I have certainly been MIA here on the blog; my last post was a month ago. I knew there'd be a posting famine, but let it occur naturally. So here's my little May recap: 1. Marathon Recovery. I healed up rather nicely after the marathon. The only lingering issue is that pesky Achilles Tendonitis but I totally rested it the past thirty days. I think this has helped immensely, and I plan on finally going on a jog next week. I'm going to make an attempt to do some regular running throughout the year to see if I can set up for a personal best in next year's marathon.
2. Class Obligations. I took a course in Genesis in Seminary this past term and I wrapped it up in May. It was an excellent course. I had actually avoided taking Mark Ziese classes while an undergrad at CCU because he has a reputation as a professor who requires a lot of classwork. Well, this was my penance and it was well worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed devoting some extended time in Genesis as it's, by far, one of my favorite texts. I also taught a course in the College of Adult Learning concerning ministry trends of the future. I had a great class and am actually looking forward to grading these finals. I'll next teach in late August, so I guess I get a summer vacation.
3. Church Stuff. Echo has been great. We continued to have solid attendance and participation throughout May. Take out Memorial Day, when the vast majority of our folk are out of town, and we had one of the strongest months in church history. This summer, my focus for our congregation is reorganization of structure. I'm going to work with our leadership on revisualizing the way we conduct ourselves.
We also said goodbye to Sam Waldron, who has led worship for us since Tye left. I knew what we were getting when Sam came and he surely did not disappoint. Sam is moving on to an internship and probable staff position with his home church. He's going to do some great things there and throughout his life. I knew we'd only have Sam for about a year but was confident God would provide someone to replace him. Sure enough, Dillon Hamilton and his wife Kathy joined us near the end of last year and have become an integral part of Echo. Dillon led worship for a church plant in Cleveland and, when a job brought them to Cincinnati, they connected with Echo. I'm confident that he's our guy and looking forward to what the next months will bring to our ministry in Walnut Hills.
4. Our Vacation. I don't like telling the cyberworld when we're going to be out of town for an extended period of time, so we kept it low-key except to those in our immediate vicinity. We've never done a big just-the-three-of-us vacation, so we decided to take a trip to Walt Disney World. Kelly meticulously planned our vacation out as we stayed in a Disney hotel and were on their meal plan. I enjoyed it because there was little for me to worry about except getting from place to place. Obviously, Kaelyn had the time of her life as evidenced by these pictures. Remarkably, I returned from our break rather rested. It was an unforgettable time. I'm sure I'll have more to write about it in the near future.
5. Our Illnesses. The weekend after we returned from vacation, I started feeling bad. Assuming it was just allergies, I plowed through but a series of nighttime fevers led me to see that this was more than allergies; it was a sinus infection. And, as expected, I passed on the cold to Kaelyn so we basically spent Memorial Day Weekend lying around the house. I finally went to the doctor at the beginning of the week and got some antibiotics, so I've been on the mend. Kaelyn, on the other hand, appeared to be improving but then had a really bad time. She woke up in the middle of the night Tuesday coughing and struggling to breathe. We recognized that it was croup, as she had it when she was two years-old. We took a trip over to Children's Hospital's ER and she received a steroid to work it out. While she still had a rough night last night, I'm thinking she'll be over it by the weekend.
So all of this is why I didn't get any posting done last month. I'll try not to let the famine continue.