September, New Classes, Funeral, and Stress

Good Afternoon Friends, Family and Internet wanderers! I hope your September has been a positive one and that the sudden sign of snow in these first few days of October does not fill you with to much dismay.

Thankfulness

This month I have much to be thankful for, the first and foremost is the support structure in which I have built around me in friends, family, the church, and the conference. Earlier this month when the lead pastor at the church was away on vacation a relative of a church member passed away. This was tragic and while not entirely sudden, neither was it expected. Yet for me as a young pastor I was faced with, in the middle of my classes and starting ministries, with walking a family through grief and a funeral. This was a tremendously nerve inducing process as I had no prior experience and was also dealing with all my other responsibilities. That being said the people around me, and the people around the grieving family were amazing and a huge resource. The conference gave me resources on how to do a funeral, the church helped out by covering things which needed to get done, an everyone else was a huge support. So as a result I led my first funeral this month and from the feedback I believe that it was not just a success for me, but that the family really felt cared for and supported by the church.

This being the beginning of my fourth year at my church (third year in my program) I am encouraged to see that many of the ministries of which I am a part people are looking to me as a leader. This year I have really begun to feel like less of a learner and more of a known quantity a leader which others can turn to as needed. I cannot point to anything specific here but rather there has been many small things which have been a good source of encouragement to me that God is indeed moving and using me where I am at.

One of the ways I have been encouraged this past month is actually with how a sermon of mine had been received. In the midst of funeral planning I also had a sermon to deliver and while I felt the sermon went well, it did lack a little of the polish that I usually like to add before I deliver it. But while I would not have called this one of my better sermons God was working through it anyways in the form of a young adult who thought it perfect to share with a friend who has been struggling. That friend also got a lot out of what I said (we record the services) and know I am planning to meet with them to talk about my sermon and process what this person is struggling with. This is an amazing privileged for me to know that God is using what I am doing to build up his kingdom, and I pray that whatever we end up talking about that God will be glorified.

Prayer requests

Youth has started already this year and it started well, but we are still looking for another leader to nurture and support our growing number of young girls. Please pray that God would bring along a female leader to help our team, we have almost 10 girls and only one leader, and while she is awesome we really need at least one more to help nurture these girls.

My second prayer request has to do with school and the workload. I know last month I asked for prayer about this and now that classes have started it has become clear that there is indeed a lot more required of me in this one class than has been before. Specifically the class is essentially twice the amount of work as another class and I find myself having to cut corners in order to meet deadlines. Please pray that I would work efficiently in all my classes and would schedule myself well, that I would be able to know when to say 'no' and when I need to do something.

My final prayer request this month is loosing all pretense. I have prayed regularly and consistently for a wife over the past 5 years+ I have been dating a lot (for me at least) and so far nothing has worked out, almost all of them have been her breaking it off. I do not know what the Lord has planned for me, and for a long time I thought it was and hoped it was to find a wife. But the wait has been long and shows no sign of ending soon, and so I would ask that you pray for me about this. That the Lord would give me some sort of sign or encouragement one way or the other because it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to have hope in this place.

Thank you to everyone who reads these and supports me both prayerfully and financially, I literally could not do this without you.