Meanwhile, Back In Waycross...

In May of 2006, I was excited to get started on my first summer at Trinity UMC of Waycross, GA.  If you've read much of this blog at all you know that summer was my favorite season of ministry, and this was especially true whenever I was in a new location.  So many adventures to be had, so many relationships to be built.  By my standards, it was going to be an abbreviated summer schedule.  There would be only one major trip- a mission trip to Chicago.  Youth Week would be shortened, and I wasn't at all sure we could do a Rec Around the Clock.  There would be a trip to Jacksonville for some miniature golf.  We went tubing and to Valdosta to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2.  Most of my usual relationship building events were on the schedule.  One on One, Happy Hour, SHO-Time and all the rest would give me a chance to hang out with students and begin to get a feel for where this ministry might go.  I was seriously pumped- and so were the kids.  


I was excited about the summer for a few other reasons as well.  Will moved up to join me in June after school let out in Tampa, and it was great to share the Skittles House with him.  Having just finished 5th grade, he was ready to be a real part of the youth group, and I was psyched to have him on board.  Marilyn would arrive in July, and we would move into our new home.  My friend Tim Vestal would be passing through Waycross with his youth group and spending a night in our youth house as part of a mystery trip to Florida.  And most exciting of all, I would be headed to NC for a week in July to serve as camp pastor at one of my favorite places on earth- Quaker Lake Camp.  One of my former youth, Hall of Fame member Heather Beggs Varner, was now the Camp Director.  I was thrilled she had invited me to come serve at Senior High Camp.  It was going to be an awesome summer.


It would also be my final summer as a youth pastor, but I didn't know that yet.  And before I could get any of it underway, we had to travel to Greensboro in May and say a final farewell to my Dad at a memorial service at New Garden Friends Meeting.  That story is coming up Friday.


Because of Jesus,