“Ms. Seiler, here’s my homework.” It was Bessie, one of my 7th graders. She stood there with a folded piece of paper in her outstretched hand.
It was only the second day of my teaching career. It was 7:10 AM and I was taking a shower in the girl’s locker room because I had no running water at my house. The school and the laundromat were the only places in town with running water. Many of the teachers showered at school, but none of us ever expected to be doing so with our students.
Well, I quickly decided to wrap a towel around my naked self to avoid any more embarrassment. Bessie seemed to see nothing wrong with catching her teacher perform her morning bathing ritual. I, on the other hand, had never taken a class in college that covered this sort of situation.
Archive for May, 2006
Cartoon Music
Tonight, as I was driving to meet some friends for dinner, I was listening to NPR. Every night, they do a variety of jazz shows.
Featured tonight were songs that were used in early Warner Brothers cartoons. The one I heard was a very lively and amusing number called “Dinner Music for Cannibals.”
That, of course, reminded me of the old joke: How do cannibals celebrate birthdays?
A Night in Africa
Bryan, of Flying Mission Zambia, has been here in town for about a month. I will be working directly with him when I leave for Africa.
On Tuesday, Bryan came to my house to do a presentation about Flying Mission. There were 20 of us packed into my house!!! Everyone loved the presentation.
It was great for everyone to see more of where I’ll be living and what I’ll be doing when I move there.
It also made things seem a lot more real and immediate. It’s finally sinking in that I’ll be over in Africa in about a year. That year will go by so quickly!
Leaving on a Jet Plane
So I got the official invite to fly to Colorado in June for the Career Interviews with World Venture!!
I found a screaming deal for $123 RT from Phoenix to Denver!!! Couldn’t believe it.
Free At Last!!
Earlier this week I made my final payment on all of my consumer debt!!!! I am finally free. What a marvelous feeling!
Oh Brother!
Carsten Michael is my favorite brother. Ok, he’s my only brother (only sibling for that matter), and I think he’s pretty darn cool.
Michael is quite talented when it comes to computers and such. This past week Carsten created a new template for me to use for my prayer/news letters. He created a listserv so that people can add/remove themselves from this list. I like that feature. It provides people the opportunity to unsubscribe if they wish, without the awkwardness of having to ask the letter sender to do it. 
Additionally, Carsten made some updates to my blog site. You’ll notice on the right hand side of the page, that he has updated a number of the links, added some more blogs of note, and moved all of those links up towards the top of the page. From here you can now access links to Flying Mission and World Venture. You can also access the link to subscribe yourself to my prayer/newsletter.
I’m currently accepting suggestions for name changes to the letter(s). If you have any ideas, please feel free to post them here or e-mail me with your suggestions.
A Penny for Your Thoughts
It turns out a nickel’s not worth the same. Maybe that explains why I never carry cash. Hm.
Check out this story.
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling
God is moving and shaking my world! So much has happened in the past few weeks.
In my first conversation with Glenn Kendall, Africa Director of World Venture, I told him of my desire to work in Zambia with Flying Mission and briefly mentioned seconding. At that point he hadn’t even heard of Flying Mission. In less than two weeks, he called me a second time. Within that time, some of his South Africa members had attended a conference involving a number of southern African ministries (including FM). In the second conversation, Mr. Kendall said that he was quite impressed with FM and that they would be willing to second me to FM. I’m not even officially a member of World Venture yet! God obviously has this so under control and His timetable is obviously much better than mine!
Income Taxes
Yes, I know all talk of income tax returns should be behind us.
However, my returns were rejected. Convenient for the IRS since I was supposed to get a nice chunk of change returned to me.
It turns out I transposed two numbers on my employer’s EIN number. So I’ve fixed it and am no longer a law-breaking rebel.
Hopefully, I’ll get the money into my account soon.
