Caring Corner with the Crazy Cuc...

As part of one of my new responsibilities, I’ve been asked to provide an article to help people care for others better. I put together my first instalment and liked it so much, I thought I’d put it up here too. What’s wrong with liking something I’ve put together? Here it is (with slight modifications to suit the audience).


Take out a soda or other beverage of your choice, grab a bag of chips or some other snack, turn off the telephone and disconnect the doorbell. Relieve yourself in the throne room and put a "Do not disturb" sign on your door. Adjust the lighting in the room, and get comfortable in your favourite chair. Make sure you're ready to stay for a while. Then take out that book. It's going to draw you in and you won't want to leave for a long while. It may be a mystery, an action adventure, or maybe a love story. There may be history. It may touch on some present reality. It may even stir some great dreams for the future. But you know it's going to be good. Virtually anyone can enjoy reading a good book - although I have to admit I'd rather watch the movie - but the point is, we can sit and soak in what's coming our way.

My wife, who's now passed away and gone to the only One who loved her more than I, used to regularly say to me "You read me like a book!" and she was right. From the week after we met and she decided I was worth a second look, through our dating time, engagement, marriage, and on to her death 9 ½ years later, there was nothing she could keep from me for long - "surprise" birthday parties, valentines gifts, weekend specials. I almost always knew what was going on inside of her. And I believe that's the way it was meant to be. Only recently though did I realize why I was able to do this.

According to John Maxwell, one of the great leadership trainers in the world today, somewhere over 80% of people feel they are good listeners, but a much smaller percentage actually are. Apparently only about 5% of people are truly great listeners!

Now, I'm sure not many people would read a book and watch a movie at the same time expecting to get everything out of both. You wouldn't study for an exam while chatting with your friends about the party the night before and expect to recall much of what you studied. Most of us would agree it's not wise to eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast while behind the wheel on the way to work or school. Yet we continually let distractions in when we are talking with someone. We look around instead of at the person even though body language is at least 80% of communication. Something they say triggers a thought in us and we just have to get it out before we forget it and we interrupt the person to do so. We watch the dance class running laps around the Convention Center instead of focusing on the meeting at hand (ok, it was fun to see their response when you showed them the doughnut in your hand, but I just couldn't resist putting it in here). Some of us pay so little attention to others in a conversation that we don't even notice when they leave the room. That's right, a two person conversation with only one present. I tried it one day at work and the poor girl kept talking for almost five minutes after I had left - and there was no one else in the room!!! It was quite the interesting site through the window in my office. We ask someone a question about themselves but then don't give them a chance to answer; and the next time we ask, they won't.

Think back to the last conversation you had. Can you remember something significant about the person you were talking with? Who was the last person you met for the first time? Do you remember their name? Or where they're from? What about other significant parts of their life?

When we listen to someone we are placing value on them. We are saying we care; and we're saying it in a much more powerful way than we ever could with words. Have trouble starting a conversation? Ask the other person about themselves. For the average person, there's no more interesting topic. Don't know what to ask? Start with a pet. I remember a conversation I had with someone who didn't believe me when I told her this worked; so I asked what her favourite pet was. This led to more questions and discussion and even though we stayed on the topic of pets, 10 minutes later, I was able to tell her things about herself that she thought she had never told anyone before. The thing is she had; they just weren't listening.

I believe everyone is an open book waiting, and usually wanting, to be read; and someone with good listening skills is in a prime position to start reading. Problem is, too many of us would rather watch the movie.

Anyone like Colouring?

It’s now two weeks until the biggest event to this point in the year – Hillsong’s annual Colour Your World Women’s Conference. It’s the biggest one yet with over 16,000 women registered. Last weekend in church, it was announced that officially capacity has been reached but they’re trying to make changes to the venue and fit some more women in. There’s now a waiting list. Each day more is being said about the conference. The plans are moving along and the details are coming into place. Apparently it’s a very tiring time for those of use who will be there all day helping make it run as smoothly as possible. We (students) have also been told that we’ll find out on Friday what each of our jobs will be for the conference. It will be a great event – even though I can’t sit in on it. Men’s conference was so good for so many men and I’m happy to put in a lot of work to enable women to be fed in this way.

Brief update

Just thought I’d better put something up here since it’s been a week again. I can’t let anyone get the idea that I’ve forgotten about my blog; and I certainly can’t let anyone think they can forget about it because I’m not doing my part!!!

This week has been pretty “normal.” Classes started at the beginning of the week and somehow I managed to make it to all of mine. I’m still hoping that I’ll get my schedule soon. Yes, that’s correct; I don’t have my correct and complete schedule yet and we’re a week into classes. This adds a few extra challenges. The week has gone really well.

Together with the 250 new students coming and a new term beginning, there are some changes in church life with service times being changed. Growing pains. It really is amazing how the changes the church has gone through in the last couple of months have not caused any major problems. There have been a number of changes in staff positions with a couple new people starting and many key existing staff changing roles. These are things that could throw many churches into turmoil yet they’ve happened virtually without a glitch.

I got an interesting phone call last night. As you recall, late last year I put a post up here about some conversations I had had with a couple of Mormons…well, those two have left but they gave my name and phone number to a couple of new ones that came in. These new ones called me and wanted to meet. I agreed under the condition that we openly and freely discuss who Jesus is, who Joseph smith (their founder) was, the completeness and accuracy of the Bible and the accuracy of the book of Mormon. I told them that there are things in the Bible that Mormons do not believe and there are things in the book of Mormon that are incorrect. If they were willing to discuss this in an open manner, I would meet with them. Being keen to do the mission work they came for, the new men agreed. I even told them that the last ones had cut off contact with me because I was not willing to convert to Mormonism and I had raised too many issues they didn’t know how to deal with. I was somewhat surprised at the phone call, more surprised that they would agree to these terms, and even more surprised when we met today and they followed through with it. Then the real shock came when they asked if we could meet again! So I have another meeting set up with them in which they want to share more from the book of Mormon and I told them before I’m willing to discuss much about the book, they’ll have to come to me with some sort of evidence that it can be trusted. They handled themselves very well considering they could not follow their trained routine in the presentation; and as is easily done with most cults, they were found tripping over their own words, reading some passages from the Bible that were contrary to their own beliefs and admitting what the Bible says in those verses. Now the issue comes with the fact that they choose to believe something else anyways. At least they’ve heard some more truth and have said with their own mouths – even if they still deny it. I’m not sure of the details of the next meeting but I’ll keep praying about it and I know as long as I’m willing, God will guide me and make sure His truth and glory is revealed as we discuss things.

Now that this has become longer than a short post, hope you all enjoy and it’s time to sign off.

New Form of Transportation

Imagine the following scene…

A man is riding his bicycle down a sidewalk; the trail starts heading downhill and he picks up speed. He continues his enjoyable, effortless ride down the hill, trying to build up as much momentum as possible for the next leg of the trip in which he will have to work hard to make it up the next hill before enjoying the ride down the other side. As he nears the bottom, he sees a large hole across the entire path – construction!!! They’ve taken out part of the sidewalk and are in the process of repairing it. He looks for any alternative to hitting the hole but sees none, so in a last ditch effort to avoid a serious mishap, he hits the brakes – hard. To his horror, the hand that’s used for the front brake in Canada is used for the back brake in Australia; and the hand that’s used for the back brake in Canada is used for the front brake in Australia. The front brake gets hit hard and the bike stops very suddenly, avoiding the hole. Unfortunately, the man does not achieve the same result. Having hit the front brake too hard, he launches himself into an aerial assault on the construction site. As he’s flying through the air, he realizes that he hasn’t finished his pilot’s training and is not familiar with completing a safe crash landing.

That same scene – or one very similar to it – flashed through my head as I took my new bicycle home and realized the brakes are operated differently out here. What should be the front brake was actually the back brake; and vice versa. Fortunately, I realized this as I was walking the bike to my car which I was using to carry it home; so before I took my first ride, to ensure that scene doesn’t become reality, I switched the brake cables to bring them in line with my Canadian standard of normal. Right hand, back brake; left hand, front break.

Where I’m living now, it should be an easy, and hopefully safe, ride to school and church so I decided to buy a bike so I can get the exercise and save the fuel used in driving my car. By my estimations, I need only take the bike 20 times and the fuel savings will have covered the cost of the bike! (it was second hand).

Classes start today but I don’t have a schedule yet so I’m not going. There have been some big problems with the enrolment process so all I know is that I don’t have any classes today and I’ll find out my schedule someday.

Thought for the day – if today was “Someday,” how busy would you be?

short update

So we’re in the first week of school now. It’s been a great week but none of us knows our schedule yet. This week is the same for everyone (almost) so it doesn’t matter too much but for those of us who have a class tonight, this could be a problem. There’s been a problem with the enrolment process and this has been a bit of an issue.

That aside, this week has been great! We’ve been hearing from many of the church people and it’s been great. Today was the day for Christine Cain to input into our lives. It is such a privilege to hear these people who speak internationally – and I get to hear them regularly!

Living in my house here has been great! It’s so much different than the apartment I was in previously. We’re having a house meeting as I write this. Being a good man, I can multi-task so I’m fine doing this while we discuss other things. At this point, we’re in the process of planning our meals for the next month. We’re each planning to make dinner (or “supper” for my fellow Canadians) for everyone in the house one day of the week. Looks like it should work out well. We’ve got some furniture on order from someone who’s moving away. Hopefully we’ll be getting that tomorrow. We’re getting tired of not having a place other than the floor and kitchen chairs to sit on. This will also be important when I start my connect group in a couple of weeks.

Well, I don’t know what else to say, and I need to eat some food yet before going to class tonight but I thought I needed to put something on my blog.