Driving in circles

Having learned to drive where the shoulder is best used as a passing lane, stopping at red lights is optional and right-of-way is determined more by who is first to blow their horn or flick their high beams... I'm not the expert on the rules of the road. That said, I was born in the land of traffic circles otherwise known as New Jersey.

New Jersey-bred homosapiens, from birth, are forced to adapt and survive in a traffic-circle world and so it's almost part of our DNA. Unfortunately, this is not true for their neighbors across the river whose namesake is William Penn (nor for our friends from across the boarder, but you'll have to ask Brother Tim to tell his story). Even more unfortunate, someone in government decided a traffic circle be placed north and east of the Lancaster airport. And I'm further convinced that this circle is likely THE ONLY CIRCLE within 200 square miles, and possibly even the only such cunundrum in Pennsylvania.

I haven't bothered to look up in the Driver's Manual the proper standards for navigating a traffic circle, so don't quote me on this, but judging by the Yield signs at every entrance to the circle, all vehicles IN the circle have the right of way. All vehicles wishing to enter the circle must yield to the traffic in the circle. In otherwords, should I choose to drive around the circle incessantly, all traffic would have to yield to me. And, yes, I've done that at least once. This traffic pattern is lost on Pennsylvanians. The circle throws them for a loop, yielding to traffic waiting to enter the circle, yielding to traffic leaving the circle, yielding for the sake of yielding. Oh, and once in the circle, it's at least courteous, if not necessary, to signal when you're going to exit the circle.

And so it is, somedays up to four times a day, the little blue van that could is the only witness to a lesson on driving in circles. To the outside observer the driver's lips are moving, but the sound and message is lost on the intended audience.

I love working with passionate people

I really enjoy working with people who are passionate about what they do. Several people assisted with chair setup in the Auditorium the other Saturday morning at 8 a.m. As the chairs started to get setup, as is usually the case, bulletins and other leftovers from the last service were strewn about the seats, hymnal racks, etc. so I asked two of the folks out to help setup to go about and collect the trash. I was impressed by one individual who exhibited passion for the task he was assigned.

Literally crawling through the rows of chairs, Nicolas covered a good part of the Auditorium looking high and low for trash around the chairs. He passion to get all of the trash inspired me. Over the years I've walked through each row, I've touched each chair, I've prayed for the lives that each chair would hold, but I've never crawled on my hands and knees to make sure there wasn't any trash tucked in a crevice. I love working with people who have that kind of passion.

Even though he's only 5 years old, Nicolas can be on my team anytime.

Maintenance personnel maintain more than buildings

The little blue van that could did it to me again. On the way to make a Dr. appointment I had my schedule timed just right. I arrived at the day services center on schedule to pick up my Dad, it appeared we'd arrive in Denver, PA with a few minutes to spare. Within seconds everything turned.



While attempting to close the van door, instead of closing, I was shocked to be holding the door in my hands, disconnected from the vehicle and unable to close. The thing just jumped right off it's track. In a bizarre twist, one of the staff was just exiting the facility and with the authority of Mr. Goodwrench explained exactly what I would need to do to reattach the door (I wasn't going anywhere until it was reattached).



Within a few minutes the day serices center's version of Jay Hall, Carl appeared and after 20 minutes, the door was reattached and we were on our way. Similar scenarios play out at Grace too. A car won't start, someone has a flat tire, keys got locked in a car, you name it and in many cases, Jay is called upon to help. As with Carl's help in my situation, it's apparently an unwritten expectation of facility/maintenance personnel. And while I didn't expect it, I greatly appreciated Carl's help and his willingness to bail me out.

I guess I need to add AAA to Jay's job description.

Pinoy Thanksgiving

While many American holidays are shared around the world (Christmas, New Years), there are of course many that are specific just to the U.S. So, growing up in the Philippines, Thanksgiving was always an interesting time of year. The Philippines doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but with a large missionary presence in the country and families who were trying to raise their kids in a different culture yet still maintaining their American heritage, everybody tried to celebrate Thanksgiving in some shape or form. Turkeys aren't real prevalent in the Philippines, so having turkey as the main course is rare and how can you celebrate Turkey Day without a turkey? There aren't cranberries either. Since it wasn't a national holiday, we always had school and a regular schedule on Thanksgiving Day. Actually, the years we were in boarding school, we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving with my parents.

Thanksgiving was a dorm celebration. You have to understand that the boarding school arrangements entailed us living in a rather large house with some 20 other boarding students, set up in a kind of family arrangement. There were us boarding students with a family who was responsible for our care and took care of planning the meals and planning the activities for us. They were responsible for disciplining us, things like that too, filling all of the parental roles. So, we had a family arrangement; it wasn't our own family, but it was out dorm family. When you put 20 guys in their preteens to teens, living under one roof, you go through a lot of food and we were on a modest budget. We weren't starving to death, but we also enjoyed eating. Thanksgiving Dinner was our annual Super Bowl of dining.

There's a whole preparation to this because you've got 20 kids whom you will be fighting with over food and you want to get the most food you can out of the meal. So, Thanksgiving turned out to be quite the event. As in any institutional mass food-producing context, we were constantly grumbling about the quality of the food and it was the brunt of many jokes as is college dorm food, as is school lunch food, you name it. Like it's football based cousin, the pre-feast preparation and hype starts to build in the week or two leading up to the feast with us kids employing different philosophies of getting our stomachs prepared to digest as much food as possible. Now you had a couple different pre-feast methodologies.

One, you had the groups that felt that getting yourself as hungry as possible was going to be the best method to consuming as much food as you could on Thanksgiving. So that would be the group that would gradually start reducing their intake the week before Thanksgiving Day, with the mindset that they would be so hungry come Thanksgiving Day that they could consume the most amount of turkey and everything else. I'll explain how we got turkeys in a minute. The second group felt that in order to consume the most of amount of food, their stomachs needed to be as large as possible, and so they would begin increasing the amount of food they were eating day to day with the thought that that would expand their stomachs and by Thanksgiving their stomachs would have expanded to a larger size capable of eating more food. Then you had the camp that just went about things as normal; they were no fun.

Thanksgiving day, again, would be a typical day. Go to school, no special day off or anything and get home, you'd have the meal with all 20 of us. The neat thing was the lengths to which the school and dorm parents would go to provide us with as traditional a Thanksgiving as possible. There were times where through connections with military personnel (our government taxes at work), we were able to get turkeys. At some point they did find a source for turkeys, though they were quite expensive and not in high abundance. I think we were able to have turkey just about every Thanksgiving. A lot of the sources would come through military connections with the air and naval bases in the Philippines or just spending extra to get the imported specialities for the Thanksgiving. As Abraham Lincoln had dreamed it would be, we'd all feast to our hearts content, bordering on gluttony and celebrate the holiday together. And of course, then, the next three days have turkey sandwiches for lunch and enjoy the best part: leftovers

But I think the most turkey-fun I've had in my lifetime was during college when I took a Butterball with me as one of my two pieces of luggage on a return trip to the Philippines. The best part was seeing the bird go through the x-ray machine.

Thanks to Charlene for enduring the challenge of transcribing this post through Windows Media Player.

Cloister Christmas Concerts - December 10 & 11

The Ephrata Cloister Christmas Concerts are scheduled for December 10 & 11 with services at 6:30, 7:45 and 9 both nights. Tickets are $4. If you aren't familiar with these unique Christmas events, I've written about them in previous years.

Deja Vu

As I drove away it was deja vu except this time I was on the opposite side.


The deja vu moments started when the new care facility informed me that all of Dad's wardrobe would need to be identified with his initials. I'd been this before, but it was my clothes that needed name labels for me to be in boarding school. When you do upwards of 15 boys laundry once a week you have to have some system for keeping Jon's clothes separate from Sam's. In addition to name labels, each student was assigned a number that was theirs until they graduated; my laundry number was 20. I was so ingrained in this and also saw it as an easy way to keep socks paired for life (you know, like ducks), I continued the practice through college - with my white socks at least. So rushing to label Dad's wardrobe just hours before dropping him off triggered the flashbacks.


With him settled-in, all of the paperwork complete and his medications turned over to the nursing staff, it was time to go. It's not like this was the first time, we've been through this three to four times now, but this was different.


I felt guilty leaving him this time. Would he receive the care he needed, when he needed it? Would he enjoy his time there? Would he make friends? We've never talked about it, but I'm guessing I went through emotions my parents went through the day they drove away after dropping us off at the dorm for boarding school. I can only hope that on the other side, Dad was enjoying himself as much as I was so many years ago. Deja Vu.

Searching for respite care

When my wife and I go on vacation, we've been fortunate that some local elder-care facilities have respite care rooms that Dad can stay in. Much to our surprise as we planned for our upcoming time away, the facility we had been using ceased to offer respite stay, so at the last minute we were searching for a new facility.


Assessing facilities for their ability to care for a loved one is a trying task. Things that crossed my mind included the cleanliness of the facility, friendliness of the staff with whom I'm meeting and the variety of services they have to offer... that was about it. When you break it down, there's not a whole lot to go on.


I've been in a couple of facilities more than once and frankly, they eerily resemble each other. Typically, the facilities are nicely furnished with multiple lobby gathering areas decked out in couches and small conversational spaces, but I rarely see them in use other than when the residents are anxiously awaiting the opening of the food line for the next meal. Residents appear to spend a lot of time isolated in their individual rooms, are we really that anti-social a culture? Is the investment in lobby spaces and plush couches purely for the impression it sends to first time guests - a plush cushiony white wash - that says "we're friendly"?


Ultimately, you have to reach a decision point, with mostly perceptions upon which to decide. My decision was about a care facility, I wonder if people choose a daycare or a Christian school on similar criteria?


Consciously or not, from what I've read, our perceptions play a role in all decision making. You can't remove that from the equation. But can we provide additional information to help decision makers get below the surface? I love the example of a business acquaintance who I've invited to Grace who wanted to review the church doctrinal statement as part of his consideration.

I picked a care facility, not realizing the deja vu that would ensue...

Bias against sales people

One of my greatest challenges is how I represent the church when a salesperson comes calling. I have very little time for sales people, in fact, it's a flat out bias. See from my perspective, if the product requires selling, it's not good enough for me. I figure I have what I need or what I want and don't need to be convinced otherwise. If I have questions about something I'm considering, the sales person should be there to provide the answers. The products I want to purchase should be so good they sell themselves and don't need a sales presentation. The moment I sense a sales job, my warning mechanisms kick-in. I assume, unfairly, that all salespeople oversell and under deliver. Completely unfair to the salesperson. My personal preference is to undersell and over deliver.

This bias grossly clouds my interaction with salespeople who contact the church. While they're looking for a sale, only recently did I realize that every contact was a testimony for Christ. I regret that in the long-distance telemarketing days I played with sales calls like a cat plays with a caught mouse. One time, I turned the tables on the sales caller and I instead tried to sell them on the long distance carrier I was using.

I was always aware that I didn't have the time of day for a sales call, but it's only recently that I clarified that it's an out and out bias.

Church billboard ads

Several high profiles churches have used billboard advertising to highlight upcoming message series which appear to have successfully increased attendance numbers and raise a lightning rod for criticism at the same time. The first church billboard I remember was in the mid 1990s. It was a billboard on I-95 that read something along the lines of "Jesus hated church too, but He didn't use it as an excuse not to worship... www.tenth.org".

Carving squash - a 3rd world Halloween

We prepared dinner in virtual darkness last night - the person who designed this unit had the bright idea to put the kitchen at the front of the house (the front door opens into the kitchen). That's all well and good for 364 days a year, but it can create a challenge on October 31.

I'm not into Halloween, for a couple of reasons.
1. I can think of a lot of other ways to spend money than buying candy to hand out to the kids in the neighborhood.

2. With so much emphasis on the dark side of Halloween, I just can't celebrate, joke or mock - whatever you want to call it - about that.

When you grow up in the 3rd world where the spirit world is accepted as a reality and you don't have to go far to see it firsthand you know dressing up or watching others dress up as ghosts, goblins and the like is not something to be messed with. I find it odd that our culture makes such a big celebration of Halloween, yet generally refuses to accept the existence of the spirit world. I'm more and more convinced that the Evil One uses our inside-outness on this to keep our culture in the dark. Viewing it as a holiday to play dress up like firemen, Cinderella etc. is one thing, but I know too well the spirit world isn't something with which to mess around.

Plus, since pumpkins didn't grow in the Philippines, it was a challenge to carve a squash and the locals looked at us like we were morons.