MicahJohn

Two days ago I went up to Mowersville. I sat in on the opening of their school day (quick devotions and the handing out of a few papers). I then worked on printing out certificates for that evening’s award banquet. Then on preparing thank you letters. After that I accompanied Darrel Potteiger to Christian Light to pick up more things for the evening. Then we got lunch at Sheetz before going on to pick up trophies at a trophy shop. We had to check through all the nameplates on the trophies to ensure that they all said what they were supposed to. Back at the church we arranged the trophy table. That done, I worked on preparing devotions for the next school morning.

In the evening I attended the banquet I had helped prepare for. There was some GOOD food! After the banquet was over I really enjoyed running around with all the kids who had, like myself, sat through a semi-long presentation.

Yesterday (the day after the day I just described), I gave the devotion at the start of the school day. Then, after working on preparing my Sunday school lesson for a while, I tallied merit points for all the students in the school. Following that, I stuffed envelopes.

Yesterday I had little time to journal, so I’ll see what I can remember. In the morning I had breakfast with Bishop Rob and the Bedford church plant advisory team. I found out all sorts of things about the pre-plant church planting process. For example, there is a church planter boot camp. I saw the Bishop’s house in progress and his office. In the afternoon I spent a little time studying for quizzing and a bit more time preparing a devotion for the BOD (Board of Directors). In the evening I followed the Bishop to the BOD meeting. On the way I had the experience of driving a standard transmission vehicle on a rising, falling, twisting, curving road (30) while eating a well-mayonnaised/hot-relished MTO. The BOD meeting was pretty interesting, but pretty long. I heard a lot of the concerns that BIC leaders have right now and heard them discussed. I also sat in the same seat for 4 hours and 10 minutes.

This morning I accompanied the Bishop to another meeting. I was made aware of more concerns pastors currently have. Following that meeting I went to lunch with the Bishop, had some good conversation, then we parted.

Today ended my first week of interning. It was a good, but exhausting, culmination to my week. I was up at 5:40 to be at Antrim by 7:00 and did not leave Antrim until 12:10. I played the music for the traditional service twice, once for practice and once during the service. Then I played the music for the contemporary service twice, once for each service. Ministry, even ministry one enjoys, can be exhausting.

Today I cut my hair!L It was a frustratingly hard thing to do. Prior to receiving the internship I planned to grow my hair out until I could put it all into a ponytail. Changing plans is a hard thing for me to do. I didn’t cut my hair my whole freshman year of college, partly inspired by parts of the Cross Country team. Parts of the growing process had been less the comfortable: hair on the forehead, then hair in the ears, then hair in the eyes. It was hard to cut it after making it past those stages. I felt the need to cut my hair in order to best minister to some of the BIC people I am going to come across this summer. The thing that convinced me I needed to go ahead and cut my hair was a comment by a young person (who used to have their ear pierced); they said to me “I didn’t know people with long hair could have deep thoughts.” The comment impressed on me the fact that my hair length influences the way people view me. I had been extremely reluctant to admit this.

Today I helped Tom build a stage for the drums and helped add guitar chords to some hymns. In the afternoon I got to spend time with James at Chill Point. Chill Point is an outreach of Antrim. They pick kids up after school and let them come and just have fun.

Today I was all over the place. I went out for donuts, I worked with James on a sermon he is preparing, I worked with Tom on setting up the stage and preparing the music for Sunday, and I worked with Carmen on setting up a projector, then met with her and her group of fifth grade leaders. This evening I went to worship practice. It was a good opportunity to gain more guitar experience in a new setting.