Friday, March 27, 2009

Acting Comfortable

I noticed today as I looked at my last post that there have been so many things going on in my life right now that I do not even know what day is what.
The storm I talked about came through on Monday night, I was at the fire station on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning is when my roof was repaired. I am sorry that I didn't take the time to proof that post better. I know that it bothers my brother (the school teacher) when I do a poor job editing my own posts!

This has been a busy week as I have been the acting secretary at church. I am looking at the bright side though, at least I don't have to be the acting worship leader this Sunday. That would really make me uncomfortable!

Our church is going through a time of transition. We have had all 3 of our employees resign this past week. Our secretary, our custodian, and our worship leader. Karen and I have talked about this for hours. I appreciate those intimate conversations with my help meet. As we talked, we realized that our sincere prayer for those that are leaving the church is that they will grow through this process. Sometimes it takes being removed from our comfort zones in order for growth to occur. I pray that this would be the result in our case as well.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Revealing

I just want to take a minute to thank the Lord for good friends! Living in Iowa during the spring brings the possibility of severe weather. Last year as we were getting ready to leave for family camp we had a storm come through that caused a lot of damage to our home. We lost our porch ceiling fans, we lost a lot of shingles, we lost a barn door, we lost our girls swing set, we had some downed fencing, we lost some trees, and there was some other minor damage around the place.
I remember being so grateful that my business partner came out the following day and helped me repair everything that needed fixing in order for us to leave on vacation the day after.

The tricky part of the roof repair was that without the wind blowing it was difficult to find all of the shingles that had been loosened but had not blown off. We fixed what we could find and our house has remained watertight till this past Tuesday.

This past Tuesday we again had strong winds come through our neck of the woods. These winds revealed what we had missed last summer during our rushed repair. After the weather passed, we again had shingles laying in the yard. It was difficult leaving for work yesterday knowing that my house needed repaired again. I thought about it all day as I made plans for fixing it today.

This morning, almost as soon as I walked in the door, a friend of mine called to say that he was coming out to help me repair the damage. Cliff showed up about an hour later and by 11:00 a.m. we were done with the work. It is truly a blessing to have people in our lives who are willing to give their time in support of others. In spite of all the other things going on in our lives, even this small thing gives me cause to praise the Lord.

Friday, March 20, 2009

On line again

Ha! It's back on!
As of 20 minutes ago, we have Internet service again. It took a total of seven hours on the phone over the last 4 days, but it is finished. This morning alone I was on the phone for sixty-two minutes before I was disconnected without getting anything resolved.
Yesterday I mailed a letter to the Qwest Customer Advocacy Group in order to express my frustration. I don't think that they have it yet.
Yesterday I was on the phone for seventy-five minutes.

Today, after I was disconnected while I was supposed to be on hold, I received a call from a Qwest customer service representative who just "happened" to call and see if I was satisfied with my service. Boy did I give her an earful.
To make 6 day story last just a couple of minutes, after one hour and sixteen minutes, she promised me that we would have High Speed Service within 3 hours. Needless to say, I did not believe her. That was 2 hours and 50 minutes ago.

I have no idea how she managed to fix a problem that no one else could solve. After all the people I called, the person who fixed the dilemma was the person who called me.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A Quest for no Qwest

I haven't been trying to avoid writing. Unfortunately, our new high speed Internet is provided by Qwest (our home phone service provider). We have had nothing but problems with them since we made the switch to DSL. The high speed has has been much better than the dial-up but our bill has been a nightmare! Our phone bill has more than doubled, we have been charged for features that we haven't requested, and we can't get in touch with anyone that can speak proper English.
Our bill last month was $130.00 higher than it should have been. We dropped our 2nd phone line, we cancelled our long distance, and we dropped all of our extra features. We talked with a lady from Qwest for over an hour as she tried to make heads from tails on our bill. When it was all said and done, we were supposed to have a credit that would exceed our bill for this month.
The changes were supposed to take effect about 3 weeks ago. They didn't.

At the beginning of this week, our high speed was disconnected (a mistake by
Qwest) and our phone bill (which should have shown a credit) was $170.00. We have been trying for 2 days to get our Internet reinstated but have been unsuccessful thus far. Qwest has again (supposedly) made an adjustment to our bill but they haven't turned our Internet back on. When we talked to the person from the billing department, he was not willing to give us a phone number in order to talk to someone about turning our DSL back on.

Today I have driven to town with my laptop in order to check email. I had 32 messages that I was not able to receive at home.

I am not sure what to do when phones and computers that are intended to make our lives less complicated, actually increase the stress in our lives. I have wondered many times how we ever got by without these helpful items.

Fed up with lousy service and searching for an alternative ISP, Jon

Friday, March 6, 2009

All Wet!

On the lighter side of things, we were fortunate enough to have some friends over for lunch last Friday. These friends of our sent their oldest daughter off to Pensecola Christian College last fall. As we were eating lunch, the conversation drifted to their daughter and how she was doing in her first year of college.

As parents do, they warmed up immediately to the idea of sharing all the things that were going on in the life of their daughter. They told us how she had been homesick for a little while, they told us about her job, and they told us about the boys that were interested in her. This caused my girls to perk up and pay close attention to our conversation. My daughters heard how the boys would walk her to class holding an umbrella over her head.

I didn't think much about this until last night as we were eating dinner. My family started talking about how that story had impacted the week. Apparently the story had really bothered Kaylin because she had discussed it with her sisters several times. Kaylin could just not get over the fact that the boys were following this girl to class with an umbrella. I learned a lot at our dinner conversation. One of the most telling things I learned was that our girls are reading too many "Victorian" books and watching too many "Christie" DVD's.

You see, at the dinner table, the girls shared with me how Kaylin had been so bothered by the story that she brought it up on the drive to play practice last weekend. She declared...

"I think it is so cheesy for the boys to be following a girl around with an umbrella!"

Emily replied, "Kaylin, not if it's raining"

"Oh, it was raining?" asked Kaylin.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

For heaven's sake, it's audible!

For those of you that have kept up with this blog, here is the audio version of Sunday's sermon. I will post more in a couple of days regarding how this was received and/or interpreted.

There were a few difficulties in loading this audio sermon. The sermon ends at 36:22
It is not the entire 56 minutes that it shows on the bar. After 36 minutes it skips back and repeats the last 20 minutes.