It’s good to be back. And I really do mean that. I enjoyed the sabbatical immensely, and I will say another “thank you” to everyone who got it set up – the sabbatical team – as well as everyone who stepped up to cover for me while I was gone. I know you were in good hands with Pastor Dew.
It was, of course, a wonderfully relaxing time. I feel detoxed, now, from the stresses of the last few years, and am ready to look at new things. While some people would do one thing on sabbatical – say, meditate at a Scottish monastery for three months – I couldn’t do that. I was busy, but none of it was church work. Moving is enjoyable to me, and reduces stress.
In case you’re wondering what all I did, here’s the recap again:
Took the boys to Show Low for a week. Saw the Renaissance Faire there, Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, and some of the lakes and woods around.
Flew to Michigan for a Hammar family reunion. Caught up with my sister and all sorts of Hammars I hadn’t seen in a while (or ever).
My old apartment in Sweden - the first floor to the right of the door.
Flew to Sweden for two week, just me and Kristie. We landed in Stockholm, went north to Uppsala and Gävle, where Kristie was an exchange student. Saw her old high school and her host family. Then went to Dalarna for a day (where they make the orange horses), and down to Kalmar where I lived for two years. I got to see the old apartment building, the old church, and the castle I used to bike to as a kid. Went back to Stockholm and home. Did everything by train, bus, and foot.
Got the boys (the two youngest) on the bus for the first day of school.
Kristie and me on Grand Mesa
Jumped in the 4Runner and went to Colorado. Originally, we were going to camp Colorado and Utah, but when we saw the temperatures in Utah, decided to stay in the elevation. Our first stop was to Colorado Springs to visit Kristie’s mom in a nursing home. We then camped in state parks for three weeks (with a few hotel nights to cleanup), and came back home in time to bring Karl up to NAU.
I stayed home for a few days, then, watching the boys while Kristie had to go back to Colorado Springs when her mom was dying. She passed on September 1st.
Then I took off to Mesa Verde National Park for four days, before driving back to Colorado Springs to meet up with the family for Kristie’s mom’s funeral on September 15th. From there I took the 4Runner and my two bikes and headed to the family cabin in northern Minnesota.
Got to try out some kayaking this fall. The lakes were mostly quiet, as it was after Labor Day and all the weekend warriors and jet skiers had gone home.
All in all I got to spend a lot of time outdoors, in woods and parks, places I find a lot of peace. Minus taking care of Kristie’s mom, most things went as planned.
I took a ton of pictures, of course, and am busy uploading them to my account on flickr.com. When that’s done, I’ll give you links to the particular albums with sabbatical pictures, and do a couple forums on a Sunday with a super-abbreviated slide show.
Of course, it was a huge joy to see the sanctuary renovations finished. I really had planned to have them almost done before I left. Things came up, of course, that weren’t predicted, delaying everything. A big thank you to everyone who managed that – especially Sam Lyth who was the project manager – and to everyone for their patience in worshiping in the fellowship hall and moving chairs, and to everyone for your generosity in the capital campaign that made it all happen.
We still have some finishing work to do. The mural on the back wall is undone. I’m working on lining up the artist. We have some things to build – kneelers, banner poles, music stand etc. – that should get made in the next few months. The big dragon to slay at this point is the audio system.
The sanctuary is 21 years old now, and changes have been made in several waves over the years. Most of the time, the solution was to keep adding more cables to more mics and more boards and more speakers. This has left us with a jungle of cables under the front altar area, many of which are unused. In addition, the mass is picking up electrical interference from lights and power cables, and a lot of National Public Radio. The solution, in the short run, was to re-route the speakers and cut out the line from the band to the computer. This stopped the awful buzzing sound, but it means no sound from any instruments goes directly to the computer to go online. The podium and pastor’s mics, however, go straight to the back, so they’re unaffected. What we’ve been doing is putting portable mics in front of the instruments to pick up the sound through the air. Not a great fix, but it at least allows people online to hear. This is why we had a couple weeks of really weak musical audio.
The solution is probably going to involve a laborious cleansing and inventorying of cables and wires, followed by some re-stringing. Our techies have been hard at work, but it could take a bit to fix 20 years of accumulated cable. Thanks for your patience.
But these are just the fine tunings of a big project. The carpet looks wonderful. The lights are bright. The band and choir sit up and can be heard so much better. The shortened pews give us more reasonable seating capacity and flexibility. It all turned out about as well as planned.
Now I move on to things in the future. I’ll be catching up with people, making visits, and planning Advent and Christmas (we have to be early in the office with these things). We have a new strategic plan to start implementing, and a new member class coming up this month. Things keep moving, our church keeps moving, and the Spirit keeps moving.
Pastor Lars