end there – I did get a smiley face! I moved onto the bigger hill! I still rode the chair lift by myself and subsequently fell down when I got off of it, but I had moved on. When people asked me how today went, I tell them that I am a better skier today than I was yesterday. (… which really says a whole lot of nothing for my ski skills but it’s true!)
I have two badges of honor and accomplishment to prove that I did indeed go skiing – my lift ticket tag (with smiley face) and the bruise that is gradually taking over my left calf muscle. I think my boot was a bit too tight and it’s not going to be pretty. We go skiing as a church in February and while I’ve had my lesson and learned to stop without always falling over, I think I may opt for cross-country skiing next month.

So. It’s been cold here –

5 Jan

trust/hope/love prevail

3 Jan

In the darkest places, you discover you are real to yourself and one another. And if you’re not called – mercifully – to such places, you will need disciplines of thinking and imagination to keep yourself real: to fight off easy answers, false gods, stifling systems. Prayer is one such discipline, essential and focal for people of faith; but there are others. We can still choose honesty or dishonesty. We can still choose what Chesterton called the ‘easy speeches that comfort cruel men’; or we can choose to face how vulnerable we all are and how much we need to fight against our fear of one other if trust and hope and love are to prevail when all is done. The challenge is how we stay awake to how the world is – and to how it can yet be changed.  (Rowan Williams)

the crazies.

27 Dec
I have the crazies. I’m going a bit insane, being snowed into my tiny apartment alone. I was stuck here on Christmas day and the day following. I tried to entertain myself, to keep busy, and to maintain sanity for as long as I could. I cleaned. I quilted. I talked on the phone. I watched (a lot of) Friends. Lord of the Rings. I did laundry. And it was okay. On Friday and Saturday, things were okay. I didn’t go crazy.
But now it’s Sunday and I’m stuck here again. The crazies have attacked me.
I got out for church. We only had one service this morning and it was all me. Pastor Kendall is on vacation so I did it all. Sermon. Liturgy. Announcements. I did everything but turn my microphone on properly. Opps. Luckily a few members ran back to the sound board to make sure things were working so only the announcements were missed. The church service went well and then I stuck around with coffee and congregation members for an hour.
But now I’m back at my apartment. I glimpsed the outside world but now I’ve returned to my shell and I can’t handle it.
I was going to drive to Watertown, SD to meet up with a friend and visit the glories that are Starbucks and Target but the roads don’t advise such travel. So close to getting out and yet, it’s a no go. I could drive 20 minutes to the next larger town, Montevideo, but the only thing I could do there is walk around Walmart and I’m just not sure that is appealing either.
Here I am. I will survive but as I told my mom when I called her, I just needed to complain a bit first.
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