Stories and other stuff

So I wanted to take a minute and give all y'all an update on my piggy bank project. I had an idea for a project for my Stewardship class to give the kids of my church two piggy banks, one with a stopper and one without.  The idea was to teach them to save money in the bank with no stopper and to teach them to give with the little piggy bank with the stopper. We ran the project for six months, and in that time, a very small (less than ten kids on any given Sunday) group of children gave $136.00 and change to buy chicks and bunnies for families in Africa. That might seem strange; chicks and bunnies are associated with Easter.  But the project helps families in Africa raise chickens and rabbits.  The idea is that they can sell the eggs or rabbits to others to supplement their incomes and for food.  Then, once their flock (or whatever you call it for rabbits) grows, they are then to help someone else do the same thing. That's gonna change someone's life.  An...

As we walked out of the art gallery at the Whitney Museum portion of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, my mother noticed a do-it-yourself postcard making station.  She asked me if I'd like to make one, because in my mom's eyes, I'm still someplace around seven years old.  My mother once gave my face a spit bath, in front of my wife....but that's another story for another time.  I told her that, no, some people paint pictures, and others paint pictures with words. In your mind's eye, you know you can see your mom spitting on her finger and wiping whatever it was off your face.  She just probably never did it when you were in your early 40s, and that mental picture either made you laugh or go "eeewwww".  But you get the idea. I cannot draw.  I cannot play an instrument.  I will never be able to paint a picture with words like James Mitchner.  Want to know what I'm talking about?  Read  Hawaii.   That's the kind of literary geni...

I heard about the shooting.  A body was found laying in the road early Monday morning in not the best part of Ogden.  It would turn out that the man was killed by a shotgun blast to the mid-section and left to die in the street.  It happens, right?  Like most, I'm so used to hearing about people getting dead that I noticed the story and went on about my business. This morning, I found out that in a small way, it WAS my business. I knew this man, William.  I even told you about him.  He was the man in the story that, like Wendi, was from Richmond, Indiana and a part of the Bible study class at the mission.  He'd left the mission three weeks ago, took a job, and was trying to earn money to get back home to his family and children. As the story develops, we'll hear about what started the argument.  We'll hear why one man felt his only recourse was to shoot another man in the belly with a shotgun.  We'll hear a lot about this and that befor...

I'm a Facebook fan.  I think it's a great way to keep in touch with friends and creep to get the scoop on people who you really have no business knowing the "scoop" about.  I would hazard a guess that most of us have been guilty of it at least once or twice.  I admit it.  In fact, I kind of laugh about it. So this really happened to me last night.  I had to go into work early for a doctor's appointment for my back, which really, really, really hurts.  Really really really really hurts bad. That means my shift ended early.  When I got off, for some reason I was thinking about the most recent former Mrs. Cooper.  That happens with infrequency.  I mean that.  That ship sailed.  I think though it was something the immigrant said that kind of made me feel badly.  For about a minute.  I just talked to God about it, told Him as far as I was concerned it was all forgiven.  Holding onto it, or taking it back just isn't som...

My roomie and I attend the same church.  It's how we met.  We keep different schedules and have different interests, but get along well.  For all the differences there are between us, and they are many, we live lives on a parallel track.  It's sometimes like we're both on our own lines, but they're headed in the same direction.  For instance, he broke his toe and I hurt my back. It just kind of rolls that way sometimes.  Anyway, sometimes we sit in the same pew.  Today was one of those times and I had a brief minute to share what the reason was that I pretty much lost my Who over.  For a man who has destroyed his life in the past by his inability to keep his pants on, the irony of ironies is that my Who's (my being strictly for identification and not used in the possessive tense) biggest problem she has with me is that I won't sleep with her. OK, so here's the quandary.....do you do something you've always done to get what you want (not like i...

You know you miss the salad days of the blog....the ones where I used to tell you all the stuff that was going on in my life.  And then I started just dropping hints, or perhaps, not even that.  I haven't written with any regularity recently.  I did tell you the stuff that went on with the people that crossed my path at the Rescue Mission.  I don't know if that's a foreboding of things to come.  I don't think so. I had the oddest dream the other night.  It started with me being in the woods with a woman.  I picked up this log and heaved it over the top of a ridge.  Then I thought I ought not have done that because I didn't know what was on the other side.  I walked up to the ridge and saw a tall thin man wearing a hat walking on a path.  I missed hitting the man.  He gave me a dirty look and just kept walking the path. Then some other weird stuff happened that I don't remember and then I was back in the woods and this time I pic...

So I was going to start writing about a pity party someone was having that travels in my circles but isn't directly involved with my life.  We all have pity parties, for whatever reason.  We feel sorry for ourselves and want others to feel it too. It's tough to read about because I see someone who is looking for something that doesn't exist this side of Glory; the perfect church.  I spent 3 decades away from church and my excuse was that I didn't much care for the way Christians treated other Christians.  I was right about that.  I was wrong to blame the church. Churches are made up of flawed human beings who make mistakes.  To me, it's one of the things I've come to cherish about my church.  Not everything works out right all the time.  Sometimes it just makes me know I have a home where I worship.  And sometimes, something pretty sweet comes out of the mistake.  Last week, we sang a song that has extra music to it that's not in the...