 I've been serving in the church since I was 12 years old. I'm from Truman, Arkansas, one stoplight town next to Jones for Arkansas, maybe you've heard of that. And my grandmother paid for my mother's first three children to take piano lessons and I was the best of the three. So at 12 years old I was asked to be the organist of the church because they needed an organist. And I was a very serious 12-year-old and I took it very seriously and I started taking organ lessons and after one year I was on the official board at 13 years old. Forty-some-odd years later my mother died last year. I went back to that home church, took my six grandchildren there with me and one of my little granddaughters set up on that organ bench with me and saw the organ that I played for all the weddings, all the funerals, have a charm bracelet to prove it. That's how you got paid with the charms on your charm bracelet. And really that launched me into being a lifelong Methodist and all of my six siblings are too as well as their spouses. I remember when I very first started out my very, very first appointment. I was so anxious. I was a student at Perkins, I was anxious to get an appointment, I bugged my superintendent and so like the Wednesday before the Sunday the things were supposed to, he calls me that Wednesday and says, well, we have a church for you, oh, I was so excited and I said, well, how will they know that I'm the pastor? And he says, well, you know, you put on your tie, you grab your Bible and you show up. And I've always thought about, well, that was probably some of the best advice I got in my entire ministry, put it in your tie, grab your Bible, show up, they'll know there was 20 folks in the congregation, it was in Sadler, Texas, you know, and they were so gracious, you know, I didn't know anything and they were so kind to me along the way, but you know, every appointment that I've served is its own unique gift. There's been in each one of them, there's a relationship that you share with them as a pastor where God is active within the context of the chapter that you write together and that to me has always been such a blessing. The one person who's been there and has been God's greatest blessing for me is my spouse, Julie, and she has just stood with me through everything, all the itineracy, you know, when I ask you the question, will you itinerate? That includes the spouse and the family in our case and I was the one who answered yes, but they were the ones who went also and I am grateful to her for just being such, she is such a gift of God to me, I'm so thankful for her. I grew up in the Northeast in a community that was on the shoreline and it was a place where the fresh water ran into the saltwater and they call it an estuary and an estuary, it's an ecosystem that just thrives for the vitality of life. It's very unique in terms of what happens in there and you know when I was coming along they used to sing the song Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary you know and I thought well that really ought to be Lord prepare me to be an estuary because really it's where it's in the coming together of where you know the people of the word meet the people of the world where they were the people who have a heart for Christ and that the heart of Christ that love of Christ are with folks who are we're all God's children you know whether in the church or not we are all God's children God's at work in the middle of all things. The most important thing is to listen to the needs first not make any assumptions of what is needed and to listen to people what you did last year it may change and you need to revisit what is now needed differently in ministry I know one year at Caldwell Elementary School our partner school we had been giving new clothes at the beginning of school year and communities and schools had to be honest with me and she says well really people can get inexpensive clothes now or hand me down clothes and that's not the focus school supplies have gotten so expensive and and socks and underwear are far more important and if she hadn't told me that we would have kept giving clothes and that would not truly meet the need and have done the wrong thing. I went to a seminar and they were talking about the church and kind of what the church is going through and they had young pastors up there and they talked about the future and when I saw that I thought praise God you know look there are there are people who are talking about the future and talking about the future with hope and and so I took hope from that that you know golly there's there folks who have a heart for what's ahead and and what a blessing that is. As often times in life you would think that the really tough things the disasters in life wouldn't be where you find hope but we are people of the resurrection and really that's where you find hope and really the intersection between despair and hope is where you find meaning in life. I had been putting flood buckets together for many years for UMCOR United Methodist Committee on Relief and knew that they were going to the UMCOR depot and and Baldwin Louisiana serving in Louisiana Conference but when Katrina hit and I evacuated and they let pastors back in before anybody sitting in the church hallway in the dark even before we got together for our first worship service floor to ceiling and the hallway as far as you could see were stacked UMCOR flood buckets they even beat me there I sat in the floor and I cried it was more than the gloves and the sponges and the things that were in the bucket and so it took on this whole new meaning of hope and when you survive something terrible for someone to offer you hope and it really gave me a new sense of ministry I will say in the tough times in life I've lived long enough as a retiree that I want people to hear the story we are people of hope and that flood bucket and our Connectionalism as United Methodists offering hope to people is such an important thing.