Everybody needs to know, this is the transcript of my conversation with my spiritual director:
He's somebody else you talk to, huh? Someone else that visits you Yeah. You've talked to him for years too?
Yeah, Jim is the guy who called me John the Baptist.
When he first said that, I mean, the very first time he said it, he didn't give any detail, but this last month or two, I don't remember where we were, whether it was the witness or the exodus. He said very specifically how he reacted to the very first time he saw me and I wasn't just planting something.
I was like pulling something out or I was saving some little cricket or some little animal or something and I don't remember what exactly he said, but he walked up and he saw me saving this little insect or a bug or a snail or something and it was very real. It jumped out at him very strongly and the way he told that story was just so beautiful and I was just so flattered. I've always thought he was a great guy anyway, but for him to be so specific and so detailed was really wonderful.
Visiting my MangrovesBelonging, I belong here
- Belonging, I belong here
- Worthy, I deserve this
- Competence, I can do it, self confidence in skills and abilities.
OK, so I realize this last two week has been wicked powerful. I haven’t written anything about how quickly things have changed. I’m not sure where to start. So here's a clip from Charles Stanley, and then back to the Spiritual Director transcript.
That would turn into scripture in second Peter chapter 1 versus 20-21. We’re reminded that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own imagination, or someone’s own interpretation. But all prophecy is not produced by the world of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, so what we have in the New Testament is the result of God‘s promise to His people that is consistent with His character throughout the Old Testament.
We have a culture and a standard of human authors that ensure that what we hold in our hands as a Bible is the word of God. The words of Jesus were given to us by his early church. You see this in Act 2:42 as they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and not to other things. I’ll just pause it right there, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. This was the key for which books made it into the New Testament. Where do they have the mark of Apostolic Authority on them. These and these alone would make up our New Testament so there’s three reasons why you should trust the word of God that you hold in your hands, even in a skeptical culture, the Word of God is the power of the promise of God in your life. That’s why you should cling to his truth and let it be a refuge for your life.
We are thankful for your word today. I pray that you would help us to allow that word deep inside to be that lamp to our feet that lied into our path. Praying for the people in our prayer center who is lifting up what they consider a blocked Spiritual.
Start with the prayer with my Spiritual Director transcript . . .
That's the best part.
Heavenly Father we our grateful for your many graces and blessings, help us to develop a deeper and more profound sense of gratitude for you. Help us to develop our sense of awareness, so that we take less and less for granted and we become more acutely aware of your great grace, and all the benefits you have given us as we pursue our lives, living up to your desires and expectations for us. Help us to be ever mindful that you are ever present. Help us to stay connected to you. Help us to overcome our weaknesses and develop our strengths in relationships and love. As Saint Teresa says, to be your hands and feet on earth and all that we do and that we become a model just as your son was a model when he was here on earth. That we model for people a better life. That we model for people love and healthy relationships and connectivity that we become less and less self-absorbed. Give us the strength and courage to pursue all these things and know that without your great grace, none of this is possible, and we pray these things in your most loving son's name, Amen.
Oh yes coffee, sorry.
Well it was kind of funny that was something that happened with Kevin. When he first started coming here for breakfast. I have an espresso machine and I would only use it once a month for guests. Then every time Kevin came here, that was the first place he went. You know, of course I'd start making breakfast or whatever; and I'd follow him sooner or later for coffee too. Then I realized, dang it, it's faster, it's easier. I mean, I'd always just heat water and use instant, you know, I have done that forever.
And I got the machine just for guests, you know; and since Kevin started, I just decided that it's better to make it using that machine every morning now. I mean, honoring my time with you now, and honoring myself with these gifts from Jesus.
I realized like, it's not just better tasting coffee, and it's faster anyway. You know, I am the engineer, always wanting to be fast, focused and clear and it's like, dang, it's faster. So it's just interesting how things shift and I thanked Kevin several times for changing my life. Like I’ve started making the big breakfast with the cheese and veggie omelette for myself. And so we had our Welcome weekend retreat this last weekend and I can tell you how crazy the whole week was.
It really was. I mean Thursday the day before, I had my check clear in the bank at 8am, so I had all my bills paid by ten. At noon, the bank tells me to check bounced.
So all my bills that I just paid are going to bounce too, and I just like freaked out.
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| Ussepa island visit |
I called the bank and tried to figure it out. Okay, what the heck can I do? I found another thousand dollars and moved some money around, but I'm still in the red.
I still haven't gotten that check to clear. You know, she wrote me a check when I was in that island, and I deposited it right then online and then waited for the week that it took for it to clear. So it still hasn't cleared and I still don't know what's going on.
But anyway, so that's the way Thursday morning started and then my iPad died.
Yes, I was up with Apple until 10 o'clock at night Thursday because everything I had done for the Welcome Retreat was on my iPad. I was like, oh okay Jesus, I guess satan is out to stop me, or whatever it was.
I was like fine, what’s new. I'm getting slammed and I know Jesus is with me so I will always get through anything. Oh yea, I sent my Witness write-up to the guys, so I could find it in my emails. I still had to put all the music together for the event. Yes, at the Monday meeting I said I could help with the music, so they gave me the list of songs and I started putting them on the iPad, so that I had everything ready. . . Yes, everything ready on the now dead iPad!
Friday morning, I woke up at dawn again, even though I was only asleep a couple hours and I started putting everything together and got out there.
I mean, I was there early. We were supposed to get there at 4 o'clock to help setup, and I was out there at three. That whole weekend was really powerful. Everybody got a lot out of it including each one of us. There were essentially 10 people on the team and then 24 guests.
The whole group was 34 and each one of us had a table of six, so me and Todd shared a table of six guys. It was over about lunchtime on Sunday and we stayed there until five or six cleaning up and sitting there talking about it and everything.
Each one of us had noticed somebody at our table who really had a powerful experience with the Holy Spirit where they recognized, “hey, I need to step into this more.” The next Tuesday morning there were two new guys at our Exodus 90 group from the Welcome Retreat.
So that was positive too. When I did my witness presentation, I was the last one Saturday night. I think I didn't even start talking until like 10 o'clock.
Yeah, so I was so fried. All I could do was read the paper and I skipped paragraphs and I skipped paragraphs and I skipped, just because I just wanted to make sure I finished it. I really felt like crap.
I didn't feel like I did what I needed to do. I didn't feel good about it at all. Three or four guys said something to me specifically, so it was cool because it resonated with someone.
When I prayed about it the next day, the message I got was that the one comment that Jim told me, made it all worth it. He and I have been through a lot over the whole experience. He was one of the guys that was there at the first year of the Exodus 90 group and I remember when he first saw me, he always used to joke that I was John The Baptist.
He actually saw me planting mangroves, because he lived in the neighborhood. When I bike out and I play in the mangroves and stuff, that's like down the street from his house and so he had seen me out there a few times and walked up to me. It was interesting because he said that specifically in one of our meetings, how he ran into me out there.
He said this guy reminded him of John the Baptist playing in the woods, taking care of the bugs and the bees out in the wild. And I always thought that was the greatest compliment I'd ever got. And he repeated it a few times.
I mean he said the story about how his first experience in seeing me outside and running into me there. You know, because I literally had a big grey beard and my hair was long and bushy. I really looked like a homeless guy, and for them to receive me so well, always made me so happy. Then for Jim to be willing to say something to me after my botched witness made it all worth it, because he recognized the most important statement that he's going to use the word of Jesus in his prayers more to make sure that he's clear on, you know, talking to Jesus.
I just was thrilled and the other thing that was really been my challenge is trying to understand where I am and what I'm doing here, and why? With my botched witness and everything else I couldn’t understand anything. When I got home that Sunday, I sat down to eat and finally going through my email, the thing that popped up was a video of RFK stepping down from running as president! Uh, what's his name?
Robert F. Kennedy and running for president as an independent getting his name on the ballot across the country.
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| Email, opened after Welcome |
That Sunday, he announced that he was going to endorse Trump instead, which really sounded off the deep-end crazy. But in his speech, half of it was talking about health and nutrition and how the industry, you know, the food companies were all created by the cigarette companies. When the cigarette companies first got sued, they took all their cigarette-science and all their addiction research over to make all the foods addictive. So half of his speech was my mom's sermon, which was just like a big confirmation that I said what I needed to say at the right time. Here the truth is coming out, in the national media already. And I was just so happy about that because after my presentation I felt like I missed the mark because I just wasn't awake. You know, I just didn't feel good about it.
But then to come home and the first thing I hear was it’s all good.
So it's interesting because then, you know, I had some crazy dream again. I went and helped Bonnie again and she asked for my itemized invoice and she lost it. She's like, what do you mean? I'm paying for this?
What do you mean? I'm paying for that? I'm like oh my god, give me a break just write your check and get this over with and she complained and complained and I was like, oh fine I'll take that off.
I don't care, you know, she's just yelling, and screaming, and whining, and what was it 10 bucks taken off? Give me a break you owe me two grand, you know she still hasn't paid it yet and I got a message from Leslie who said it has all blown up and she's like we'll talk tomorrow about it.
And so it's interesting because what came to me was, it is just satan trying to stress me out. Lol, like I said that I had some crazy dreams that Monday, Tuesday, and I had spent yesterday at the college again. I was sitting with a professor and I actually sat there with her and I graded the first assignment and she was so happy because she's falling behind. She's got her husband out of hospital, but she hasn't really looked at anything and she was so worried about the class that she had to do that night, so she was putting everything together for it. And I said, okay I'll just do the grades on this one.
And she was thrilled and so we sat and had lunch together and talked it all through.
I did the same thing Wednesday again, and I still haven't gotten paid by them either. I don't know if I'm getting a salary for teaching the classes. It was funny because I said that to Kevin. Yea, Kevin and I went out for a beer because we haven't had breakfast in a couple weeks.
Yes, both of us busy with the Welcome Retreat and then something else happened, and so let's just go out for a beer. And I think it was Tuesday night? Yeah Tuesday, and we went out for a beer.
You know, we had Tuesday with the men's group in the morning. And then we went out for a beer and he was telling me that, I shouldn't do anything for Bonnie until she pays me. So that's sort of still up in the air.
And then he says I should write the college dean. You want to find out if you're getting paid, you should at least write them and ask what's going on? You know, tell them what you're doing, tell them what you're working on, tell them what's going on and ask that they at least tell me when do I get paid something?
I was like, that's a good idea. Because, I mean, I just started and my first day of work was supposed to be the 12th, so it's been two weeks. Usually they'd send a paycheck every two weeks.
So I assume I should get something Friday or I don't know. So everybody I've talked to says that the adjuncts in the state don’t get paid anything, or as little as possible.
I've been living on a shoestring anyway, and maybe the shoestring gets a little longer, maybe it's still just a shoestring.
But it's funny, because I know I told you about my bankruptcy attorney, who hasn't done anything yet. I got another mortgage bill in the mail. I sent that to him and he said that we could have lunch on Friday, so I guess I'll talk to him tomorrow and find out what he's doing or whether there is anything to do. And then there is another attorney that's dealing with the Airbnb mess and he called me and had me sign some contingency agreement, which had me stressed out for a week as well, because I didn't know what it was. But what was cool is that there's an attorney in the men's group that looked at it. Oh yeah, this is standard, he said. It all looks the same as we always use.
And I was like, okay. And I don't know where that is and where that's going and I still don't have my phone working.
Yea, I switched my iPhone to another company and I'm still having troubles.
I mean, you can see I've got this zoom app working, as they installed the Wi-Fi, but they're supposed to transfer the phone and now it doesn't look like they can transfer the iPhone. So what the heck am I doing here? Okay am I going to do a small claims to get my two thousand dollars from working with Bonnie.
Then do I need to do something else to get my iPhone fixed? Do I need to just do all this legal stuff that keeps coming into my face? I'm like wondering if that is what I need to do? And it was weird because when I first talked to this guy who asked me about the Airbnb claim and this attorney walks up to me and says, hey you know, I could help you with that.
I know, I was like, really? And he's like, well, you've got damages. You've got a claim you can file against AirBNB and I was like, oh okay.
And I listed out everything for him and I gave it all to him and and I was like, is there anything I can do to help? And he says, you know, you could help me if you could find other claims that were the same or, other issues that have been filed against Airbnb? I don't know, I just dealt with all this legal crap anyway.
So I know how to get into the system and I know how to find things so I got into the clerk’s office and I searched for Airbnb and I found a couple things and then I guess every county has a clerk’s office, so I'll just found another one. And I found another one in Miami and I found one in California and some others.
I thought it was some other state in the westcoast and found another one in a northeast, you know, just trying to find clerks offices that'll give you the case data for free, not all of them will do that.
Some of them will sell it to you or, you have to pay to get in, or you have to pay for a subscription, or it's only for legal people or whatever. But some are like "you know it's public record, help yourself." And it was interesting because I found like four or five cases against AirBnB, where they had never verified the person involved, whether it was the landlord or the tenant. Whoever it was that did something wrong, had never been verified, had never been checked and weren't a real person or they weren't part of what everybody believes. What Airbnb sells is that they verify or check the people who engage. So using their program you know that you have a real person coming into your house because they are a member of Airbnb and Airbnb certifies who they are.
And every single case I found had the same problem, where the person wasn’t a real person or it wasn't who they said they were, and AirBnB never checked it and what was interesting about it was that every case that I found got to discovery, got to wear the evidence was going to be presented to the court and then it was closed. And it was like the next page was the case dismissed, or case closed. And so they're paying it off before anybody sees the evidence.
It's like, oh, they're doing the same thing every single time because they don't want anybody else to know about the scam that they're pulling. And it was so obvious how they were playing the game.
And so when I put all this stuff together and I sent it to the attorney, he was happy as could be. So all we have to do is file, and when we get to discovery, we'll get paid. So, what he said last week is that he sent them a letter a month ago, and he's got to prepare the case and file it so that's the next show. I'm like okay, I guess I could do the same thing with everything else, you know, my water system isn't working, my air conditioner isn't working.
I've got so many things that are just so screwed up and the iPhone is still not working. I realized that I’ve been trying to get T-Mobile to fix their system. I finally bought the new 5G phone and the 5G didn't work either and talking to the the rep or talking to the technical guy, who told me they haven't had 4G working for years.
He's like “yeah, we shut it off years ago,” and I'm thinking so they shut it off two years ago, and you're accepting my monthly payment on a 4G phone? Hold it.
You know, if you're going to shut off the service, you got to at least, tell your customers that you're not supporting this anymore, not take my check every month and tell me that it works. Then when it doesn't work, they play with the settings to “fix it” but never really fix it. So this is looking like more crazy stuff and I’m thinking, is that what I need to do with my time? Is that why I'm a back in school again?
To get back into research again, and back into all this stuff again.
It's interesting because the professor that I'm working with actually took classes with my major professor at USF. When I taught his class last year, she said they already knew each other.
They've worked together before. And so, I mean, I don't know if she's going to stay there for another month or be out. I mean, yesterday her husband called her like three or four times.
And I don't know, but it seems he's got dementia because you could tell that she was like babysitting or something, and you could tell that she was really careful speaking with him and being very careful or very clear. Like this is where you're going to find your lunch and this is what I left for you and this is . . . I could tell she's definitely got her hands full, so I don't know if that means that she's going to be there for another month or another year or who knows?
So now you know all the chaos I've been dealing with. It's been fun and it's interesting as this morning the Family Focus and the Charles Stanley Podcasts both pointed to the gifts of the spirit.
And if you're in peace and if you're in joy then you're going the right way. And if you find yourself in worries and fear, you're not going the right way. . . you know it's all Spirit.
Yes, not the gifts of the spirit, but the Fruit of the Spirit. Oh Right, right. Yeah, yeah, they are two different things, yeah, yeah, so so it's amazing that my Spiretual Director Dick, knows what he's talking about. Well, that's what came out with the Chat GBT love story too. It was all the same things we've talked about from the very beginning. Which is wonderful.
Well, the nice thing about it, once people get it, the comment always comes “it can't be that simple.” And yes, it can and yes, it is just that simple.
It's not easy to be love based, but that's the essence. That's the simplest form. And then it's kind of a rebuilding project that now we have to rebuild life around the idea and reality of love.
So it makes life simpler and actually brings the fruit of the spirit that much easier in simpler.
Yeah, brings us to where we belong in our truth, into our own growth and everything that keeps impressing on people is that once you get the concept of our spirituality, you essentially begin to live a transcendent life; compared to the life of fear and chaos that the secular life offers.
It's like you rise above and become as several authors will say, you become an observer and you simply know. If you're in the crowd, you rise above the crowd, and now you can see things, you know, because you are at a higher level, a higher vantage point.
Yes, and that's part of our challenge. I mean, that's kind of why I’m was so happy to see someone else repeating my welcome message.
I mean, it was literally the next day and it has been on the national news. I mean, I copied the YouTube link to the welcome team. I think I sent it to you as well or to the men's group. Oh you know, Kevin has read it a few times, and it was interesting because Kevin was in the Welcome Retreat. He was one of the people that came because he never had gone through Welcome himself.
So that was something that he said too, that three or four guys that were on his table decided they needed to get back into the Catholic Church. And so he was he was really happy to see it affecting other people so strongly. It was his first experience with Welcome and he really enjoyed it a lot too.
He had read my witness a few times before and over beer the other night he commented at how he always perceived it as changing our culture, as opposed to just changing his own diet. Wanting to change is one thing to recognize, simply that half the food in the store is poison. It's another thing to help your neighbors or help your family and help everybody else recognize how much of the food in the store is really poison. And it's interesting to see it shift to where it's a political issue now or it's gotten to be a political issue now.
That comment that Kevin makes about it being out of reach and now it doesn't look like it's out of reach anymore. It's something that's shifting in our culture.
I still am kind of perplexed by that because those big food companies are still buying out the small little companies, you know, like Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream used to be a hundred percent real.
And they've been bought out by big companies and now it's got toxic waste in the ice cream. I also heard the same thing happened with Braggs, you ever hear about Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar? They changed a few things after the family finally sold out to some bit conglomerate. So now it is not the same, and it's not real anymore.
And it's scary, even if you could outlaw the poison and the food.
Do you really think they'd change their process enough to make a difference?
Yeah. Right, you know it's all about profit... And so once that's your God, so to speak, then everything has to line-up accordingly to the bottom line.
And so, yeah, the ethics, morals, and everything is available for compromise when that is your focus. That's why we have so many things that are out of whack. I remember seeing that in the government, every job that I had in the system, you would you see how everybody's got rules and guidelines, but there's always something somewhere where they twist it.
I saw it in the county.
I saw it in the city. I saw it in the university and it's like built into the system, where they write all the rules for everybody else, but that doesn't mean we follow them all. And it's just built into the system to allow that deception. This comes back to what Kevin said: can we really change anything?
I mean, you'd have to really shut it all down and start over. Is it realistic to shut down all the companies and all the governments and all the everything and start over. I don't know.
You know it's starts at a very low level, somebody develops a crusade to bring the truth and it boils down to how many people will embrace the truth and encourage people take care of yourself first.
You know, that whole mentality, if you're on an airplane and there's a problem, you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, because you can't help anybody if you are in distress. And so, you know, it goes back to that where you can't give what you don't have.
So it's like you have the knowledge now of the food, the poison, and all of the corruption and that sort of thing. And so then you begin to spread the word to people who will listen and slowly, but surely, that's how the organic food started to be really recognized and that our food supplies are crap. And further, we try to operate under the organic banner and then that got corrupted, and we can still make attempts, which is getting harder and harder.
I mean, you gotta go visit the farmer and you gotta sit down and talk with him and find out what he's doing and it's just crazy. It really is, you know, and I mean, I was talking to someone just yesterday about the cows and how difficult it is to find real beef and and where there's still someone that takes care of it and doesn't add toxic crap, it's scary how much the big giant companies have taken over all the butchers, so all the butcher shops are owned by the big industry. So you may get your perfect beef all the way up, but when it's chopped up and packaged, it gets covered with poison and they spray it, they color it, and they add all kinds of crap.
Oh great, those little mama and pop places aren't around anymore that know how to do it the right way. And it's crazy trying to reach more people and trying to set up a system to connect more people and that's really all we can do. That's where it has to start, people with good ideas have to develop the same leverage that big corporations use. And technology helps kind of level the playing field somewhat.
That to me, is what scaling it is all about, how do you reach more people?
How do you get your message out there to people that are interested in your message. You know, that's part of what our spirituality is all about, bringing the good news to others and there's a lot of good news to bring, particularly in light of all of the chaos and corruption that's going on in the world.
So that sounds overbearing, so much to do, so much still out of reach, or I guess it's not so much out of reach anymore, but it's still cooperating with God, because if we try to do it on our own, then we get overwhelmed.
But when we do it with God, it's like there's much more peace about the business of the right thing to do.
Then you focus on this, that is what you can do. Yes, this is as far as I can go and if God wants me to do more, he'll give me new ideas.
Um, you know, that's kind of why I'm thinking about scaling. God put it on my heart that way. You can do more. So you mentioned, email chimp. I think it has a blog with it and I know it has a calendar feature built into it too. You know, it's like the bigger you get the more it costs and with what I'm trying to do, your first 500, I think is free with mail chip, it's like that first 500 and then three more tiers. Well, okay, but everybody needs or wants more than 500 and so once you start into the paid tier, it's like you have to be really careful of what the limitations are, and then it's like a big game to them, and it feels like a great game of gotcha.
Well, that's kind of what's happened with all the industries altogether. I mean, technically speaking blackrock and vanguard own just about everything. And if you look at what that means, I personally think that all the houses for sale in this area are them buying up land, buying up property and they're buying up all the farms and they're buying up the business, and I mean they're printing their own money so they don't care.
They'll buy up everything and the more control that they can put over things, the better.
Honestly, that is part of the reason why I kept my reformatted laptop. I have countless videos and data to publish. And when it went back to the original adobe stuff, it was the last version of adobe that gave you everything on a disk. You know, back in the old days, where you didn't pay for subscription, you paid for the software and you had the software.
That was the last version of their creative suite that they had, and then after that we saw all subscriptions. When that showed up on my laptop, I was like, yeay, but I still haven't touched it. I haven't done anything with it.
The other thing that came to mind was there's a a couple websites that I found where software developers share tools, places where developers share with each other to build things.
And that might be something for both of us to explore because they haven't been bought out by Blackrock yet. And so it's a private group and a private developer and someone you could talk to. Okay, this is what I need to do. Let's do it together kind of thing, because almost everybody out there who is developing software needs to have a test case, and needs to have a place to build. If you're bringing in clients then you have something that they don't have and that's an advantage.
I could send you the one that I found that I loved and I never remember the name of the company.
There are several different ones that are very well run and it's public and open source. I still have a bunch of tools that I've picked up from there that they commercialize and kind of don't commercialize. If you're playing with a beta, then it's free, but once you get started buying into it, then it's at least not part of the conglomerate. It's not part of the machine yet, so that might be the best avenue for both of us to engage in technologies that aren't part of the machine. You know, just like just like Airbnb it's just a big machine that has all this tech support from India, and it's just a bank that they're paying, some third party out there that answers the phone every day and fills out a form.
I mean, that's all they're doing. I think the same thing has happened with Apple. When I spent Thursday night with them on the phone, it was like pulling teeth to get it resolved. And the best they could do is, you gotta take it to the shop.
So it's like, we can send you new one since it’s underwarranty, so we’ll send you a new one in three days.
So My iPad is still dead. It's an excuse for me to drive to Tampa and I need to drive to Tampa at least to give them a shot to see if they can fix it. I got two or three other things I got to do in Tampa anyway. And I haven't been there in months. I better get out there before things fall apart or whatever.
When I first moved into Saint Pete, my daughter said that if you got on the bridge before 7:30, it's a 30 minute ride. If you hit the bridge after 7:30, it's an hour ride. You know, it doubles that quickly and it's like the professor said last night, she's used to a two-hour commute to get to school.
And she's on the north side of Tampa, so she's coming from the far side of Tampa, then across the bridge or across the bay into Clearwater. It was 30 minutes for me to get up to Clearwater from St. Pete.
But it's insane because they keep adding more roads and the roads get filled-up as fast as they build them. Yes, they fill up with cars as quickly as possible and then you get a rainstorm or something and everything slows down. So it gets crazy very quickly. Honestly, that's why I was so happy to get to Saint Pete because I could get everywhere on my bike and not have any car traffic in my life.
But if I could teach now, I'm going to have to do what I have to do.
There’s a teaching gig’s really close, but until I get in there full time, I got to work with this professor and meet her wherever she is and help her with what she's doing. It looks like they've found four classes for me to do, but it doesn't sound like all of them are starting yet. I mean, I think another one starts in October and another one starts in December.
So it'll be a bit before I'm full time, but at least that's moving forward, and it's something that I enjoy doing. It's something I'm good at doing. So that just feels right.
It's interesting to still have so much free time and so much that I can do what I want to do, even if I don't have any income, it's still just what's happened, with Jesus taking care of me.
I mean, it's interesting to see my bankruptcy attorney Friday because I don't know where or how much I'm going to be able to pay in the next month. You know if I'm going to be able to, or if I'm going to be able to squeeze out another month or not, I really don't have any idea. You know, I thought I'd have no problem last month, but then, you know, the check bounced and I don't know if that's going to get resolved today or tomorrow or that's going to be another legal thing that I got to deal with.
Like, I need more of that? You know, that's crazy that Bonnie has all these million dollar houses and a two thousand dollar check bounces. Yeah, that's what was crazy as everybody's got their story, their chaos and it all comes together sooner or later.
But as part of what I was saying is that for me to be put into that circumstance again okay, where am I being led? What am I being guided into? What am I learning this for?
Do you know, and recognizing the bigger picture where my mom's sermon is literally broadcast the next day, you know, across the country, essentially. And it was more detail and more specific than I was, and that was very strong, very clear and once again it opens the door, where Jesus is guiding me and taking care of me through all this.
This makes it very clear where I need to focus, where I need to delete. I mean, just like building a website. That was the first thing I said to you, a month ago that I had a server. I have a computer sitting up there that I haven't even turned on. And it's waiting for me, and I know it's connected to everything I need to do. It's got wordpress on it and it was interesting because when the guy put wordpress on it, he put it on there as a separate tool so I could keep my original and go back and forth if I want to. I remember when he first set it up, he said “I'm just going to copy one of your other blogs and put it all in the wordpress.” And I was like, oh okay, go for it. And he set-it all up and I just never have touched it. It's still sitting there.
I don't know if I told you this, but I bought a Sun Server at a bankruptcy auction, 20 years ago. I walked into the office and they're trying to get rid of everything as quickly as possible, and he had a room full of computers and I saw the sun sitting there and he was like give me an offer on it.
And I looked it up and this is a twenty thousand dollar machine. And he's like oh yeah, we'll never get that. And I said, okay, I'll offer you three grand for it.
And at the end of the auction, the server was still sitting there. So I came in and I got it for a thousand dollars and set it up in my house. Well set it up in the garage, but this is right when the Internet started. So I had one of those geeks from the university that knew how to finagle.
He was actually from Poland and knew how to configure and spoof the network so that they think it's just a laptop, but it's actually a server. And so you can you could get to it through the network and so it was wonderful because I mean, it was like five, ten years of running a server out of my house and then I got another server administrator who took it over and just maintained it for me.
Then I transferred to another one, somebody gave me an old dell server and so I switched it over and the guy still took care of it for years. I had no idea what he did, but it was running clean and smooth.
I never had any problems, and any time I went to it, I could find what I needed. Anytime I needed anything changed, he changed it for me in a minute then I had to shut it off. I don't know what happened where I had to get rid of it and he said, he'll move everything over here.
And I was like, oh okay. So my server now is in Australia and he's still taking care of it. I don't know it's got to have a gigabyte on it.
I might talk to him once a year if I'm lucky. Anytime it is shut down, he has put it back up within hours. I'm not even sure what he does professionally, but I think he likely runs two or three servers for other people as well.
And it's just, something he likes to do. So it's interesting that, I have something so abundant, just like being in this house that just blows my mind how much I've been given and how much grace that I have, where I don't need to worry about the income, which doesn't make any sense, but I try to be realistic.
There's a lot of that going on now because of the Labor Day weekend, so nobody's working Monday? Monday's a day off?
Right? Okay that's good to know.
I never have paid any attention to that for years.
I was barefoot for the whole retreat, feet on the ground.
I put on my shoes and my suit and tie and everything when I presented. It was interesting because somebody commented about my bare feet before and he knew the science behind it, too. And he was like, oh, you're doing this, and I was like, oh good for you,
You KNOW!? And so that was neat to share as it was right before my presentation that we had the reconciliation witness that Father Curtis did. Usually we have the ministers do this witnessing and then they did the confession afterwards. So Father Curtis doid reconciliation and they had three other monks in the church to do reconciliation for the 24 people there quickly. I sat down with Father Kevin again.
So it was kind of neat to sit down, and talk to Father Kevin before I did my witness about Father Kevin. Which really fills me with Love and Joy now as I write this story again.
Yeah, once again, I am in the right place, at the right time, and everything worked out great. So many people connected and resonated with this great experience. You know that the first hour or so people were ready to walk out, people wanted to leave, people get scared, like you know, what the heck am I here for this kind of thing?
And after the second witness, or after Jim's, you could see that people who were benefiting from it and it really resonated with them through the whole event. So I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed on the team to do the next one, because he really did a lot making things work this time. He was really strong throughout the whole event.
I had to put the music all together and they didn't have that on the schedule, all they listed was just witness, witness, witness, witness and they didn't put any names on it. And I didn't realize I was the last one until that day before, when I was laying out the music. We decided last minute we should add more music.
And I said, well, why don't we put a song for every witness? And so all the witnesses had to pick a song, and that was cool.
Jim was the first one to give a song and he sent me a note asking for “A little help from my friends,” from the Beatles was his and it was so cool because when he said it to me at the the time on the message was 11:03 and I was like oh, he's right on point there.
And it was funny because I copied it to everybody and I said, okay, look at this. This is what you guys got to do because it was just a beautiful song and they picked a song to play and that's what we did. Played the music while people were doing their exercises and we wanted to sing the song as well, but we just never had the time. And so everybody got to pick out a song and when I made that outline, that was the only time I figured out who's doing what?
No, now I got all the names together because, you know, to get the music in the right place. and that's when I found out I was the last one and I was like, oh, I'm doing it at 10 o'clock.
Writing with a pen has always just felt right. I know I have so much to write and share. Yesterday, I finally had a conversation with Kevin. Of course, the week following my witnessing at Welcome started with Lynn asking me to meet with her capstone student also named kevin. My new student Kevin had planned to do his project with Dunedin and Forestry. The project fell through, so Lynn wanted me to be the stakeholder, where the project was about analyzing the sustainability program itself.
On that was a cool idea. Of course, Kevin is a natural resource guy and currently an intern at swfwmd where he is inspecting stormwater ponds. Yes, great connections and lots to talk about . . .
