enjoy the first quarter of 2008 by having one new and fulfilling experience in January, February, and March

For Good Friday I read the Solemn Collects and Biddings for the evening service.

These prayers are read to express the prayer concerns that should really be a part of our Christian walk and include prayers for all world leaders (that they seek justice and truth), for the sick, the homeless and those in need, as well as a large list of various groups.

The actual text of the Solemn Collects (BCP pg 277-280) is long so I won’t go into it all here, but it is prayers like this that draw me deeper in the Anglican Church.

Among the parts of the prayer that shout out to me is “Let us pray for “those who in the name of Christ have persecuted others.” Imagine that, a church that admits that sometimes in our blind persuit of Truth we trample others.

Yes, there are times when I get frustrated with some ofhte sticks in the mud, and many of the middle aged people who love the phrase “that’s not how we do it here” but its those moments of “we ain’t perfect, we know you aren’t either, so come worship with us” that always draws me back in.

Reading those pages to the congregation was truly a new, and extremely fulfilling experience.

With 92 people still active on this goal I am curious if some have simply forgotten about the goal. Perhaps a little nudge, reminding them that this goal was about new and fulfilling (not Huge and Earth-shattering) will result in a posting or three ? ? ?

Then again, some may be hold outs for an invitation to the April-May-June goal.

Me, well I know I have to still finish some entries here.

I was SuperCheered by Cheryl ; someone who inspires me on a daily basis, and someone YOU should probably get to know. “A blessing” is too limitiing of a definition of her – and the SuperCheer, well it was at the right time!

I just learned how to add the eBay widget that goes directly to my eBay store to my blog. Definitely new, and possibly fulfilling as this will provide yet another avenue from which traffic will be directed to the eBay store.

One of the more new and fulfilling experiences for me was polishing, really more like restoring, the antique brass in church.

One of the pieces is a brass lecturn from the 1890s from which the Bible is read on Sunday mornings. The members of the altar guild are wonderful and delightful people, they remember the Old Testament from first hand experience so their eyesight isn’t all that great. The intriquite metal work held a ton of old polish (the rest of the piece gleams like the sun!) It took hours, and several boxes of toothpicks, and hundreds of metres of dental floss, but most of the remainder polish was removed from the front of the piece in time for Easter.

I forsee a great deal of this restoration work to continue in the coming weeks. And I expect that to be just as fulfilling.

With this goal, most of the people on the team were invited by me; it took quite a bit of time to do that. Time is become a harder commodity for me to find lately so I threw some of the team building goals out there for others to handle.

In this goal I posted those goal questions at the bottom to find out who is interested in joining the April-May-June new and fulfilling goal, and some have responded.

And, in the April-May-June goal I posted an entry about inviting friends to the team goal, and some have responded.

Not that I don’t love this goal, and the great posts, and the comments about the nature of this goal, but doing so much of hte initial part gets to be a bit much. And delegation is something I need to learn to do more. And I sorta did here.

So I guess I had a new and fulfilling experience with the new and fulfilling goal.

Some times new and fulfilling things just happen upon us. Seriously, they do. We need to be open to the idea that sometimes things just happen for no other reason than they just do.

So a few months ago I received a letter in the mail regarding a class action lawsuit against my former insurance company regarding illegal late fees charged to customers. Customers accounts would be flagged as late based on when the payment cleared, not when it was received. For instance, you pay by cheque the day before your due date, but the check does not clear until the check did not clear until after the due date, and whammo – a late charge. I wasn’t even aware that this had happened until after I received the paperwork.

There was not anything that I had to do. The state’s Attorney General required the company to contact every customer and those who did not want to participate had the chance to back out. Those who decided to stay had no financial risk at all, and if nothing happened with the case the only effort on my part would be tossing some papers into the recycling.

I hadn’t heard anything for months. Then today two settlement payments, count ‘em two, were received in the mail.

I see more investing in the business in the very near future, just need to catch up on some of the other goings on with it first and then watch out!

It’s the 135th Anniversary of our congregation, and 100th Anniversary of our church building – and we’re celebrating by repairing the roof. Being one who loves architecture I stepped up to the plate with my $135 check for the roof campaign, and it turns out I was the very first member of the congregation to do so. I’m hoping that along with making this sort of offering, I will be able to dedicate some of my time to initiate some projects invest some sweat equity into the church building and grounds this year. (of course I will undoubtedly run into lots of committees, argh!)

one of the first things I did in March was create the next goal in the series …. it’s for April, May, and June

With two trade shows in February I saw the opportunities for my business just unfold before me. Instead of the usual “ooh, ahh” experience of past shows it was almost like those scenes in a beautiful mind where he saw equations in his mind’s eye, except I saw html and quickbook entries!