My Apologies and a Holy Week Update

So when I last left you, faithful readers (all two of you ) we had made the decision for M to take the call at GLC, when they offered it. Well, I am happy to announce that they voted last Sunday after church and offered the call to M. The funny part of the vote was that they broadcast worship over the local cable channel, which goes all over the area, up around here and everything because it is the same cable company. Normally they turn the broadcast off right after worship so any meetings or anything aren’t on tv. But last Sunday, their service ran faster than usual and they forgot to shut the cameras off. So the whole meeting, all 12 minutes of it, and the unanimous verbal vote to extend the call to M, was sent out for the whole area to see. Good thing it ended well! My dad’s cousin happened to be watching the service and called my dad pretty much before M even got the call from the call committee! So M starts at the beginning of May.

As for my call department, it looks like I will be done at HLC as scheduled at the end of May. I’m a little sad about that; I love the congregation, but I know that we all need to move on. I think the call committee is going to recommend a congregational vote in the next few weeks. The NWMN synod has given my name and paperwork to a congregation north of Thief River Falls, MN for a short-term interim. It will be a long way from home (an hour and a half drive) but it would be part-time and I’m going to negotiate that I could come up on Saturday nights and stay until Tuesday afternoons. That will work at least for the summer and I may have a permanent call by then. We’ll have to reevaluate when my mom has to go back to school in the fall and our free child care isn’t available! It will be hard to be away from M and Itty for those days every week, but it will be really good to get my foot in the door in NWMN again and with interim experience. I kind of like the part of interim that is, by definition, short-term. I don’t have time to get bored and I don’t get the feeling that I am stuck in a job, like I have felt with pretty much every other job or call I have ever had. Maybe interim ministry is where God is calling me. It’s a thought.

The dead rodent smell is still there, though better. My dad cut an access panel in to the wall by the tub and, holy cow! You could see where moles had been burrowing in through the sand around the pipes and there was at least one dead carcass of either a mouse or a mole, we couldn’t actually tell. Yuck! Atta cleaned it all out under the tub with the shop vac as best he could and then Quick-creted the opening around the pipes so the little buggers can’t get back in again. Then he put some activated charcoal packets in there and put a board up over the hole. Problem is, this didn’t completely take care of the stink. We are thinking there must still be a dead something in the heat run. The smell is more bearable and is pretty much covered up by an odor-eliminator air freshener thingy we got. Atta’s still debating our next best move in the Great Rodent War of 2011.

I have a confession to make now. I confess that I made fun of M the last 5 years when he would, without fail, get terribly sick during Holy Week. Every. Single. Year. He could come down, usually, with the worst sinus infection in history and would have to drag himself through Holy Week services and then would collapse after Easter Sunday services and we pretty much wouldn’t see him until the Tuesday after.

I confess this, after three days of being sicker than I have been in a very long time. During Holy Week. On Sunday evening, I started to get a sore throat. By Monday morning, it was a raging sore throat. The only thing that got me through Monday was sipping hot chocolate and using Chloraseptic throat spray. Tuesday I dragged myself to work and to text study in Fargo, simply because I knew I needed to get some cold medicine and I could do that in Fargo. I felt passable until about 2pm, when my head began to hurt. Like someone filled my sinuses with that expanding insulation foam. I really did think my face was going to explode. M was working the night shift and I am so glad my parents were here and willing to take the lead with Itty that night. Itty insisted on me giving her a bath, so my mom actually bathed her and I laid on the bathroom floor where Itty could see me. Wednesday wasn’t much better, but I stayed home and did some work from here, instead of dragging myself to the office.

Yesterday I felt terrible in the morning, but I managed to get myself to the office by noon. I got everything ready for Maundy Thursday service, but I’m not exactly sure how. The service went fairly well. I don’t remember much of it, other than I was very dizzy while I was serving communion, probably from having to move while being half bent over and not really looking where I was going. We got the 5th graders communed for the first time with both the bread and wine, the council members and I washed the other members’ hands and we got the altar stripped. M said the service went well. I’m hoping that tonight’s Tenebrae service goes well also. There are a few more “moving parts” to this service, so we are going to practice a half hour before the service.

The water report stands as such: the water here is receding; the water around HLC is not. The smaller river that runs near HLC is rising again, due to a dam release upstream. Atta is cleaning out the sheds and putting everything back where it belongs. I think the bridge north of us is open again. The one just to the south of us isn’t yet, but that one is lower. We won’t be in the fields for at least 2 weeks still, it is so wet.

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