Parliamentarian

This morning I took a test to become a parliamentarian, and passed it! The reason I have been working on this is that I attend so many meetings that attempt to use parliamentary procedure, but waste a lot of time because people don't know what that procedure is. The test was 100 questions, and I had 300 questions to study. I could relate many of the questions to situations I have experienced in meetings where the procedure was not followed. We had three workshops at this Parliamentarian conference at the Highlander near the Manchester airport. One workshop was on how to prepare an agenda. Another was on making evaluation forms. The third was on rescinding a past action. We also had a panel of experts that we could ask questions of. One person on the panel lives in Merrimack. Small world.

Community Church of Hudson

On March 18 I preached at the Community Church of Hudson, which was looking for an Interim Minister. It was love at first sight for both the church and me. The Deacons moved quickly to put together the Terms of Call, and I began my term as pastor on April 1. It is a 35 minute commute, (less than the 45 minutes to Tilton where I pastored for 3 years). The church building is HUGE! We could re-locate an African tribe, and still have room to spare. There is a Thrift Store in the church, run by the Women's Fellowship. I am thinking about re-doing my wardrobe with the goodies displayed there. So far it has been more the recipient than the seller -- everyone we know wants to clean out their closets and have us take clothes to it!
I preached my first sermon as pastor on Easter. There were 93 people, 25 of them were children and young people, 3 were seminarians, and our daughter, Loralee and son-in-law, Aaron came too! We now have a Children's Message and Youth message built into the service. There are many middle school students, and I look forward to spending time with them.
It is a joy to be back in the church pastoring after an 8-month break!
I continue to teach my course in Human Growth at St. Anselm, 24 freshmen in nursing, all female, and very lovable. I am also doing recruitment and training for Child Care Resource & Referral at Easter Seals. So if you are wondering why I haven't called you....

Latest Wiley News

Everything has happened quite fast, and I just haven't been able to keep up with this blog site. But here is our update:

MY FATHER came home from the hospital after having a bleeding ulcer mid-February, but then had a stroke, so went back, and has been in the hospital, rehab, and skilled nursing until Friday, April 13. It has been hard to see him stripped of his dignity, unable to talk, and reduced to the level of an 18 month old. There is always the feeling that we should spend more time with him, and every spare minute is either spent with him or feeling guilty for not being with him. Due to his health, we are not planning any mission trips in the near future.

MISSIONS: We have had the joy of presenting the story of our trip to the Czech Republic at 3 churches.

We led worship at Campton Congregational Church in northern New Hampshire, and were pleasantly surprised to find my brother-in-law's brother is a member of the congregation! Needless to say, we had to go out to lunch and catch up on family news.

Our second presentation was at a Missions Night in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Yes, right next to Plimoth Plantation and the Mayflower. We felt like we should have worn Pilgrim costumes! It was a fun evening. We brought things from Prague, and handed them out to the people there, asking them to guess what each was!

Our third presentation was in East Freetown on Sunday morning. It is a beautiful chapel, 
and the pastor is a DEAR friend, so we made many new friends there, and were treated to
breakfast/lunch afterwards!