Field Notes #3: Monday, Monday (First Day in the Office!)

I've been reading Henri Nouwen's The Inner Voice of Love, a collection of spiritual imperatives and reflections, as a daily devotional for a while now. Today's entry was entitled "Keep Trusting God's Call." What a perfect admonition to keep in mind on my first day at the office.

I came in this morning and began making a list of supplies for Vacation Bible School. We had a planning meeting for VBS yesterday afternoon, and I was assigned to be in charge of the games. We're using Cokesbury's "Galactic Blast" VBS curriculum, so the planned activities include "Planet Toss" and "Creation Station Relay." I'm always skeptical of curricula like this, but these activities actually look pretty fun.

I also got to write my first contributions to "The Hill's Chapel House Call," HCUMC's monthly newsletter. I drew up two short articles, one about VBS and the other introducing myself to the congregation.

I got to have lunch in the office with Pastor Val and LeaAnne, the administrative assistant, which was cool. Val and I coordinated calendars and set a third Sunday for me to preach, June 6 (I was already scheduled for July 4 and 18).

One highlight today was that Val gave me a copy of the church directory. This may seem like a small thing, but I'm actually really glad to have it. I've met so many people in the past few days and yet I've forgotten so many names already. I'm going to do something that my dad does at his church (which has quite a few more members than HCUMC, so it'll be more manageable for me): each day, I'll take one page of the directory and pray for all the families and individuals on it. I think this will be a good exercise not only to help me learn names and faces but also intentionally to incorporate HCUMC's membership into my prayer life.

This afternoon, Val and I began to complete the Learning-Serving Covenant required as a part of field ed. The idea is for each student to set learning goals and to establish guidelines for supervision and so on. Even though this is my first field ed placement, I was already familiar with the covenant, as we had used in in the PathWays summer program. But it was really good to go through it with Val, and I got a lot out of the conversations we had when we went off on tangents.

Since I'll be involved in helping plan and lead worship a great deal this summer, Val lent me a few books that I'm super excited about, much to my embarrassment. They are: ReConnecting Worship: Where Tradition & Innovation Converge, by Rob Weber with Stacy Hood; Redesigning Worship: Creating Powerful God Experiences, by Kim Miller; and A Royal "Waste" of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World, by Marva J. Dawn. That last one is the sequel to Reaching out Without Dumbing Down, one of the many books I am determined to read this summer. All of this will surely show up in this blog later.

After work, I came back to the Edwards' house, where we had dinner and then headed off to aerobics class at the church, which Debbie Edwards teaches. That was an intense workout! And we did it all to techno hymns, which was pretty amusing. I'm glad I went, not only for the exercise but also because it gave me the opportunity to connect with a few more women from HCUMC. Debbie holds that class twice a week, so I'll try to start going regularly.

And now I'm bushed. (Do people actually say that?) I'm gonna try to get started on one of these books, but I may well fall asleep reading. Which isn't such a bad thing. :)