More Work

I have to confess - I am getting way more work done in the new office - it is far away from the life of the house, that I actually feel like I am away - except for when Adam and Sophia come running in here to attack me.

I worked all day prepping for a leadership retreat for our elders this Saturday.

I am presenting a lot of the ideas found in Jim Collin's book: Good to Great. This is a book that I have known about for a long time, and finally got around to reading recently. I wish I had read it earlier - it is excellent.

Collins is very popular among pastors for the practical wisdom he has in leading organizations well.

Felicia has set up a baby monitor in my office, so that I can hear either Sophia or Adam from the downstairs office. Half the time it sounds like the aliens from Signs are trying to talk to me. I usually have it turned off - but don't tell her that.

New Office

Working in my office at First Baptist - about 3-4 yrs. ago.

Slowly moving in - I have a new desk and chair, both IKEA. 2 book shelves are up - we need to build one more. And then I need to move all the books in.

Offices I have had:

First Alliance Church in Calgary: a desk and chair in a sort of open area, next to the children's pastors office. I also used empty offices of pastors who were on vacations - including the senior pastor's office - which was huge and had a fire place.

First Baptist Church Vancouver - had a office in the "youth house" behind the church.

-had another office inside the actual church building - it was pretty nice.

1250 Granville - our first apt. in Vancouver - had a tiny little office that overlooked busy granville street.

950 Cambie St. - beautiful office with floor to ceiling glass windows on the 26th floor overlooking yaletown

2 Spruce Court - nice office near the front door of the first house we lived in in Port Moody

Right now - I work at a small desk in our rather large bedroom - its ok, but the inability to grab a book when I need it kind of sucks.

Eventually, I'm sure our church will rent some sort of office space in Port Moody, and I can set up an off-site office.

My Dad had a really small cramped office at University Hospital in Saskatoon. In Regina, he had a bigger office, but it had no name on it - nobody would know it was an office, walking by.

Back

Finally slowly getting back in the swing of things, after the time away. A couple of guys and myself moved a bunch of stuff out of the school that our church has met in for the past 9 years. It was kind of weird. I'm really looking forward to the move to the theatre.

It is centrally located in Port Moody - in the same building as City Hall, in fact.

My health issue - I have touched briefly in past tweets and facebook status' and maybe even on here about a health issue I have been dealing with - Since February I have been having very bad sinus pain - I've gone on 3 rounds of antibiotics and an x-ray.

Today I saw an ENT specialist and his over eager resident. The diagnosis is.... nothing. There is nothing medically wrong with me. He said it's just stress. I guess that's good news - but I'm not sure how to treat it - green tea while listening to Enya?

He said good diet, exercise, plenty of rest should all help, and Advil. So basically that's it - stress.

I don't feel I have an excess of stress compared to other people - I have a stable job, a nice family, lots of friends, great extended family.

The only stress I could think of is the occasional blurt of stress happening in someone else's life that spills over into mu life, virtue of my job as a pastor. I always thought I worked out a lot of this stress by running and taking regular time off - guess that's not enough. Maybe I've been stuffing some stress down and now its popping up in a physical form.

Anyways, I'm going to pray about it and try to relax.

Other stuff - finished a lengthy N.T. Wright book on the New Testament which was very good. Also finally finished Good to Great which is more great than good.

Saw the Kings of Leon in concert - rocking good show.

Adam's b-day party coming up this Saturday - it has a pirate theme. I'm going to dress up like Keith Richards and stumble around mumbling. Should be fun.

Vacation Post

It's late at night - I'm listening to Bat For Lashes. We left last Thursday on our summer vacation. 1 week of holidays so far.

1st day - Travelled to Kelowna and stayed with some friends who were renting a lake front house. It was very beautiful there, and we met there 7mth. old twins who were very cute.

Then a long long drive from Kelowna to Calgary. Stayed at a nice hotel in downtown Calgary right next to the Bow River.

I interned at a large church in Calgary in 1993 - that short time was one of the most positive ministry experiences of my life - made many great friends through that time. Went back to that church - First Alliance. It has now supersized to about 3000 in weekly attendance in a beautiful new facility in the south of Calgary. It was truly one of the most unbelievable church buildings I had ever seen. I didn't see many of my older friends as many were away.

We made a day trip to the Tyrell Museum of Paleontlogy - which actually planned our trip to Calgary for the sole purpose of going to this dinosaur museum. It is really quite something, and Adam really loved it.

After Calgary, we drove to Canmore and met up with my brother and his wife, my sister and her family and my parents. We try to pull off one of these reunions every couple of years. Our last one was Christmas 2007 in San Diego.

So far, we have hiked, wandrwed around the town of Banff and dipped in the Banff Hot Springs. Today is Felicia and I's anniversery so we had dinner out.

Other events include canoeing in Lake Lousie, high tea at the Chateau Lake Louise, hiking Sulphur Mountain and maybe going to a local church on Sunday.

The whole dream wraps up Monday morning. We are staying in a large vacation home that we rented - it is really big with a lot of nice amenities, hot tub, sauna, etc.

I was hoping to get more reading done (I brought 9 books!), but we've been playing too much to crack open a book. Vacation is going well.