Thursday

Today was a pretty uneventful day. We worked on the tub surround in the parsonage and I painted a little. I guess I had a little excitement with the painting. We were painting the peak of the church, and I had to climb about 2 stories up and lean over to paint. I don't like heights, so I was a little shaky. After I did one section, the other Mark on the trip volunteered to do the next section, my hero. We had borrowed the ladder from a local lumber yard called Gallup lumber, so we took it back and I had a chance to talk to the owner, Michael, for awhile. He had let us borrow this huge ladder for free and does a lot of things to help out with the mission. He is a really cool guy and later came to where we were having dinner and we gave him a plaque expressing our thanks. He said he would put it up in the front of the store, where I noticed he had several plaques from other organizations. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures from today, but I didn't think anyone would want to see pictures of me working in a bathroom and I don't have any of me on the ladder from hell. There are several things that I'm going to miss when this trip is over. The first is being referred to as a young guy. I am one of the younger people, but I think I'm older than most people think. I think my bald head and protruding stomach must scream out late 20's to early 30's. If they only knew. Another thing I will miss is the daily connection with the people I'm working with. A lot of them have shared their stories and they are amazing. To hear people's triumphs and struggles and how they have gotten through it with their faith is inspiring. I didn't share my story this year because I didn't think I had a story, but after a evening with several of the ladies on the trip, who asked for my story, I'm told I do. I owe the base of my faith to mom and Miller, since they were the ones who drug me to church as a kid. Then, when I fell away, I would say that a lot of it was do to being drug to church for all those years and for me being arrogant and thinking I could disprove the existence of God, which I did in my mind. The thing I've realized is that I was using today's world to cancel out everything I had learned as a kid. I'm from Missouri, show me. I didn't think I could be shown, so I didn't open my eyes, mind or especially my heart. I met Marcy and I wanted to impress her, so I said I would go to church with her, even though I had no intention of ever believing again. I thought I could fool everyone, I had with so many other things in my life. Well little did I know that this was all in God's plan, that this was step one in a process to bring me back into the fold. I went to church, I listened and thought, are these people serious? I had never been to a church with live music, so I right away thought, cult? I've been to a lot of church's in my day, thanks to Miller's job and friends, and I had never seen anything like this. I can't just take the word of these people, so I started to look into religion and this God thing on my own. I read a book called A Case For Christ, written by a man who was a non-believer. He talked to scientists, religious leaders, historians and all kinds of both believers and non-believers. The case was overwhelming that Christ did exist. It's written, in non religious books, just regular books, that there was a man who was called Jesus Christ and that he performed miracles. I can't tell you everything in the book, but it is a good read, especially if you don't think God is real. I know where your coming from, I was there, but look into it before you discount it. In one of the devotions given tonight, there was a quote that I don't know exactly, but it said that you are put in a place, not to move someone from 1 to 10 in their faith, but maybe from 5 to 6. I wanted to thank Marcy from moving me from a -100, to a positive number. I'm not sure where I am on the scale, but I'm climbing. For those of you who read this blog, just to see what I've done, you just got a short faith story from me. With all of the stories I've heard this week, I wanted to get that off my chest, now back to the cursing and crappy pictures:)