Teach a Man to Fish...

So every friday night we have our youth program and i've been somewhat frustrated with the teaching times. i'm not saying that i'm upset with how things are being done by everyone else, because i'm the only one who's been teaching the jr highers. we've sort of been bouncing around and the kids hear me teach in chapels on fridays and some times on sundays, so you can only hop around and teach topically for so long. but at the same time, i didn't want to get bogged down in going through a book on friday nights because that could literally take months and we want fridays to be more of an outreach.

so when it came to last night i decided we'd go through Philippians and show the kids the flow of a book, and that the books are more than just a bunch of verses thrown together, but that they are letters with running thoughts. so we started doing that and it turned into basically going through it verse by verse and having the kids outline the book. it was awesome to hear and see the kids go through it and to challenge them to really think about the implications of what Paul was writing. talking about what growing in knowledge and discernment means.

so we ended up only getting through the introduction and encouragements, but the kids absolutely loved it. so that's what we're gonna be doing for the forseeable future. afterwards the kids were coming up to me and asking me to expain what different things meant, like fruit of our salvation. so, its great to know that they were listening and thinking about it and weren't ready to just stop thinking about it and move on. these are the moments that make you love ministry.

$1 debts and ketchup

So today i had to go into the bank that i used to have an account with and pay this mysterious $1 debt that they were pestering me about. i'm not sure how i got a $1 debt in the first place since i completely closed the account and then apparently i spent the one dollar. anyhoo, i go in to pay this one dollar and i get bounced around to three different people because no one could take the one dollar. as i'm standing at one of the windows i notice there is a bottle of Heinz ketchup on the other side of the glass. i checked the bottle to see if there was anything special about it, but it was just a normal bottle of ketchup. i thought, maybe this lady is personalizing her window and she feels an infinity towards ketchup, so i leaned back and looked at the other windows. They all had ketchup in their windows. i turned around, and every desk had a bottle on it. the following conversation then took place:

'Out of curiosity, why do you have a bottle of ketchup in your window?'

'To boost our sales.'

'You sell ketchup?!'

'No, to boost our company's sales.'

'Your company sells ketchup.'

'No.'

So i stood there incredible confused as to why these random bottles of ketchup were in the windows. A guy down a few windows heard me ask and decided to ask his teller also, 'Why do you have bottles of ketchup in your windows?' 'You sell ketchup?!' Apparently, he didn't get a clear answer either.

This whole thing made me thankful for not doing business there anymore because i just can't trust a bank that mysteriously keeps ketchup in their windows or a bank that would have close ties to Theresa Heinz Kerry.