Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

November-December 2004

A Christmas Letter

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

I have been getting a lot of Christmas letters, full of fun and sometimes not-so-fun summaries of a year. A year in the life of someone I know, someone I care about, someone who has touched my life and who continues to share their life with me. My teacher friends the Stump's told me of their trip to Japan with a whole bunch of their students. My cousin Gregg is in the mission field in Indonesia. My friend Sheri went to Egypt to discover another world and crawled through pyramids. Then some letters talked of harder times, of struggles with health, struggles to let go of the pain of being parted when people you love have gone on before you to heaven, of retirement and moving. These gifts of life stories have been shaping me and becoming the lens by which I am finally starting to get ready for Christmas. It is in these stories, our stories, and my story that Jesus comes to be born again at Christmas, to walk in our worlds and become part of our stories. For that is what family does, it shares the stories of life. Glorious and tragic, happy and sad, all the stories that make up a year of preparation, our time of Advent before we are born again with Christ in joy and struggle.

So since so many of your stories have touched me, I thought that I owed you a Christmas letter back. (I'll try and make it short, but I kind of have a problem with that. As a few of you have mentioned (^.^)

END OF DECEMBER/JANUARY: I remember the mad scramble to get ready for Christmas last year, the Christmas program and then after Play Practice on the 28th leaving for Georgia to see my sisters, their husbands, my nephews and my younger brother after such a long time. It was so good to see them, and especially Mark again after such a long time and know he was ok. Then the scurry to get back home in time for worship. Taking buss tickets to a man who had gotten a job and was trying to put his life together again. The really cool "scooby-do type" Dinner Theater "And Then There Was One Two". That was fun and lots of work and all the surprising talent we have in our church, from Tricia and Liz, a new side of Matt and our youngest actor Precyus. Then we went to St. Paul UMC for our next two-day seminar on Evangelism and becoming a welcoming church called "Fire Seeds." A lot of learning and hope. Then weekly meetings to try and make that training bring about some fruit.

FEBRUARY: But every thing is not big scheduled group events, some of the gems are small things. I had one of our church people, Tricia make an appointment with me to watch the movie "Almighty Bruce" since she wanted to talk to me about how God was illustrated in it and I was never going to get around to seeing it. My life has gems strewn all through it. I had forgotten that one. The UM Men have their big Valentine's Party at the Old Country Buffet and once again it is good to eat with family and laugh and sing. Got to teach the early morning Bible Study for the UM Women and once again it was a joy. I made too many handouts, like I always do, but it was still good. And then we have our wonderful Ash Wednesday Pancake Feed and then the worship service that starts Lent. It is easy to forget the majesty of the work we are a part of and that God continues to create. The cycle of the Church Year where we remember the salvation story helps me remember that we are not alone in this and no matter how small other people see us to be, we are part of something glorious. Then we got even busier and had a Nuke-Con Game Day, where we invite the local gaming science fiction group to rent out our basement and we stock the concession stand to raise money for apportionments and get them to advertise our name and address all over the city to people who we would never meet. It is a great success (Taylor had to try out all the miniatures games.) Then we rush to get everything ready for Bishop Moncure who has finally made it to Olive Crest. Because he had to cancel visiting three times, this time he preaches for us on Sunday and is was powerful.

MARCH: I'm going to have to start leaving lots of stuff out. This is getting long. But we think the dishwasher is dead and we can't figure out how to buy a new one, but Harry Vacek and Jack Thraen, and a friend of Harry's managed to fix it even though the repair people said it was a gonner. (Guess they wanted to sell us a new one, sigh.) But I remember the feeling of relief. I found a "Temporary" sign with 5 inch letters that we could put out front (I found it at the Sam's in Iowa). We can't afford a new Marquee, so this will do. Ron Holling built us a frame for it and we now can advertise to the traffic driving by. Of course the wind kept blowing all the letters off, so now we have a cover that Velcro's over the top. Makes it a real pain to change letters, but we have a sign. And that is the difference between $400 and $4,000, so we can put up with some frustration. I wanted a new sign board for so many years, this is cool. I really have to speed this up. We went to Gibson's movie "The Passion" as a group and then came back and discussed it. I'm glad we went as a group. I don't think I wanted to see that by myself. We have our fabulous "Rummage/Garage/Yard" Sale at the church and raised lots of money for our Apportionment Mission giving. It was wonderful, and lots of work.

APRIL: Then I got to do a wedding just before Maundy or Holy Thursday Upper Room Service and Good Friday Tennebrae Service of Darkness or the Death of Jesus. Those are so powerful evening services. Then Easter hits, with an explosion of light after night and lots of excitement. Then I went off to my five-day workshop on "Self Differentiated Leadership." It is giving me tools to grow and try to keep moving forward. I know that I am not all God sees me to be and I need to grow.

MAY/JUNE: Ok, more weddings. But I mean it this time. I have to compress some time here. And some more weddings. Then Annual Conference, where all the Church's in Nebraska send delegates and their preachers to plot the course of next years work together, establish the budget, and learn about what each other are doing. I got some more special Fair Trade Coffee's and Teas and learned how to get some to the special ones directly. We started up a beginning Board Game Night on Sunday nights to help build community for our planned for evening worship service. Also got my Van's transmission rebuilt again (under warrantee, fantastic). I got a bunch of friends to help me, rented scaffolding and we painted mom and dad's house in Elkhorn. I kept diluting the paint by dripping sweat into it. I don't know why it is so much hotter only 30 feet higher in the air. But even my hands were sweating.

JULY: We had a special Fire Works celebration at the church in the parking lot and it was great fun with lots of families gathering to be part of it. I really enjoyed it when some of the more genteel "older" ladies got into the sparklers. That was as much fun as the kids. Our Vacation Bible School was wild and wonderful as always. I led a course, another one of those "Christianity 101" things I am trying to get together to help us grow new members. It was fun though and the kids were wild :)

AUGUST: Ok, go faster Michael, last page for sure. Went visiting other church services to learn how to do a new worship service, had good times. Learned a lot, but it is going to be harder than we thought. Still, we can do this. Put new insulation in the roof of the Computer lab that had leaked when the furnace and air-conditioning people put holes in the roof. It took us all day and was really dusty. But working with that team was a really great experience. Took the Youth on a Rally down to Ralston. They were great, the band was loud and the only time I really got excited was when they played things they had not written. Oh well. It was still good to go. The speaker was great thought :)

SEPTEMBER: We finish the Computer Lab room rebuilding by putting in new ceiling tile to go with the new lights. That was cool, but harder than it looks. Ok, this has got to wind up soon.

OCTOBER: We did another great Tymna Vacek and Company rummage sale. I walked with a bunch of kids and brave adults and two dogs on the CROP walk and we made it the whole 10 kilometers. (And we were not the last group to finish.) Got to go on my four day Vacation to Mile Hi Science Fiction Con in Denver again. We used the van Dad bought at the garage sale and blew a tire outside of Lincoln. But we made it there, though I missed my first panel. Jeff & Gabrielle Staben, Kurt Lambrecht, Deb & Precyus Merriweather and I all crammed into the van and into a hotel room so we could all afford it. It brought back my days as a college student. But it was also great fun. My Sunday worship service is growing and the author guest of honor came to worship with us, Elizabeth Moon. It was a splendid vacation, but way too short. Need at least one more day.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER: We had a special Voting Day Hospitality Suite at the church for people who came to vote. We served cookies and coffee to the long lines of people waiting to vote and had a Chile Feed downstairs in the evening for those who hadn't had time to eat. Down to counting lines. Ok, we had some struggles with money in the church, but was also had some miracles. Also had some miracles in my own family as Dad got recalled to active duty and is now serving a church in Arnold Nebraska full time till the end of July. I think it will help with our family money, but we sure miss him. But he sure picked up speed being the pastor in charge again. It is great to see, though I wish he was closer. Five hours is really far away when I'm used to seeing him every day.

The house in Elkhorn is still not sold, but we are really close to having everything finished, fixed, improved and cleaned up. Hope to get the rest done a few days after Christmas. That would be a blessing so we could concentrate on Turtle Manor, the Omaha house we are rebuilding. Need to get a chair lift so mom can get up and down the stairs and install it. But that is for next year.

The church family has acted like God's family and much love has been shared even in the midst of fussing this year. We have been anxious and we have also been hopeful. We are making plans to grow and reach out to different people than already here.

Our Day Care director Carolyn Hempfling of 13 years retired and Pat Kern joined our family as the new director and our Day Care seems to have survived the transition and is starting to grow and get healthy again. One very special blessing was that both the Omaha District of the United Methodist Church and the Nebraska Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church mission outreach committee (called Revitalization Grants Committee) approved one of the many grant proposals I wrote. This second one will enable us to reach out and help people file their taxes for free, especially poor folk and older folk that can sometimes get taken during this time. We are setting up a VITA site with the IRS using our computer lab and Internet connection. We are trying to live like Jesus and help those in need and this looked like something we could help with that others could not.

I look back on my year and I am blessed. Thank you all so very much for being part of the blessing. Let's continue the excitement.

Your brother-in-Christ,
Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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