2012 City of Nelson Easter Egg Hunt

Let me tell you what happened….

On Monday, April 2, 2012, I popped in to the City Council meeting for the city of Nelson.  As I sat there, the Council started discussing what they were going to do with the money that the typically donate to assist a church with their Easter Egg Hunt.  As they discussed, I heard that small, still voice in the back of my head say, “Tell them that Serve Church will do it.”  I immediately pushed back.  ”No.  There is only 5 days until they want it done.  I can’t do it and it not suck.  5 days isn’t enough time.  God, you are barking up the wrong tree.”

Fast forward 2 minutes and I find myself standing behind the podium telling the City Council that Saturday at 6:30 would be a GREAT time.  What had happened?!?!  What did I just get myself into?  Now I have to go home and tell my wife.  Crap!  She’s going to kill me!!!  I have hardly any money in the church checking account!

The City Council allowed me to use the baseball field and walking trail here in town.  I would at least have a venue!

Within a few hours, I had already received a telephone call from Gary Lamb of Action Church saying that they would take care of the eggs and candy, I just needed to focus on getting the word out and planning the event.  The next day (Tuesday), Gary called to tell me that I had 900 eggs with more coming. I contacted everyone that I knew to be a praying individual and told them to knock down God’s door with prayers.  I knew one thing for sure; I couldn’t do this without God.

I still had to get the word out to the community so I went to the post office and took advantage of the Every Door Direct Mail program.  If you do mailers, you REALLY need to check out that program.  It cost me $30 to hit 204 mailboxes.  It was literally next day mail advertising.

I decided to hide the eggs empty, have the kids bring them back and we would, in turn, give them a bag of candy.  Seemed mutually beneficial to me.  They get lots of candy, we get to keep the eggs for next year.

My wife and I started stuffing paper bags.  We put 4 cups of candy in each bag, but it looked so empty.  The problem was that we only had about $300.00 worth of candy.

The next day (Wednesday), I sent out the fliers and I made realized that I had lent out my sound system that I intended on using.  Panic set in!  Phone call after phone call was a dead end.

I got a phone call letting me know that I have enough candy to feed the entire population of Texas.  I’m just exaggerating a little bit.  Gary went to a church in Chattanooga, Origin Church, to pick up some items for their Thrift Store.  He had been offered 75,000 pieces of Milky Way candy and took every one of them for me.  This is no exaggeration; if I had poured out all the candy into the bed of my pickup, it would not have fit.

On Thursday, I collected some eggs and set about the day resigned that i would not have music playing at the Egg Hunt.  Some people came over to the house and started filling bags with candy.  We had a lot of candy.  A lot.  Lots.  We literally filled brown paper bags with so much candy, we were afraid that they would rip.  8 cups of candy in each bag.  We only used 30,000 pieces of the 75,000 we got.  We still had a lot of candy.  

I got a phone call from Revolution Church.  Chad Elliot and Thad Wood were coming through in a pinch with a sound system for me.  What a relief.

I worked all day on Friday so not much really got done.

Saturday rolled around.  The big day.  I got to the ball field around 3 and started getting things unloaded.  Volunteers started showing up.  Things started getting done.  Eggs were hidden, The sign in table was put together.  The music was loud enough to stop traffic!  Everything was done and ready to go by 5:00.  Then it hit me.  What if no one showed up?

i walked around the walking track.  Honestly, I am lucky that God didn’t strike me down.  It looked like the scene in The Apostle where Robert Duvall is yelling at God.  Then 6:00 came and people started showing up.  More people came.  More. More. More. It was overwhelming!

All told, here is the final count.  I have run the number several time because I just can’t believe them.

200: number of people that showed up

3500: number of  eggs put out to be found

$6862.50: the monetary value of candy that was distributed back into our community

72: the number of volunteer hours in 5 days

1: the number of communities Served!

I am beat down right now because it is 1 in the morning.  I can’t wait to see how this event changes the future of Serve Church and the City of Nelson.

My Comfortable Life

I had someone say to me the other day, “You’re just comfortable where you are.”  I understand what they were saying.  The context was that I was comfortable in my life and I needed to take a step of faith.  But after I got to thinking, I decided to list how comfortable my life is.  So here is the tip of the iceberg.

My life is so comfortable that I get to:

1. Put on a uniform every day that makes people HATE me just because I wear it.
2. Put on a bullet proof vest in case someone decides to try and take my life that day.
3. Drive around in a car that is constantly scrutinized for every time I do something that someone perceives as wrong.
4. Place my financial livelihood in jeopardy every time I arrest someone for doing something wrong.  That is regardless of if I do everything right.  
5. Try to undo 15 years of bad parenting in 15 minutes.
6. Resolve issues in 20 minutes between two people who hated each other so much they decided to get a divorce. 
7. Tear apart families because Daddy hits Mommy or vice-versa.  
8. Take children from parents who cannot care for them properly.
9. Babysit a drunk person because they cannot be adults and act responsibly.
10. Instruct my family on how to act whenever I use our “safe word” if I ever have to shoot someone when I am out shopping because I arrested them in the past.
11. Go everywhere with a gun within arm’s reach.
12. Tell people that their loved one won’t be coming home because they were involved in an accident.
13. Go to work every day knowing that I may have to send one of my Officers to a call that could get them killed.
14. Look in the mirror EVERY DAY and know that today might be the day that I have to take another human being’s life.
15. Wash the blood off of my hands and uniform before I get home to tuck my children into bed.

Please know my heart in this.  I am not complaining.  I happily do this job because it is a calling from God on my life.  It is my ministry.  There are a lot of good things too.  In many ways, I am comfortable in my job.  But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops.  

Maybe I’ll do a post on the good things in the future.

To My Miscarried Child

To my miscarried child,

Hey there!  I know you don’t know who I am, but my name is Brian.  I was going to be your Daddy when you were born.  I don’t know if you were going to be a boy or a girl, but I know that your Mommy, Lacey, and I sure were excited to know that you were coming.  But being pregnant makes mommy very sick.  We had started getting things together as soon as we found out God was going to bless us with you.  We even had a whole bunch of names picked out.  Your big brother Declan was super excited to learn that he was going to have a little brother or sister.  Declan would have been 5 when you were born.  He’s a rambunctious little boy and would have taught you some pretty cool things like how to climb trees and ride a bike.

But God had different plans for you.  When your Mommy was 11 weeks pregnant with you, she went to the doctor’s office to listen to your heartbeat and maybe get a chance to see you for the first time.  I was working and got a phone call from your Mommy.  She was crying.  She told me that the doctors could not find your heartbeat.  Despite all of my praying and begging God to let you live, he didn’t.  I don’t know why that is, but I do know that God is in control and that he had his reasons for taking you back to him.  I won’t lie, it still hurt.  It still hurts today, and it will still hurt for the rest of my life.  Your Mommy and I didn’t do anything wrong.  We did everything that we knew to do to keep you healthy and safe while you were being made.

Just so you know, Mommy and I miss you.  And we love you very much.  I don’t know what life would have been like with you but it isn’t the same without you.  Mommy and I had another baby though.  His name is Wyatt and he is very much like his brother.  Maybe one day we will all be able to meet you in Heaven.  I don’t know what it’s like there, but you do.  Maybe you could ask Jesus if we could talk to you when we get there.  I want to know everything about you that I didn’t get to learn before you died.

Love you,

Daddy