Love and Respect

I just got back from a luncheon for Pastor's and Ministry Leaders at Victory Worship Center that was put on to promote the upcoming Love and Respect Conference in Tucson.

The conference is based on the idea that love best motivates a woman and respect best motivates a man.

The graphic included here is a little preview of the conference. It represents the crazy cycle. The Crazy Cycle illustrates the negative reactions that occur when a female in a relationship feels unloved, causing the male to feel as if they are not respected, which causes the male to react in a way that causes the female to feel unloved, etc., etc.

The conference is designed to help you jump off the crazy cycle, show you how you can jump onto a cycle that is energizing and rewarding and show you how you can work with a partner that is unresponsive or indifferent.

I'll remind you later about the conference. In the meantime, if you are in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, head on over to the website and consider registering for this conference.

It's all about the branding

I grew up in a small town that had a good number of senior citizens.

At one point in High School, my friend Bill and I were out of work and out of money.

Realizing the first fact and coming to grips with the second, we knew that we needed to make some money. So, what could be better than doing work that helped out the local seniors and got us some money at the same time.

We figured that senior citizens were always looking for help around the house, with yard work and running errands. Since we were nice young men, they would be happy to pay us to do some of these things for us. So, we got to work.

We came up with a name and some fliers, talking about how we could help with errands, dishes, shopping, yard work....whatever older people needed help with, we were there to help. Then, we started distributing the fliers, handing them out at stores, putting them on the doors of seniors or people who had older relatives and we waited for our first call.

It never came.

Looking back, I think we needed some help with the branding process. Our name and slogan read:

Oldhelpers
"If you are old, we can help"

Current Reads.

Here are three books I really am reading right now.

Focus

One of my side jobs at work is to help teach driving skills. Yesterday, I was out teaching evasive techniques to some of the new guys. The drill involved getting up to speed and then waiting for a light to tell you which of three lanes to turn into with your car.

One of the guys in the drill kept clipping the inside cone, regardless of which lane he was taking. I jumped in with him to demonstrate. While I was whipping through the cones, I asked him what he was looking at as he did the course. He explained that he was looking at the lights until they changed, then he was looking at the inside cone so he could try to go around it.

The one he was looking at was the very one he kept hitting.

I told him to focus on the big open lane, not the corner cone as he was driving through the course. After he started doing this, he made it through every time. It seems that if we continue to focus on something, even if it is the something we are trying to avoid, we end up hitting that something nearly every time.

Oh, I also got to do j-turns, powerslides and ride the quads. Feel free to be envious.

What are you....

the Latest From Dinesh

Dinesh D'Souza, the native of India and author whose works include: The End of Racism, Life After Death: The Evidence, What's So Great About Christianity, is releasing a new work entitled: The Roots of Obama's Rage.

Fans of Obama will not appreciate this volume, but it does offer a unique and interesting criticism of the President. His criticism does not consider the President a Socialist, Marxist Anti-Christ or Muslim, as he has been variously accused of being.

He believes the philosophy of the President stems from different experiences than we might consider and how his inspiration is, admittedly, and maybe even more disturbingly, from a different source than most would expect.

This book will be available in about three weeks, for those that would like to look at an alternative and interesting look at the thought life and background of President Obama.

Here is D'Souza's website with more information about this book and others that he has written.

Something Old, Something New

This post is exclusively for those that want a small glimpse into what I have been doing with my time. All others please disregard.

For the past several years, I have been considering how I reconcile my calling as a minister with my calling as a uniformed officer. I am still on that journey to considering if this occupation is a wilderness experience for me to grow and learn (Moses did it for forty years, so my five so far seems paltry), or a lifelong career or something entirely different.

This week, I am a part of a uniformed chaplain's academy, learning how to operate in the capacity of a Chaplain for our Department.

I am already a part of the Peer Support Team and I am not entirely certain how the department will use me in this capacity, but it is a great opportunity to learn and grow.

here is a link to the application that gives a little more information about the course:

Uniformed Chaplain's Academy

Taxing

Yesterday we got our bill (or statement or whatever they call it) for our property taxes in the mail from the County Assessors office.

According to however they decide property values, the value of our house went down about twenty nine thousand dollars from last year. This resulted in a reduction of our property taxes by about twenty nine dollars.

I would have to look at the numbers again to get the exact figures for this, but by extrapolating these numbers, I realized that if my house was condemned as a radioactive, zombie-infested pit that was completely destroyed and the Assessor decided the value was $0, I would still owe about $1,200 every year in property taxes.

It's Classified

In the days before the existence of Craigslist or Ebay, we decided to start a classified Ad Shopper in the Community where we lived. Every week we had 5,000 to 7,000 copies of the Gila Valley Exchange printed up and distributed. People would call us during the week and dictate the classified ads they wanted placed in the Exchange and the paper generated revenue from the ads I sold.

When we first started, as much to fill up space as it was to promote what we were doing, we would sprinkle announcements throughout the old rag. Some of them generated some interesting responses.

One announcement said something like:
"Get rid of you unwanted pets with the Gila Valley Exchange"

A reader called wondering where they could drop off a litter of kittens that they didn't want.

Another announcement, a large banner that covered the top of two pages read:

"Free private party ads in the Gila Valley Exchange!"

One page had the wording "Free private party" and the other side finished the announcement.
So, we had a reader that called and wondered where and when the free private party would be held.

Unfortunately, it was private. They weren't invited.

We sold the paper after a year or so and the new owners were able to almost immediately close up shop.

Everyone should take the time at some point to have a business of their own. It is a wonderful learning experience.

This means war

Just prior to deploying to Saudi Arabia, for the whole Desert Storm thing, we were issued new gas masks. The masks we had were the bug eye style that made you feel claustrophobic and required you to cant your head sideways in order to shoot a rifle. I didn't really like it until they put us through the training, which included standing in a room full of CS gas with your mask on, then removing it and gagging, burning and drooling until they let you out into the fresh air.

The new masks were positively luxurious, with a full face shield that made you feel almost as if you had no mask on at all. At least compared to the other style.

The gas mask was stored in the bag ready to wear. The head strap contraption had six small adjustable straps that helped the mask to sit properly on your head. Four of the straps were kept pre-adjusted so when you put your mask on, all you had to do was pull the straps over your head and tighten the lower two straps for a proper fit.

The first time the alarms sounded, warning of a SCUD attack, we all tossed on our masks and the rest of our protective gear. The pop of the patriot missiles being fired to engage the incoming rockets added to the sense of urgency.

When I tightened the lower two straps on the mask, I pulled a bit harder than I needed to. We had pulled the thing on dozens of times before, but never when we thought we might actually be getting poison-gassed.

Tightening the bottom straps pulled the chin piece back for a snug fit. Tightening the bottom straps more, made your chin feel like it was being shoved into your spine. But, I really didn't feel like loosening the thing up when we were being poison-gassed. Especially when Chris Linko started nervously wondering aloud what it was that he was smelling. If Chris Linko was being gassed to death because he didn't pull his chin strap tight enough, I wasn't about to loosen mine up.

Finally, one of the other guys yanks off his mask and asked us all if the things made our chins hurt too. I guess we all pulled them a little too tight.

When first facing difficult, challenging or frightening times, it seems that it is easy to overreact.