Off to pick up the coach!

"Honey, would you hold mine for a minute?"

Our shared retirement journey does not begin until June, but we left today to pick up the coach in Mobile, Alabama. The Alpine is waiting patiently with it's present owners, David and Margaret Hickson, to discover if it likes us and wants to be our new home when we arrive there this weekend.

This is just our first night on the road, and yes, it's New Year's Eve.  Our friends at Hope Church are partying the night away even as I type, but none of them would be surprised to learn that the two delicious cones shown above, which we found in a wonderful ice cream shop in Hagerstown, Maryland (The Big Dipper, just over the bridge on Route 11. Been there over 30 years) is about as wild as we'll get today.  In fact, and don't tell her I told you, it's not 8:00 pm yet and Mona is settled into a great book in her jammies! But hey, that's how we roll!

And for me, beyond the joy of getting my ice cream cone back from Mona after I took the pic, was a lovely late afternoon stop in Williamsport, Maryland, on the Potomac.  This is both the site of a Baltimore and Ohio Canal bridge and shop, but also the spot Robert E. Lee crossed the Potomac in June, 1863, in his attempt to split the union through Pennsylvania. And it is the same spot, about two weeks later, where he led his bedraggled army back south in the rain after the hard defeat of Gettysburg.

As I looked up the almost unchanged Potomac Street from the canal I felt the 150 year old eyes of the original inhabitants, almost all southern sympathizers, staring from their curtained windows despairing of the parade of drenched soldiers slouching past in the downpour.

-Ken

Going to church every night

What is missing in the pastoral scene above? The artist has a cool running mountain stream, and the lofty mountains as well.  The soft green pasture with the deer just arriving to lie down, or maybe partake of their evening meal. And the international symbol of peace, a small, neat, country church. What could possibly be missing from this scene?

There it is!  Trying to hide behind the chapel in the woods. A full time RV'er has parked his family for the evening at the back of the little church hoping for a quiet evening with the deer, and maybe a nice conversation with a church-goer, the pastor, or a trustee.  I place the emphasis on the word nice when I mention conversation, because the camper won't know for sure till the next morning whether or not he's welcome.  But that's our plan, if we can make it work.  We hope to go to church almost every evening we're on the road.

Here's the deal.  I'll be a retired United Methodist pastor with a full record of my service on the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference website for anyone to find.  I also have a pretty full personal Facebook page, as well as FB pages for our blogs and the www.Freedom-Now.net business we hope to make profitable once we are on the road. I think we might find mostly positive responses to our request for a place to park for the night if we make it of other pastors.  Especially of other United Methodist Church pastors.  After all, we have over 40,000 of them scattered over the US alone.

We hope to be able to drive each day without definite plans of where we will spend the night till the late afternoon or early evening.  Then, when the time is right to either stop for supper or bedtime we'll search Google Maps for small country churches in our neighborhood.  When we find one the Google link will connect us to at least a phone number and we can call that number to ask if we may spend the night.

We expect to get answering machines most of the time, and if we do we'll let the receiver of the message know who we are and that we'll be leaving a $10.00 check in an envelope in their mailbox or doorway to cover our use of their parking space for the night.  That's about what any primitive (no hookups) RV site would cost anywhere but the highest end tourist destinations. And if we get a call to move, or a county police person drives in and tells us to move, well, we will.  It's not that hard to punch two slide-out buttons closed and head to the next county. Even at 2:00 am. I guess I will have to put some clothes on though to answer the door. But Mona may stay fast asleep in bed till I pull over again.

Now all of this may sound fanciful to some, and we may discover that indeed it is. But I'm thinking that a retired pastor and his wife, taking up no more than a parking space for the night, will be very welcome by another pastor or church family, of any denomination.  And $10.00 can't hurt any small congregation for the space to put down 10 tires for the night.

Well, we'll see.  Our first destination the very day I retire is Shanksville, Pa.  Site of the Flight 93, 9/11/2001 memorial.  There's a cute little United Methodist Church just on the edge of town.  We looked down on it with Google Earth. An ideal pull through for 50' of RV and toad.  Now don't whisper a word of this to those folks!  This will be our first experiment to see whether this idea works at all.  And if you see online that a retired pastor and his wife were arrested in mid June in Central Pa for trespassing, well, would you say a little prayer for the both of us?

-Ken

My last Christmas Eve sermons at Hope Church

Thank you, Jim, for this picture of me taken when you visited over Thanksgiving.

Am I praising God or asking to go to the bathroom?  :)

God is Good.

When His disciples called Jesus 'good' Jesus told them, "No, only the Father in Heaven is good." Good, meaning perfect.  His disciples, and we, allow His modesty, but since we learned from Him that He was and is God we kind of figured it out.  But when I say 'God is Good." I mean Mona and I have learned this over and over again from personal experience.

Take our decision to get married.  I was 18 and earning the minimum wage of .75 cents an hour at a wholesale warehouse in Harrisburg.  Mona was 20 and earning slightly more as a beautician but she also owned a car (Plymouth Valiant V8!). Yet God spoke to our parents and they said YES.  Mona more than I spoke to God and He said yes to her.  And here we are 44 years later more in love than the day we wed. God is Good!

Almost every time we had big decisions to make in our lives my fervency and Mona's calm brought us into sincere conversations with God that have really have blessed us so much each time we have allowed Him to be our guide in them.  God is Good!

Yes, jobs, positions offered, positions taken or declined. All involved God's guiding.  We went to A large discounter once in the late 80's because they sought me out to possibly lead their nationwide craft departments.  Prayer, despite the promises of the company, kept us at SKH.  A short time later I was offered a directorship on the SKH board, and a couple of years later, Ames stores went bankrupt. God is Good.

Going into full time ministry in 1997.  Who saw that coming??  Laverne Buckwalter did. So had my grandmother 30 years before.  So had my pastor when I was 18.  So had Mona.  So did God.  God is Good!

Now we move toward full time retirement.  The store has sold. We go to pick up our new home, a 2006 Alpine Limited Motor Coach next week. Our house goes on the market February 1 and an auctioneer comes to visit January 24 to value all of our remaining possessions for auction when we are ready to sell out, before my June 8th final sermon.  God is Good!

I could write of His blessings in our lives for pages, but I'll end here by simply saying that we have learned way beyond Scripture that God is good.  We have learned by daring to put His will above our own, and certainly above my impetuous own, most of the time.  And we have been well blessed when we have acted within His will.

It's Christmas 2013.  I am writing my last Christmas Eve sermons for Hope Church. And this is God's will. 

God has a marvelous plan for a new pastor at Hope, and for new ministries in retirement for Mona and I. And maybe even for some ways we may supplement our preacher's pension.  God is GOOD!!!

Merry Christmas to all!!!

-Ken