Oct 12

My AIM weekend

I had a terrific time. Here are some highlights:

I was on a great MPT, and it was a wonderful weekend, a time of spiritual renewal and a great time with old and new friends. But it was long, and tiring, and I’ve spent part of today over at my parents’ house with my sister and her kids — also a wonderful time. I’m pooped, and glad I don’t have to go in to work tomorrow. But I do have a lot to accomplish in the next couple of days: work on my sermon for Sunday, work on my lay speaking lesson for Wednesday, get ready for a radio interview I’m doing on Wednesday morning, and try to clean up the pigsty that is my apartment right now. Some vacation!

Oct 05

My learning disability

Mountain T.O.P.

Mountain T.O.P.

For the past few weeks, I’ve thought several times about Mountain T.O.P. Although it’s been less than a year since I rotated off the board, it’s been several years since I’ve been able to attend one of the summer Adults In Ministry camp weeks. They wind up falling right around the same time of the summer as my foreign mission trips. But I really miss Mountain T.O.P. and want to go back at some point.

Meanwhile, I had to cancel my plans to travel to North Carolina next weekend, but I held on to the vacation days. It will be good to have a few days off, but I didn’t want to just lay around the apartment for six days straight.

It plays out like a sitcom scene. I was just too stupid to put two and two together until yesterday, when it occurred to me that Mountain T.O.P. Adults In Ministry is having some of its fall weekend events this month. In fact, one of them will take place … next weekend.

Duh!

I’ve made last-minute arrangements to attend. Unfortunately, the fall weekend events are home repair-only; I won’t have the option of working with kids or teenagers from the Cumberland Mountains the way I do when I go during the summer. And you don’t get exactly the same experience from the long weekend that you do at one of our week-long camps. But it will be great to be back up on the mountain, in the unique Christian community that characterizes a Mountain T.O.P. event.

The AIM weekend will run from Thursday night through Sunday morning. So I’ll still have a few excess vacation days (most of Thursday and Sunday, all of Monday and Tuesday) in which to relax and perhaps to clean up my pathologically-filthy apartment.

There’s still time and room for any of you reading this to join us, if you’d like. More information is available at the web site.