.: bistan.net :.

When I was born, Jimmy Carter was our nation’s president.  I’ve always wanted to meet him.

A few weeks ago, I read that he still teaches Sunday School classes at his church in Plains, Georgia and the public is welcome.  That’s just over an hour away so I decided we would be in his next class.

The Davis Family with the Carters

This morning we woke up early and drove down. There were already about 60 people in line.  On Sundays that Carter doesn’t teach, about 20 members show up.  Today there were over 300 from about 30 different states and 20 different countries, including Richard Riley, a former South Carolina governor and Secretary of Education under Clinton;  several international interns from the Carter Center and a Navy submarine commander.  It’s amazing what a former president can do to a sleepy little church!

When we drove up, a military dog sniffed around our car and then we went through secret service screening.  Those agents are pretty cool.  It’s just like the movie Guarding Tess, where Nicolas Cage is assigned to an old widowed first lady.

We had great seats.  After the lesson and the worship service everyone is able to take a photo with the Carters.  Since we were seated near the front of the sanctuary, we ended up near the rear of the photo line.  The lady in charge of the morning, a former teacher of Amy Carter named Ms. Jan decided that Mackenzie was so cute that she literally grabbed her hand and walked us to the front of the line.  Even Jimmy Carter thought my baby girl was cute!

Later, we stopped at the local cafe for lunch and guess who was there?  The Carters and the whole secret service detail.  Pretty cool!

It was amazing how accessible and approachable this world leader is.  I dare you to find another current or former world leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, or governor who is this accessible.

Bucket List Check!

There is a church about 1/4 mile from our house.  We visited the church for a while in 2004, but found it was a little formal and conservative for our tastes.  I am only a suit/jacket/tie person if I am being compensated and Kimberlie has never been a dress girl.  They also strongly encourage their members to send kids to the regional bible colleges, where students are disciplined for holding hands and such.  The people are somewhat nice, though we got a clear signal that they looked down on the fact that Kimberlie “works outside of the home”.

Other than that, the church is fine.  I did some technology work for them a while back.  We attend festivals and other events there every blue moon and my kids even play Upward Soccer there.

Anyway, certain days of the week are “visitation days”, where the members are supposed to take tracts or flyers and canvas their communities to reach the lost. Now, this isn’t a small church: each week, nearly 1000 attend (according to numbers published in their bulletin) and every few years they are building new buildings or additions.  I point this out so that you don’t think that this could be considered a “neighborhood church”. Rather, the members that we know are from communities all around, up to a 50-mile radius. 

Our street is the closest possible residential street to the church.  Every time the members go out to visit, they hit our street (and our house).  EVERY TIME.  It’s like the members are trying to see how they can “get credit” for evangelizing by putting out the least amount of effort.  It synonymous with the whole Livestrong bracelet fad from a few years back: by buying that yellow bracelet for $1.00, it truly is, the least you can do to fight cancer.

Today's flyer from the church. We get tracts or flyers about twice weekly.

From my perception, this is complete laziness.  Only one household in our neighborhood attends this church (and they aren’t the ones canvassing).  Over half of our neighborhood is a different race than 99% of the church’s membership and it is an undiputed fact that churches in the south are still as segregated today as they were in the civil rights era.  I note that to prove that they aren’t purposely targeting our neighborhood, but rather being lazy.

Wouldn’t it be a better use of their time and resources to visit their friends, family, and colleagues who could potentially be interested in the church? According to the church’s teachings, they should be giving ten percent of their income and significant amounts of their time to the church.  Why wouldn’t they want to see their investment pay off?

Welcome to America, where even the churches are lazy.

Each Wednesday, Tristan brings home a folder from school.  It contains things like school work, behavior charts, PTA notices, notes from school, etc.  This past Wednesday, the folder included a request to “Help Light Someone’s Christmas”.  Basically, it’s the same concept as the Salvation Army’s angel tree: you sign up to purchase a gift for a specific amount and send the gift to the school.

Now we typically help various organizations, from giving in church to volunteering in various things, to sending canned goods to feed people who apparently only eat at Thanksgiving, to making donations, etc. Even with all of that, we have never received joy from giving.  In fact, we hate giving.  It’s like a chore.  We do it though for various reasons — whether political or religious or otherwise.  But because I love Heard Elementary School, I wanted to sign up immediately. 

Kimberlie tried to throttle me back.  We’re already room parents for Tristan’s class.  We donate classroom supplies and send paper money and sell wrapping paper and buy BBQ tickets and support the PTA, so I understood her concern. But being room parents, we’ve met all of Tristan’s classmates.  If there is someone in Tristan’s class, school, or our community who needs a token gift to improve their holiday season, I want to help.  I filled out the form and committed to purchasing a gift at the $15.00 level and returned the form. 

The next day, Kimberlie was picking up the kids from day care when Tristan handed her a paper light bulb.  It said “Jacket for a 6 year old girl, size 6/7″.  Her eyes teared up.  We don’t live in a wealthy community, but it is the suburbs and I never imagined that someone nearby might not even have a jacket.  We thought we were going to be purchasing a token gift for a child who might not have as many toys on Christmas morning as our kids, but instead, we were purchasing a necessity that in our household would never be considered a gift.  And so we were off — to find the perfect jacket!

Being the bargain-hunter than I am, we ended up with a $40.00 Old Navy jacket.  All of their outerwear was 50% off plus I used a 30% Stuff-n-Save discount to end up spending $14.00.  It could possibly end up being the nicest garment the unknown little girl owns.  Tristan’s birthday is coming up later this week and we actually enjoyed shopping for this unknown child more than we enjoyed shopping for our own child.  The jacket has already warmed our hearts — for the first time since I can remember, we feel good about giving.

Let’s hope the little girl can stay warm until Christmas!

Tomorrow will be a difficult day.

Last Labor Day weekend, while I was running the Labor Day Road Race, a coworker/friend was on a trip to Birmingham.  Her son Joshua, one of Tristan’s friends, became ill and was taken to a local emergency room.  To make a long story short, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  It’s difficult for me because he is Tristan’s age. 

I’ve wrote about Joshua before here and here.  You can also read more about him here.

On Friday, he died at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital.  I visited them Wednesday and he wasn’t doing very well.  I have to say that the PICU is one of the most horrible places that I’ve ever been.  Each room has huge glass windows into the hall, so everywhere you look, you see children suffering.  I hope I never have a reason to go there again.

Joshua’s mother is the only person that I work with who has a child the same age as Tristan, so for the last four years we have chatted about the crazy things that our little boys have done.

Every night for the better part of a year, Tristan has asked God to “help Joshua feel better” as part of his nightly prayers.  Friday night, I talked to him and told him he didn’t have to say that anymore because Joshua was in heaven.  When my mother died last year, Tristan didn’t fully understand everything that was happening, but going through that experience helped him understand the end of life on earth.  So when I told him about Joshua, he grieved for the first time.  That was difficult for both me and Kimberlie.

Tomorrow, I will go somewhere that I’ve never been to before and somewhere that I hope I never have to go to again — to a child’s funeral.

After the birthday party, we quickly headed off for Grub on the Grounds at church.  That is basically a bring some food, have a picnic, and then have some fun.  They had volleyball, wiffle ball, ping pong, basketball, frisbies, water activities, and plenty of other stuff.  It was great to get to know some of our church members and attenders in a different setting.

You have two options today:

1. Dress your kids preppy and go to church:

2. Stay at home and feed rabbits and ducks:

Whatever floats your boat, enjoy this beautiful day!

Six years ago when we got married and moved into this house, we did what was pretty normal at the time: we got a telephone line.  From the time the line was turned on, we were inundated with calls for the P… family.  I’m guessing that they had our number before it was assigned to us.  

My first clue was that Georgia Power wouldn’t let us use our new number to have power turned on for our address, because the number was associated with a delinquent account.  After that, it was credit card companies and even Gillead Christian Academy (a local extremely conservative private school).

Joel and Sonja P… are the main culprits and their son Jonathon gets almost as many calls.  Here is how the conversations for Jonathon would usually go:

Bill collector: “Hello. Is Jonathon there?”
Me: “This is Jonathan.”
Bill collector: “My name is blah blah and I’m calling about the money you owe me blah blah.”
Me: “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

Do you think the bill collectors bought it?  Of course not!  Once they confirm there is a Jonatha/on here, they think I’m changing the story when I tell them they have the wrong number.  So here we are, six years later, still getting harassing calls for the P… family.  

So how am I smarter than the bill collectors and why all of this tonight?  Using my common sense approach to researching on the internet, I’ve found them all.  Joel works (or worked) at the local Honda dealership, Jonathon is currently in the Marine Corps and Sonya (and possibly the others) attends a baptist church that is 1/2 mile from my house.  The latter two are on facebook, along with extended family, cousins, etc.  Why can’t the bill collectors use google?  It certainly would increase their recovery rate.

The number actually forwards to my cell phone now — our land lines are long gone — and when this AT&T contract is up in 2011, the number I’m referring to will be gone as well. 

Now, even though hardly anyone reads this blog, I’m calling these people out.  They deserve it after years of telephone calls and dinner interruptions.  I did hold back a little.  I haven’t published their address here.  They moved into their current house (which they paid $84,000 for) in November 2002, about 5 months before I got stuck with their number.  It’s all about research!

It’s been a beautiful February weekend.

Friday night, I finished my first C# project (which really sucked by the way) and submitted it for grading.  I’m rethinking this whole grad school thing.  It was much easier the first time around before I was married and had kids.  Then again, it’s only 3 projects per class and 10 classes in all.  That makes me about 3% of the way towards another masters degree.

Saturday, after grocery shopping, we decided to stay home and enjoy the nice day.  We spent a good bit of time working with Tristan on a new skill: riding a bicycle.

Tristan has a hard time taking risks or trying new things.  For example, if we plan to put him on a new theme park ride, he cries the entire time we are in line, but then enjoys the ride and immediately wants to ride it again.  Same thing yesterday.  He cried the whole time we were trying to get him to pedal, and didn’t enjoy it until he realized that he was accomplishing something.

Sunday, we had childcare at church.  We’ve worked in childcare since the church began — almost two and a half years — but today was the first time we had ever done it outside of the baby room.  We were in the 18 month – 3 year old room which was an entirely new experience.  I think that is my favorite age of kids.  There were 12 of them!  Follow that with some chocolate chip pancakes from IHOP and an afternoon nap and you have a great stay-cation weekend.

Today, the kids enjoyed a long day of fun.  We started at Lowe’s, where Tristan participates in Build and Grow every other Saturday.  Then, we headed to Liberty United Methodist Church where Pam, the 4K director at the kid’s preschool, happens to be the children’s director.  It was a nice little Fall Festival with plenty of games and prizes. 

After that, we headed to our church, The River.  It was a great “first” Fall Festival and the hot air balloon would have been a really nice touch, but unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate.  The kids did enjoy the face painting, inflatables, fire truck, and their second horse ride of the day.

On the way home, we drove past the Centerville Mall, where New Hope International was having their Fall Festival.  We couldn’t resist a brief stop to let the kids ride Thomas the Tank Engine though the mall parking lot.  Of course, here are pictures . . .

We recently stopped at a McDonalds during a weekend road trip.  For some reason, there were several different people sporting Christian t-shirts.

The first was a young man with a “World Changers” t-shirt on.  He was with his mom, dad and 4 siblings.  I overheard them discussing homeschooling.  The mother had a snooty demeanor to her.  She seemed to look at other and make faces to herself and her family as if she was above them on some level.  After getting their food, the seven of them found the most remote booth in the restaurant.  I’m wondering how you can change the world, when you aren’t even comfortable being part of it.

The second was a teen girl.  I don’t remember what her shirt said, but it was a blatant Christian shirt.  The much older (and tattooed) guy that she was with (and hanging all over) had on an interesting shirt as well.  It said “If the van is a rocking, don’t come a knocking”.  I’ll reserve my comments on that one.