Early April "Kid-ism"

Was down at the Pastor's house yesterday trouble-shooting an electrical problem -- was a bad breaker. I had Caleb with me, he was holding the electrical meter while I checked for current, loose connections, and bad breakers.

I finished installing the new breakers into the panel outside and (since he will talk all day to anyone that won't tell him to be quiet) I told him when we went inside, if he wanted to help me, then he couldn't talk -- he could only listen. We walked inside and the Pastor said, "Well hello, Caleb. How are you doing?"

Complete silence.

Caleb stared straight ahead, grinned widely, and only held up the meter as he walked right on past. I'd forgotten to tell him he could answer questions! So I told the Pastor, he chuckled, and Caleb and I went to check the first outlet on the recently replaced breaker's circuit.

Everything was fine, as we prepared to go, the Pastor's daughter came into her brother's room (where we were working) and asked Caleb if he wanted to stay and play. (She talks almost as much as Caleb, and much faster.) He looked at me, I nodded, and told him that was fine, so he said, "Well, OK; what could I play with?"

She replied, "Good. You want to play -- let's play with my Barbies. I'll be right back, wait while I go get them."

It took Caleb a few seconds to respond, but he stammered out, "I don't play with Barbies!" before she got to the door.

The neighbor girl barely slowed but she said, "That's OK, I have boy Barbies too. You can play with the boy Barbies and I'll play with the girl Barbies."

He barely had time to blurt out, "No! I don't play with Barbies!" before she left.

So she said, "Don't worry, they're really boy Barbies! I took their shirts off so you can see. It's OK."

By that time I was having trouble finishing screwing in the outlet because I was (silently) laughing so hard. In the other room, the Pastor came to Caleb's defense and said, "Honey, Caleb doesn't play with Barbies."

So she returned and tried another tack. She pulled three cars from under her brother's bed and let Caleb pick one. That was right up his alley -- the Cars movie was on TV the other night, and he was pumped about race cars. He even let her pick which car she wanted to play with. Then she started in on him again with, "This is good, we can pretend the Barbies are in the cars. Here, I'll take this girl car, and you can take this boy car." (I couldn't tell the "girl's" and "boy's" cars apart, but she liked the Porsche better than the American made ones.)

Caleb had finally figured out she had ulterior motives and said something to her about racing the cars instead. She kept right on the Barbies-in-the-cars idea though, when she hit on a brainstorm. She pulled a Superman action figure from the toy box and said, "Here, this isn't a Barbie. This is Superman, 'Da da da daaaaaahn!' He has a cape and everything! Here, you play with Superman and I'll go get my Barbies."

(Singing the theme song was a nice touch.) By that time I was getting the faceplate started (and having trouble -- because I was still laughing), but Caleb had collected his thoughts. He said, "No thanks, I'd rather play with what I have here. I don't want to play with any Barbies." She continued, trying to convince him that action figures are MUCH different than Barbies, but he was adamant in his response. He wanted to play with the cars and he didn't want anything to do with anything remotely resembling a Barbie.

She wasn't very happy with his decision, but I got a kick out of the whole episode.

Food for Thought

Last week, Dr. Russell Anderson came to our church and preached three messages: Sunday School, Sunday morning worship service, and Sunday evening service. He is the Anderson half of Hyles-Anderson College. He's also a multi-millionaire many times over.

I had the privilege of driving him to and from church as well as riding back to the airport with him. He asked what I do at the church so I explained all I do, and that I try to work outside the church as much as possible to earn most of my money. So then he asked what kind of work I've done. And I asked if he thought I should concentrate on working at church, or on working outside of it and increasing my giving.

He had an interesting (to me anyway) answer. He said at my age, with my skills, knowledge, and experience he thought I should continue doing what I'm doing in ministry, hire people to do the physical labor I do for the church, and become a multi-millionaire myself.

That was quite a jaw-dropper.

Personally, I'm really not all that concerned with making money and becoming rich; never have been. Money is just one of those things I need to do the things I want to do. He said that's exactly the kind of person that can really do a lot for God, because I probably wouldn't be as concerned with how much was "mine." He also said if I would continue to give money away to my church (and other God-serving ministries), then I'd make more than I could possibly imagine. He gave me a few ideas on how to go about it, where to start, what to focus on, and told me to call him with any questions because he'd be more than happy to answer any further questions I have.

So as you can probably guess, I've been a little distracted in the last few days. Not sure if I'd call it "excited" -- definitely a lot to think about. I will definitely have some phone calls to make in the near future.

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EDIT: April 3rd, 2009.

There are a few others, but one of the more interesting projects I'm looking at now: a friend wants to close or sell his business (he's not sure, almost apathetic about the outcome). I don't know much about repairing copiers, but neither does he (he's always been a salesman). He has made a lot of money in the last 20 years with his business, at the same location, and is ready to stay home with his wife (she's ill).

In the last 2 years he's been taking less business in an effort to have more time. At the same time, he's still lost thousands of dollars to embezzlement -- and didn't even miss it! (He's so unattached from the daily workings of the business, that he only found out when a police investigator from another county called him to say someone was forging checks and his was one of the forged ones; turned out to be the secretary, who's gone now.)

Anyway, IF I can find good replacements for the other bad apples in the business, then I think this would work as a good base from which I could launch everything else I'd like to do.