Our Lives

Well I have 2 Stephen Ministry classes left.  Then at the end of the month we are commissioned.

What a mixed bag.  On the one hand, I have learned so much.  On the other hand I am a little scared about the responsibility that comes with being a Stephen Minister.

In the comfort of our class, doing role playing has been very useful.  The relationships we have developed over the last six months amongst our class have been really strong.  We have shared things that have been difficult to share in our role playing which has helped to strengthen the bonds that the 14 of us have built.  We have been practicing ministering to one another.

But to go out and minister to someone else is a little scary to be perfectly honest.  But I do think that the process of arriving at the care receivers home and taking a minute in the car to pray for the right words and the right responses is a great way to handle things.  After all, it isn’t us but God who is ministering to our care receivers through us.

I am sure that as we built caring relationships with the people in our class, we will, over time build the same kind of caring relationships with whomever we are assigned.  I just pray for strength in remembering to focus on the process and not to “get in the hole” with the care receiver - but to hold onto Christ for support and extend a hand to help bring my care receiver out of the hole.

What a great day…

Church this morning.  Always a great way to start the day.  Very good sermon today, kinda expanded on the topic from our Bible study last week.  Communion Sunday.  Always love taking communion.

Such a beautifully perfect day, I wanted to spend some time outside.  Well, after the Farmers Market on Friday, I was inspired to make some more jewelry, so I took all my supplies out back on the patio and made 4 necklaces.  They turned out really nice.  I was feeling very creative.  Watch for them on the Kindred Spirits Design site in the next couple of days.  (have to photograph the images and such first)

Then made a simple dinner, did the dishes, went for a walk up to the clubhouse to get the mail, listened to the coyotes all evening howling and carrying on.  Watched Brothers and Sisters two hour movie, did my Stephen Ministry homework and that’s it.

Lots of good accomplishments.  Another great day in the Valley of the Sun! Time for bed.

Arizona, 83 degrees right now, sun shining, birds singing, breeze blowing, windows open…

Life is good.

Anyone that has known me for very long knows how much I love hummingbirds.  They would also know that I once rescued one that I found buried in a huge pile of boulders in MI.

Well, God granted me that privelage again today.  I heard a crash into one of our windows and saw a bird falling to the ground.  I went over to see if it was lying there or if it had gotten right up and on its way.  To my dismay, it was a tiny little hummingbird lying on the ground, not moving.

I ran outside and picked it up - took it to the sofa on our patio - laid it down and went inside to get an eyedropper and some hummingbird food I always keep in the fridge for my feeder.

I grabbed a soft towel, because it is really cold outside right now and began to try to feed the stunned bird.  At first it just looked at me unable to move, but it was blinking and breathing (very fast).  I kept offering it the food. Finally it started to drink a tiny bit, still barely able to move.

After a few minutes of eating and resting, the hummingbird was standing up a little and drinking.  Then all of a sudden, he was strong enough again, and flew right out of my hand and into the tree!

Looking at this tiny little helpless creature, all I could think about was how beautiful these birds are.  God has put some of the most beautiful creatures into these tiny little packages… imagine the love he puts into every living creature - not just us…. 

Thank you God.

Talk about a high stress day!  Yesterday was horrible.  I hope I don’t have a day quite like it EVER again.  The following computer escapade took up most of the day.  I won’t even go into the rest of the horror that had nothing to do with my computer!  : # 

My Norton had expired so I renewed the subscription at the end of Jan.  Since then, my computer performance had been quickly declining, until Wed when my mouse wouldn’t work properly.  Then I couldn’t get my browser to work properly (especially Facebook). 

Everthing I tried to do was an effort that I didn’t have in me.  So I got on the blogs to see what all the error messages meant and discovered that they were all a result of Norton bugs.  So I tried all the temporary fixes they recommended to no avail.

My next step was to call Norton and get a refund.  Which they gave me.  I then uninstalled Norton.  Now for anyone of you who have used Norton, you know that the normal uninstall method doesn’t do the trick completely.  To completely uninstall, you need to use their online uninstall tool (which they claim you don’t have to do). 

After I uninstalled it on my own, I went to their website to use the tool (which I found the url from a tech blog).  It still had a ton of files it found and uninstalled.  But wait, I’m not done yet…

Then I had to purchase a registry cleaning software to get rid of all traces of Norton completely!  Who do you trust?  I found one that is MS certified and McAffee certified.  So my registry had 587 files to fix.  Not all Norton, but I suspect most of then were.

Some of them were Itunes… but I digress.  So I cleaned my registry.  Then I got online through an account for McAffee I had created for Katies computer.  I was able to purchase a license for mine for $2.50!  It’s only good until May when her’s expires, but then I can get three licenses (Mine, Kates and Jay’s) for $45.

Norton was $60 for three licenses.

So for $29.95 for the registry clean up and $2.50 for the McAffee, I am in great shape.  My computer is running better than when I took it out of the box!  Yeah……