One of many places I like to use for a temporary work space.
I’ve officially transferred over to my new position as “organizing pastor” of Tidelands. It is nice to finally be dedicating 100% of my work time to setting up this new ministry. I’m beginning to realize just how much of my office resides in boxes at the moment! I feel a bit homeless after having an office to go to every morning for the past 14 years, but that is not necessary a bad thing. I’m also experiencing a bit of the same overwhelmed feeling I had when I first experienced the freedom of my youth ministry position at Mountain View (“here is the job: now go for it!”). I had built up a bit of a routine and schedule in my life of ministry that became quite comfortable and now I’m starting from scratch again.
So far I’ve been able to spend a lot of time getting to know the Stanwood/Camano community better. I’ve been searching for a good place to hold our informational meeting and I’ve discovered that there aren’t many (any?) restaurants with meeting rooms around the area. Kristina and I are beginning to wonder where sports teams go when they have their end of season parties! I’ll have to ask my soccer team parents that questions this week. Right now it looks like the library meeting room may well be the way to go.
Today as I was driving around and dropping in at different places I realized just how much I am already falling in love with this community and these people! It has a lot of small-town friendliness mixed with tourism, commuter life, island life, and quirkiness. This is a good place to land and raise our kids. I am so grateful to God for leading us here and I can’t wait to begin blessing this community with the love of Christ! In the meantime, I need to try to get some floorspace cleared out in our shop bedroom so that I can set up a desk and unpack some boxes!