Coffee

I feel that this post is appropriate now that baseball's Mitchell Report has been made public, naming players who have taken performance enhancing drugs. Almost a year and a half ago I began seminary firm in my commitment to avoid performance enhancing substances. But now just over 18 months into seminary I find myself addicted to one a performance enhancing substance, coffee. And I have really needed it with all that we have been up to since our last post. So we'll dust off the Wayback Machine and I'll give you a quick review of all we've been up to over the last month or so.

Fortunately, we were able to take a break from the snow and the cold up here in Chicago, and we got down to North Carolina for Christmas. We were able to see lots and lots of family and folks that we hadn't seen in a while. I snuck in some banjo. And I was able to assist at St James in Newton and at Trinity in Vale on Christmas Eve. I also did a little bit of preaching at Holy Cross in Lincolnton. It was busy, but great getting around and helping out at all the different churches. We also found time to get to a Bobcats game and hang out with James Li. Here are some great pictures:

Once we got back to Chicago Hannah got back to work and I got back to class. For my January term class I took a class on Urban Ministry. For two weeks we travelled around Chicago and visited lots of different sites that are addressing issues in the city. We were able to see and hang out with Harry Belafonte, Jeremiah Wright at Trinity UCC, Michael Pfleger at St Sabinas. I just finished up the class last friday, and I now have two weeks before spring classes get started back. And with these two weeks I'll have plenty of time to blog, hold me to it.