Stream of my conscience 10:30 pm Tues 2/6

Don't look for too many entries over the next 8 or 9 days. We are nearing our "assessment retreat" experience, five days and four nights during which the 12 superintendents and our bishop gather to take an inventory of the churches and pastors of the conference. We each take a turn going through our districts, describing as accurately as we can, the situations in all of our full time and some of our part time appointments. To get ready for this (it begins Sunday afternoon at Camp Windermere---thank you Missouri Baptist folks for having such a nice camp/retreat center near the Lake of the Ozarks), we all have to write a short paragraph about the pastor and the church. This is put in to a computer data system we call "MissionBase" and then it is accessible to all of us. It is quite a task putting all this info it---we describe ALL appointments, full and part time. It is not just the time; it is how much I want to "get it right;" to make sure I am faithful to what I have heard both the PPR committees say, and what the pastor has told me. I try my best.

This morning, we held the 100% Apportionment Breakfast for the east side of the district in Lexington for pastors and some lay persons from churches that, you guessed it, paid 100% on apportionments last year. Not many came, though several were invited but I had such a good time. Dick Curry, the assistant to the bishop and my predecessor in the Heartland North superintendency (and one of two or three people God has put in my life to see me through it all...oh, my, how blessed I am to have Dick for support, good advice, and somebody who always makes me feel like I am cared for) came over from Columbia even though I didn't ask him until yesterday. And he brought appreciation from the bishop. Thursday we have the westside breakfast in Kearney. What a great group of pastors I have...what a blessing it is to be in the superintendency and to get to walk with so many pastors and churches as they do their best every day to reveal the Kingdom in their communities. And one of the laymen who attended this morning from Lexington, Charles Bartrum, brought me 2 dozen eggs from his chickens, homemade lime salsa, and two jars of jam. And the weather was so beautiful today, after I cleaned off my desk at the office (Jesus must be coming soon) I took two hours this afternoon to clean out my nasty car---and then to take it through a car wash in Liberty before their charge conference to elect a building committee. (I'm so proud of the way my car looks now, I had to put one that looked like it on this entry..imagine a Cardinals decal on the back bumper and a round little cross and flames on one side of the bottom of the back window, and a "Member of the SIU Alumni Association" decal on the other---Hey, you know Southern Illinois men's basketball team was RANKED this week in the top 25 AP poll--GO SALUKIS) And then after I got home, I input seven more churches/pastors info. And then...I wrote this. No splendid theological insights tonight; no flowery language. Just a little appreciation for a good day.