Friday, February 02, 2007

First and Second Day - New Job!

Nehemiah 1:11: "'O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.' I was cupbearer to the king."

Yesterday was the first day of a brand new life! And what an interesting day it was! I began a new position yesterday as the Communications Director at Faith-Westwood United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska.

What does a first day look like? Well, I haven't had one of those in over 20 years, so it looks pretty wild and wooly! I was here early (7:30 early!) because my poor husband had to drop me off before being at his job by 8:00. Which was fine. I had a lot to deal with.

But, I moved in with confidence. The Nehemiah scripture passage had come into my email box and I felt God's peace as I prayed that prayer.

I met with Dr. Delp and began the discussions with him regarding his hopes for the first few weeks of my job. I got a list! And ... tried not to be overwhelmed.

A day of accomplishing small tasks. I hate to complain, but why can't the small things just be taken care of around here! I was checking on 3-4 year old cards that had been filled out and left in a pile. Well, YES they had been input into the system. Throw them away.

This will be one area that I will miss having my sister, Carol, around for. She is a purging queen! She can go through a room in a flash and have everything tossed out or sorted. but, it occurs to me that there might be worse packrats than myself on staff here, so it's going to be a bit of a task cleaning some of these things up.

Does anyone want to help me design some bulletin boards? Wow ... we are a great big church and there are empty bulletin boards in this place. I'm going to have to fix that. How about some old church directories, would you like one? We have a bunch!

Today is another day of eliminating small tasks so that I can get going on some of the bigger things. At the end of February we will be beginning a new sermon series / small group series "Momentum for Life". Michael Slaughter will help us learn about his five life practices: D-R-I-V-E: Devotion to God, Readiness for lifelong learning, Investing in key relationships, Visioning for the future, and Eating and Exercise for life. Hmmm ... this looks interesting!

The book says he has adapted these from the Psalms of Ascent. I do look forward to seeing how that happens.

So, for today! Consider again the words from Nehemiah, "O Lord be attentive to the prayer of this your servant."

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