Break Week

The last few weeks have somewhat felt like running a marathon, but while still sitting. I preached the last three weeks at three different churches and spent the last two Thursdays at the Iowa State Fair. Today is my first week off and it feels good and boring at the same time.

On July 29, I preached at a small church in Ames, IA. I hadn't ever seen the church before, but I did make sure it was accessible. Dad and I arrived about half an hour before the service started to get setup and unknown to me, they built a ramp so I could get on stage. It felt a little strange at first that I could easily be seen, but I got used to it pretty quickly.

August 5 was another congregation, but this time in town and a building I was familiar with. They also built a ramp so I could access the lower part of their platform. It was a little more comfortable since I preached on stage the previous week, but still felt odd. This was my first time preaching at both churches, so I used my somewhat introductory message of using the tools God has given us, such as wheelchairs and diaphragmatic pacemakers.

Two gospel booth volunteers

My final week on August 12 was at my home church. This was my second time to give the message to my congregation, so it required a new message. In addition to me preaching, dad also covered the service opening and congregational prayer. On top of that, I didn't have a nurse on August 10 or 11, so I preached after two nights of little sleep.

Just as I started, a wave of exhaustion hit me but thankfully a few sentences in I was given a boost of energy. I preached on how to respond to a world of suffering and received several notes thanking me for it, so tiredness must not have shown through.

Between preaching, I volunteered at the Ark Encounter booth at the fair August 9 and 16. The other volunteers can easily hand out gospel tracts, but I have to stop the person, direct them to my hands, then how to pull out a tract. This was my third year and I feel like I gave out more tracts and talked with more people than previous times.

It was a challenge preparing sermons and coordinating with multiple churches among everything else. I started to get in a routine though and it started to get easier. Today is a nice break, but I hope I'm able to do more before winter comes. I'll see what happens the next few weeks and follow God's plan for the preacher quad life.