Adventures in Calling (part 1)
in order to gain more congregational support for our newest building program/capital campaign, the church is doing a church-wide blitz of house calling. In the student ministry, we are attempting to call on every student, jr. high and high school, that has shown his/her face at our church. This ammounts to about 350 personal home visits...I know, scary. The following are real occurances from the first night of calling...

I visited one student and (like a few other homes) everyone in the house decided to join our little talk. It was so cute, 3 kids, mom, and a huge friendly dog all listening to me make small talk while handing off a packet of info that encourages the family to give...and give a little more. Before I left, I asked if there was anything that I could be praying about in regards to the family...mom looked at me very sincerely and said..."would you just pray for our finances." That felt like a punch in the stomach.

"most students don't live in apartments." That's what I was thinking as I pulled up to an address that put me in the middle of an apartment community. I had trouble finding the apartment, so I parked my car and began searching on foot. Eventually, I found the right place, but had forgotten who I was calling on, so I had to go back to my car and look up his name. Brandon. The apartments were the kind that you go in, then find the front door of the apartment. Well, oddly enough, there are no numbers on the actual apartment doors, so you can only assume that the apartment door is somehow represented by the location of the apartment number on the outside of the building. In each building is four apartments. There is an upstairs (2 apartments) and a ground level (2 also) and a basement level, which upon further investigation makes a somewhat embarassing visit to the laudry room and storage space. When I first walked in the building, I noticed weed. I thought I was going to choke from the near visible odor. I thought, 'well, if he's high, maybe he'll just give me all his money right now.' I knocked on the door and was met by someone I half expected, but didn't anticipate. He was a short man (about my height) and really stocky. He had a huge, brown, bushy beard that probably had some small wildlife trapped in it. He had an extremely hairy chest, and the reason I know this, is because he wasn't wearing a shirt. classic. He had a small strip of something coming from the back of his head over his shoulder...i thought it looked like a Billy Ray Cyrus style rat-tail. Or a Vanilla Ice braided rat-tail. To top it all off, he was wearing a breathe-right nasal strip. Like the ones that football players used to wear. He honestly looked like a dwarf from the more recent Lord of the Rings films. I am almost sure he heard me gasp before asking in a frail voice if brandon was home. The man, with his eyes open as wide as they could be, simply shook his head, no. Obviously, I had the wrong house. After a few more uncomfortably exchanged words between us, I learned that brandon's step father was currently living at that address, but Brandon lived with his mom. I am still not sure who that man was, perhaps a miner bent on finding his precious mythril. whatever.

sometimes one street might be a 'drive' while the next street may be a 'court.' so when you are looking at driving directions, make sure you pay attention. you could be on racer mill drive, and cross an intersection and suddently be transported to racer mill court. Why don't they just give them different names...geez. So when I rang the doorbell, a older gentleman answered and explained to me (after I asked to visit with an unexistant "Adam") that I was simply on the wrong block. I had a hunch that I was at the wrong house when I saw that the man who answered the door was african american. It isn't that there aren't many black people that live in this area, there just aren't many that come to our church.

i go out again tonight...