From the Pastors Desk - January 07, 2024
As many of you know, our daughter, Anne, works as an undergraduate research assistant for one of her professors. The lab she works in contains years of experiments in current states of use or left abandoned by past graduate and undergraduate assistants. While she was working this summer, a group of unfamiliar faces appeared. The Ohio EPA had come to pay a visit. Although the lab had no serious violations, the EPA did order them to clean up, especially after one of the ladies walked across the floor yelling “Sticky! Sticky! Sticky! Sticky!” Unfortunately, that clean up became a major undertaking. Years of past experiments, some older than the students currently working there, had to be discarded properly in various waste bags. There were many days that the task at hand seemed insurmountable. At one point, Anne and another undergrad stopped to take a break. The other student looked at Anne and flatly stated “We are doing the best we can!”
“We are doing the best we can!” has become somewhat of a motto in our household now. When the going gets tough, or something just isn’t working out, usually Anne or I exclaim that famous phrase and frequently start laughing. We have found it best to stop, take a breath or a break, and then start again.
I suspect “We are doing the best we can!” is the way things are going to be at Good Shepherd for a while until we get used to not having Ed around. Although Ed has left us in a good spot by organizing so many things ahead of time, I’m sure there are things that we will discover along the way that we had forgotten about. I don’t expect this transition to be seamless.
Thank you to all who have volunteered to help take on Ed’s office responsibilities. I will be taking on the bulletins and newsletter since I am already familiar with the program and have access to the full worship service information. Please send your announcements or information for those items to my email or the church office email, or you can always call me or hand me notes on Sunday morning too. I plan to print the bulletins on Thursday so we will keep the weekly bulletin deadline on Wednesday. We’ll also keep the newsletter deadline on the 20th of each month as it remains now. We’ll see how that goes, and if it needs changed we’ll change it. Thank you to all who have offered to help with the bulletins and newsletters, but, unfortunately, I have to have the process firmly in hand before I can train someone else to do it.
For all the rest of you who are taking on additional responsibilities, please let me know who you are and what responsibilities you are taking. Communication is going to be key in getting this whole process working well. If you have questions, call or email me. I may not have the answers, but we will figure it out together, and remember, “We are doing the best we can!”
Faithfully,
Lei Fahrner
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