My Happy Hallowe'en Birthday Present

Hallowe'en and Reformation Day greetings to all!

The past few months I have been away from my Vox blog, as I did not have secure internet access, having taken up residence in a one bedroom apartment, while our new house was built.

We moved in yesterday, so today I woke up on my 59th birthday, on Hallowe'en, in a new home, the first we have ever known.

You see, for 36 years, while I was a fulltime pastor (I retired July 1, 2009), we lived in church-owned parsonages. With one exception, all our parsonages were fine, meeting conference standards, mostly. Only one place would come close to the movie line, "What a dump!" Fortunately our stay at that one was relatively brief.

We live in a two bedroom custom rancher with a double garage, large kitchen, dining room, and living room with a fireplace, an attic over the garage, two full bathrooms, and in the rear of the house, a sun room looking out on a tranquil pond (the neighbor's pond).

Canada geese come to the pond, but by now they have migrated away. Still, turtles inhabit the waters, regularly surfacing on logs and rocks to sun themselves (Well, wouldn't you do that, too?).

Am I fully retired?

No way.

I still pastor, but instead of two churches full time, I have two country churches which are very part time, about 1/5th of a United Methodist pastor's salary in our conference. Basically I just drive to these two churches on Sunday morning to hold their services, then return and am available to them during the week, if they really need me. I make my parish office here in my new home in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

Oh, and I have three other part time jobs, too.

You probably know that I like to walk, a lot.

So I work part time serving two walking routes for a once-a-week paper called The Merchandiser, delivering to about 400 homes right around where we now live.

And my last but not least part time job is as a Leader in Weight Watchers International.

I have a regular meeting I lead in Hanover, every Friday morning at 10 at the WW traditional storefront location. And I have been accepting substitute Leader or Receptionist invitations to the area, places like Thomasville, Chambersburg, Mechanicsburg, York, and Carlisle.

Even with five jobs, part time, I do not work more than 30 hours per week, which suits me just fine.

My dear wife, Chris, has also found part time (25-30 hours per week) employment as a medical receptionist at a nearby counseling service. This is the same kind of work she did 2003-2008 in southern Maryland.

We are both life-long Marylanders (although she was born and spent her first year in Maine). Our decision to relocate to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to the borough of Hanover, was not a hard one, as we had already become familiar with the area while I was pastor in the Manchester, Maryland area, which is just about 15 miles south of here.

Darryl