We are taking on another call.

That means Pr. Pam is very busy trying to tie up loose ends at South Lyon Power & Light as well as at All Saints, she is already getting some things in place for her new ministry at Peace Lutheran Church and on top of that she and Gunnar are contacting moving companies, doing paperwork, packing moving boxes and doing a LOT of laundry.

For my part: I have to make sure that I don’t accidentally end up in the washer or one of the moving boxes with candle holders, books, bed sheets, and other things. I am trying to stay out of their way and only come out for a hug when they get sad about leaving all of you.

Right now I am on an emotional roller coaster as much as Pr. Pam and Gunnar are. (Yes, teddy bears have feelings, too!) On one hand we are all excited about the new ministry at Peace Lutheran Church. (I wonder if they will let me lead a bible study for stuffed animals there … ) On the other hand we don’t want to say good bye to all of you and we will miss you a lot.

By the time the newsletter is published, we will have moved into our new home already, getting unpacked and settled. You will be focusing on the next steps for South Lyon Power & Light and All Saints. It won’t be easy since both campuses will have to deal with the transition but I am not worried at all because you already have a great pastor and awesome staff at the Hartland campus and you will have a great leader at South Lyon Power & Light. And: you are not alone in all of this; God is with you! If you focus on God’s love both campuses will come out of this time of transition even stronger, and they will thrive.

Gunnar, Pr. Pam and I are grateful for the time we got to spend with all of you and for the wonderful ministry we got to do together as children of the light and disciples of Jesus Christ. Thank you!

And thank you for bearing with me all this time. (At some point I was convinced that the only people reading my articles were Pr. Pam’s mission director and her mom. But then I found out that my audience is actually way bigger J )

I will miss sharing my thoughts with you, but maybe Peace LC would consider hiring me as a staff writer. I am an outgoing bear after all.

There is only one last favor I have to ask of you. Whoever happens to be the new mission developer at South Lyon Power & Light: Make sure they bring their teddy bear!

Love,

Pelle

When you are as great as I am, it’s hard to be humble!

No: I didn’t say that. That was Muhammad Ali. Although I think I am a great teddy bear: I am handsome, I am smart, I am loving, I am caring, I am the most qualified leader of a whole bunch of stuffed animals, I am very gifted in counseling, I am an outstanding writer, and I work hard. One should think that I deserve some benefits from that. But then I came across a parable that made me think:

A woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart, was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the papers and get depressed.

Oh, she said. And she left the store without buying anything.

If I did things only if there were a reward in store for me, I wouldn’t get much done. Maybe it’s not the right thing to expect benefits for myself all the time. Maybe I should just do what I have to do  – for God, for others, and not for myself.

Yours Pelle

(Source of the parable: Migan McKenna in Parables, cited in Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, 359.)

REGULAR events at South Lyon Power & Light:

Sundays:           8:15 AM                        Worship Team Rehearsal

9:10 AM                        Worship

Fridays:              9:02 AM                        Women’s Bible Study

Hello Ladies:

come, join us for our women’s bible study on “Bad Girls of the Bible” on Friday mornings at 9 AM at South Lyon Power & Light. We are a relaxed group that is looking forward to exchange ideas, thoughts and questions about bible stories with you.

Recently I was sitting on Pr. Pam’s desk in her home office, keeping her some company while she was working on her sermon and checking e-mails. After a while she got a phone call and I couldn’t help but listening in on the conversation. I forgot what most parts of the conversation were about (which is good in terms of confidentiality anyway). But the story the person on the other end was telling her stuck with me, and I want to share it with you:

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a little girl going back and forth between the surf’s edge and the beach. Back and forth the little girl went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was stuck by the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached the girl continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As he came up to the girl he said, “You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. What difference can it possibly make?” The girl looked at the man. She then stooped down, picked up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. Then she turned back to the man and said, “It sure made a difference to that one!”

We can make a difference too – one at a time!

Yours Pelle

REGULAR events at South Lyon Power & Light:

Sundays:          

8:15 AM                        Worship team rehearsal

9:10 AM                        Worship

Wednesdays:

10:00 – 11:00 AM        jobseekers breakfast

(hosted by South Lyon Power & Light in September, St. Joseph Catholic Church in October)

Women’s bible study is starting soon!

In case you didn’t get to hear the sermon, here is the God Moment:

South Lyon Power & Light was doing a car wash in South Lyon – not as a fundraiser but in order to show some kindness to the people in this community. We were washing their cars for free, and even handed a dollar to the people who came and had their cars washed. Some stopped and said they didn’t have the time to have their cars washed but wanted to support us, thinking we were doing a fundraiser. They were astounded when we said: “Well, then take at least the dollar if you can’t stay to have your car washed.” Most of them were speechless because they wanted to pay US and didn’t expect that we would do something for THEM.

People’s responses were:

-         Are you serious?

-         Why would you do that?

-         Or they were just shaking their heads, saying nothing.

Others were really hard to convince that we wouldn’t take any money. In one case we were only partly successful. One gentleman had given one of the kids from our mission team a few dollars to pay for the car wash, and he insisted that we would take the money. But we didn’t. We could at least persuade him to take his money back, although he wouldn’t accept the dollar from us.

To summarize our experience: The expression on people’s faces was priceless as one mission team member put it.

But there is an aftermath to this story.

We managed to wash 16 cars that day, which was okay, although we were hoping for more. We had 50 dollars in one dollar bills available. Since we didn’t get the chance to give all of the 50 dollars away there was money left.

At 2:00 PM we wrapped everything up and most of us headed home.

I head a meeting scheduled at 3:00PM at SLPL. While waiting for the family I was going to meet with I was pondering about the money we had left. It just didn’t seem right to save it for another occasion because if had washed 50 cars it would have been gone any way. The fact that I was pretty hungry at that point and ready to order a pizza at the Pizza Service next door gave me the idea. But first I had to make it through that meeting on an empty stomach.

After the meeting I went over to the pizza place, and ordered my pizza. The young man behind the counter asked if this was all, or if there was anything else he could do for me. I said: “Actually, yes. There is something you can do for me.” I gave him 10 dollar bills and asked him to take $10 off the next customers’ bill. I left one of our connect cards with him as well in case that person wanted to know where this came from. My pizza was supposed to be ready in about 10 minutes.

I sat on the stairs in front of our storefront, waiting and thinking. Had I done the right thing? What if the Pro Pizza employee kept the money for himself? And the I thought: Well, I guess I have to trust God on that. God will make sure that the money goes, where it is supposed to.

And it worked exactly the way I had planned it. The next customer got $10 off their bill. Another young man was about to walk into the pizza place, and I still had money left. So I gave him 10 dollars as well for his meal. I still had money left, and walked over to the party store and tried the same thing. THAT did not work so well – at least not in the beginning. The employee there did keep the money for himself. But my trust in God paid off. When I walked into the parking lot to put some things in my car, a pickup truck stopped next to me, with a whole family in it – Mom, Dad, and two children. The dad told me that he had overheard my conversation with the party store employee, and wanted to let me know that things didn’t go the way I intended them to. He by the way would have been the customer to get $10 off his bill, which didn’t happen. I told him to wait a minute and walked into the party store. I confronted the employee with what had  happened, and got my money back. I had to work hard in order to convince that family in the pickup to take the money. They told me that they don’t need it and that I should give it to someone more needy. But finally I was successful.

By that time my pizza was ready. The young man from next door brought it over to me, and I tipped him very well because I still had money to give away. Why shouldn’t he be one of the people we were sharing God’s love with. We now have exactly one dollar left from our last outreach event.

Then I took my small BBQ-Fajita-Chicken pizza, locked the door, got in my car and drove away. While driving out of South Lyon I was thinking about the experiences of that day. I  could already see the CVS pharmacy at the corner of Pontiac Trail and Silver Lake Road, when it hit me: I hadn’t paid my pizza!

So I turned and went all the way back to the pizza place, walked in, credit card in my hand and said: “I forgot to pay my pizza”. The young man behind the counter said: “Yes you did.” And I said: “And you didn’t remind me.” And he said: “No, I didn’t.”

“But I want to pay for my pizza.”

“I won’t let you.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you have done so much for others today and now it’s your turn.”

I responded: “But the whole point is to do something for others unconditionally, without asking anything in return. We don’t want to take anything today, we want to just give.”

And he said: “I know. But the pizza isn’t for your church. It’s for you.”

And then he turned around and walked into the back of the store taking care of his pizza oven, leaving me there with my credit card in my hand and a pretty dumbstruck expression on my face.

Finally it dawned on me that this whole servant evangelism concept had backfired on me, that this was God’s precise timing, and that I had, at that moment, become a “victim” of God’s unconditional love. And I must admit: I have never had a BBQ-Fajita-Chicken pizza that tasted sooooo good!

God gives love and grace freely to anybody at any time, no strings attached. Go and do likewise!

In August, I went with my family and my dear friend Rudi the rabbit on vacation to Arizona. Of course we did a trip to the Grand Canyon. And while peeking down into the gorge from a side pocket of a backpack I remembered something I once read somewhere:

It is said that one day, a man with a small child stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon peering over the side in speechless wonder at its beauty and magnificence. After a long silence, the daughter looked up and said to her dad, “Wow! Something must have happened here.”

Being a PT (Pastor’s Teddy) I couldn’t help it but compare the Grand Canyon to the kingdom of God. I thought about the future, and what it has in store for us: At some point people will stand in the midst of God’s complete kingdom and say: “Wow! Something must have happened here.”

People will look in awe at a world that has completely changed. Hatred will have changed into love, fear will have changed into confidence, racism will have changed into friendship, hunger will have changed into satisfaction, darkness will have changed into light, death will have changed into life.

And now the question is: Do we want to be part of this?

I certainly would not want to dig a hole into the ground that has the size of the Grand Canyon. I am way too small and couldn’t even hold a shovel. And the Colorado River has taken care of this already anyway.

But God’s kingdom has not yet developed its full beauty yet. There is still a lot of work to do. Don’t get me wrong: we are not the ones who make it happen. God will make it happen - with or without us. But the question still is: Do we want to be a part of this? Do we want to help make it happen?

I sure do, because it is a wonderful work. It is not just hard work, but also a lot of fun. How cool would it be to look at something a billion times more beautiful than the Grand Canyon and say: Wow, something has happened here and I am part of it!

So, let’s grab our tools and get to work!

Yours Pelle

REGULAR events at South Lyon Power & Light:

(Summer schedule)

Sundays:                     8:15 AM              Worship team rehearsal

9:10 AM               Worship

You know: being a teddy bear isn’t always easy. There are a lot of high expectations when it comes to being a stuffed animal. I am expected to comfort when times are tough for my human family. I am expected to give advice when decisions need to be made. I am expected to listen to problems.  I am expected to keep my mouth shut when humans need to concentrate and ponder. I am expected to snuggle and hug. I am expected to travel with my family, whatever crazy trip this may be. I am expected to encourage and support. I am expected to make my families’ needs first priority. On the other hand I am as much dependent on them as they depend on me. I am dependent on their love. I am dependent on their care. I depend on them looking after me. Their care enables me to do what I am supposed to. I am like a little baby bird that depends on their parents to feed it and teach it how to fly. Little birds can only grow and fly on their own if their parents take good care of them in the first place.

It is the same with South Lyon Power & Light. There are high expectations in terms of growth and success. But like a baby bird, South Lyon Power & Light can only grow and learn how to fly if there is love, support and care from the parent. You can’t just kick a bird out of the nest right after it hatched from the egg. If you do that it’ll die.  It needs to be fed. It needs love, and it needs support. Then it will grow, and finally fly out into the world.

If South Lyon Power & Light is meant to grow, to be successful and to be out in the world spreading God’s love, then this mission needs to be fed, supported and loved.

Yours Pelle