Thanksgiving at ‘The Mission’ turned out to be almost everything that it was advertised to be. The only thing lacking was the all-nighter. Galen, Brad, and I were up till around 4 am, running back and forth from Trader Joe’s. Because we normally only do one food pickup at midnight, we had a number of extra helpers pitch in and help with the food pickups, unloading, and sorting of the food. We left Trader Joe’s for the last time at 2 am Thanksgiving morning. Between the drive home, unloading, sorting the food, and parking the van, we went to bed at around 4 am, and then got up again at 8:30 to get ready to meet the volunteers that eagerly arrived early!

I’m told that the line of people outside the building began to form at 7:30 am, even though they knew the food distribution wouldn’t begin till 10 am. At around 9:30 I went outside to see how many people were in the line. I quickly recognized most everyone in the line, so I ended up staying outside talking with different people and learning some numbers in Spanish (setenta y uno). One of my greatest regrets is that I don’t have more time between the responsibilities that surround the weekend and flow into the typical Tuesday. I normally have papers due each Saturday at midnight, and I’ve set a goal to write this blog post on Sunday night, though I usually do it on Monday night. Then I normally end up preparing my sermon that I preach each Tuesday on Monday night and Tuesday morning. The regret is that I don’t have more time to go meet people that attend the services, and talk with them before the beginning of the service on Tuesday afternoon.

This opportunity on Thanksgiving day was really enjoyable. I made it look like I was being helpful by counting the people that were outside (I got up to around 165 before I stopped counting.)

*Interruption while writing*

It’s now 2:20 AM, Tuesday morning. We just finished unloading and putting away as much of the midnight run as possible. Brad counted over 200 turkeys that came in today, and over 150 came in as part of the midnight run. I think we(by we I mean Galen/is) are going to take about 50 of them down to the Bowery Mission, Fanny Crosby’s old stomping grounds.

We also got a call from the Trader Joe’s up on 72^nd street. We normally only pick up from them on Thursday’s at noon, but apparently they were overloaded with food to get rid of and were having trouble getting their regular non-profits to come do an emergency food pickup at 1 am. Thankfully tonight we had the help of Victor, Will, and the guy from the parking garage across the street.

I’m going to pass on making an entry on my doctrinal statement this week because 3 pm is quickly approaching and I’ve made very little progress on writing the sermon (Acts 2:1-13 or so).

This semester can’t end soon enough! I’m definitely getting tired of being in school. After much counsel from my wise advisor, Bradley Jones, I’ve decided not to take any winter classes, so I’ll have almost two months off from school! Until then, I have one paper, two finals, the rest of this blog post, one sermon manuscript, and a ministry report due between now and Friday.

Financial Stuff

As far as I know, we’ve had three people make donations online! Thank you so much! We really need to raise around $50,000 for the most pressing phase of renovations – the apartments. We continue to average around 3,000 views per week on this blog, and so I’ll restate it. If everyone reading this blog donated $10, we would be halfway there! Think of it like the ads on Wikipedia. Once the goal is met, you don’t hear about it again for a while!

Also, I don’t know if anyone has sent in any support for Brad, but he’s there loading the fridges full of turkeys at 2 am, and never once complains about having to empty the sofa for change to pay his cell phone bill each month. Ok, I don’t think he tears apart the sofa for coins, but you get my point.

General Stuff

The NYGM board meeting is coming up this week! I am very excited to have the board come to town, and have some of them stay in my room! I’m also looking forward to reconnecting with my alter ego, “Radames”, from Aida (the opera we put on last spring at BJU). I was the understudy for the tenor, Radames, so I felt a strong connection to the guest artist (aka, professional opera singer), Clay Hilley, when he arrived. It certainly helped that he’s a believer, and attended a Christian school that’s part of the loose network of Christian schools affiliated with Bob Jones University. Those factors and the shared experience of working through a beast of an opera role make for a lot of great conversations! I definitely need to brush up on my arias by the end of this week, and learn some more. The music program at school is definitely one of the things I miss most about leaving Bob Jones.

If you all would take 10 seconds and pray for Pastor Bill, we would really appreciate it. He fell and hurt his back this week. He was on a ladder, and the ladder slipped and he fell and reinjured an existing back problem. He was out of commission from Wednesday evening till Saturday, when he preached the outreach service. He’s able to walk now but he’s walking much more gingerly, and is in noticeable pain so we’re trying to keep him from lifting things.

If you remember, a week ago Saturday, when we set a new attendance record, of 171, the following Tuesday even more people came, with 176 people total. We can pretty conservatively say that it was the first time in 50 years that people have been seated in the choir loft during a service.

Pray for us, that the Word of God would go forward with clarity and power.

A number of people visibly responded to the invitation at the end of Saturdays message, and some of those people were in the Sunday service, the following day.

Verses like Galatians 4:19 are starting to make sense to me “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”