Quote of the Day #1: “In light of the gifts I’ve been given, how can I make the greatest contribution to the Great Commission?” — Jerry Bridges, speaking about one of his ‘a-ha’ moments in life
Quote of the Day #2: “Are you selling flowers or beauty?” — Paul Stanley, speaking on leadership
Another long blog hiatus. I’ve got to tell you about last week, particularly about meal setup. Every week a different team is in charge of setting up the meals. That includes bringing the food from the main kitchen to where we’re eating, setting out all the various plates and silverware and condiments, and cleaning up afterwards. It doesn’t sound like much, but one thing involved is that you have to get to every meal about a half hour before it starts. That includes breakfast, which normally starts at 7 AM. Now that’s no big deal for me because I already get up really early for work. But the problem is I’m supposed to start work and start meal setup at 6:30 AM, and my job is the only one where I can’t just set things aside until I get around to them. The conferences are going to start up regardless. So I was starting work at 6 AM and getting up at 5 AM all last week. It was killer. Our setup week ended last Sunday and not a moment too soon.
But while we were doing setup our team plotted to do the ultimate prank. You see, up through now all the pranks have been against certain individuals or groups. We wanted to be the first to prank everyone in NCP. So we planned to hide all the food for one of the dinners and send everyone on an elaborate scavenger hunt. Our buddy Cactus was going to bring this letter to dinner for us (while we were out to dinner, away from their wrath):
Dear Doug Erdman,
(please read this letter out loud to the whole NCP group)
We, the food setup team, have really been inspired by Doug’s teaching on servanthood and character. Doing the food setup has been tough, but we have seen that it is in the tough moments that character grows.
Waking up early and cleaning up the meals has also given us a new perspective on the NCP group and raised a few concerns. We think that within NCP we need more opportunities to help grow in character, team-spirit and leadership skills. Therefore our team, which has been biding its time for the right moment, will no longer be silent! We have put much energy into serving you with a scavenger hunt to find the food for your dinner.
This is not just any scavenger hunt; to make it successful it will require organizational skills, team spirit and cooperation. This is not something that can be done alone, but will require the different expertise, personalities and cultural backgrounds of all the NCP-ers. Furthermore, to do it efficiently we advise you to make good use of all the resources at your disposal.
Bon appetit!
Sincerely yours,
Guido, Tim, Adam, Andrew & Christiaan
Just a note: if you’re in NCP ‘05 and never heard about this it’s because we never did do it, and as far as I know I’m the first person to talk about it. Why? Well we started to think about everyone else this was going to affect. The Eagle’s Nest counselors also eat with us, and we really didn’t want to mess up their evening. We did talk to them and we managed to get their okay, but I can’t imagine they were too happy about it. Next we thought of the people working in the kitchen. They would have to wait for the dirty dishes to be brought back to the kitchen before they could go home. We did find away around this by securing one of the NCP kitchen guys (Jeff) who said he’d do the dishes. But it was Jeff that clued us into one thing we hadn’t thought of: the little kids. Especially Gabe, who’s a real little tike. His stomach probably won’t appreciate the prank as much as the rest, and neither would his parents. We also found out that two teams weren’t going to be eating dinner with us the night we had planned to pull the stunt, meaning ten people would be absent. All these things combined with the fact that the clues, nine in total, were going to take at the very least an hour to follow through to the end led us to make the decision to cancel the fun.
This may have been to our long-term advantage, since the next prank that was pulled (dumping watered-down syrup on two people that had been pranking all summer) was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Glen Eyrie. One of the men in charge of the property came by later and sat in some of the leftover syrup. So pranking is banned now (at least pranking on the Glen). Now granted, our prank wouldn’t have soiled this guy’s pants, but it probably would have gotten around to him and caused a somewhat negative reaction.
Two Wednesdays ago I spent time with the McKinney family for the first time in years. Lynette McKinney was my first piano teacher and taught me for (I think) four years. Her family went to my church and so we got to know them very well. It was great getting to talk with her again. I got to see her two sons, Andy and Chris, but not her husband who at that point was leading a high school mission trip in Mexico. I’ll get to see them all on Friday because I’m having dinner with them.
A week ago Monday night we went square dancing down at the Carriage House Courtyard (almost one year to the day since I last went square dancing at U.M. Army). I hate the Cotton-eyed Joe, especially when you’re in shoes that don’t slide and you’re dancing on brick. And I really don’t like line dancing either. But the rest, the plain Jane square dancing, was a lot of fun. I still hold that this is probably the only kind of dancing I’ll ever like because I don’t know if I’ll ever put the time into learning any other kind of dance (and I still haven’t “learned” how to square dance, the caller is telling me everything to do).
So tonight is the Tacky Prom, which includes dancing and a talent show. I’ve got ugly purple pants and a great ugly shirt. I think I’m going to arrive late so I can skip out on the dancing. But I’m in the talent show. Well, kind of. I’ll be on piano accompanying two girls who are singing. It’s an old Irving Berlin song. Should be a hoot.
NCP is almost over! A week from today I’ll be on an airplane to Connecticut. I have very mixed feeling about the end of the program. I’m ready to not be living in a room with fourteen other people in it. I’ve finally gotten used to my job so I’m not dying to quit. There are still a lot of people I’d like to get to know better, but there’s a couple of people I’d just as soon get away from. I guess my biggest hope is that I’ll be able to stay in contact with a few people from here for a long time, and my biggest fear is that I won’t.
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