(working) Around The Church In 80 Days

My Pastor has terminal cancer. He's had it for 8 years (I think). They keep giving him deadlines, and (praise The Lord) he keeps outliving them. He is, however, growing weaker. He now preaches once every week -- for the Sunday morning service. Every month our church song leader switches off with my neighbor for the adult Sunday School hour. The Youth Director (ages 13+) preaches the Wednesday evening services (and fills in if the Pastor is too sick to preach the Sunday AM service). I get to preach Sunday nights. (I'm the Director of Youth Ministries, which is all children 12 and under.) Since I'm teaching Sunday School, Jr. Church, and our Wednesday night King's Kids program, Sunday Night is the only service I'm available to preach. We've been talking to a young guy about coming over here to become our Pastor's assistant. He's from Seagate Baptist Church in Naples.

We found out last month he and his family are tentatively planning to arrive here in the middle of January (between the 12th & 19th). JFYI, I'm hoping he'll be doing some preaching soon after he arrives... at least the Sunday night services. =) Anyway, from the time we talked to him, that gave us approximately 80 days to prepare for his arrival. We plan to get the house he'll be staying in fixed up first: replace the carpet, remove the popcorn from the ceilings, repaint, and a few other cosmetic things to make the house more "livable" for them.

We're getting close to 60 days remaining now, and with the holidays coming up, and people (myself and others) going out of town to visit relatives, we haven't gotten as much done on their house as I'd like. Granted, getting sick hasn't helped, but hopefully things will go smoothly when we actually "start" the actual work. [Somehow, the "Williamson Corollary"** to "Murphy's Law" always seems to apply to estimating how long a job will take and finishing it.]

So, to start working on the house, I first had to empty it. Which means, of course, that I needed to find a place to put everything in there. The only logical place to store furniture is in the church's utility building. After looking through it, I discovered the very best place to store furniture really needed to be cleaned and straitened first. It took me 4 days to "make a hole" and move everything into it. I still have a few odds and ends to move, but it's complete (for the most part). And, wouldn't you know it, the guy I'm working with plans to go out of town next Saturday for 10 days. **sigh** I don't mind working by myself, it just takes so much longer.

Since I'm sick, I think I'm going to stay in bed most of today. Hopefully I'll be well enough to preach Sunday.


** [The "Williamson Corollary" to Murphy's Law states, "The more important it is to complete any process within a certain time frame (or by a specific &/or inflexible deadline), the higher the probability of multiple, complex, unexpected problems arising to hinder (or stop) the progression of work and completion of the task "on schedule" and "within budget."]