Many of you who read this know that October has been designated “Pastoral Appreciation Month” by some random group of individuals. The same group of greeting card industry executives who created Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Grandparents Day probably created it, but I digress.

October is supposed to be a thirty-one day span of time in which Christians go out of their way to bless and encourage the spiritual overseers God has given to the Church. In general I’ve always enjoyed Pastoral Appreciation Month. I’ve been fortunate to sit under the teaching of a number of respectable pastors over the years, so blessing them during this time of the year was always a delight.

Last November I was installed as a Pastor at North Country Fellowship. That means that this October it was a new paradigm: I was on the receiving side.

Many of the common gifts for Pastors include ties, pens, and Bibles. All are good gifts, but ties aren’t me at all. A number of people in the church know that I have more Bibles than the local Christian bookstore. Actually, I did get an incredibly cool engraved pen, and I love it! However, the church didn’t just stop there‚Äö They blessed not just me, but my whole family; Diana, Elijah, and our baby-on-the-way.

The church bought us a 1998 Buick LeSabre with 50,000 miles.

It. Is. Totally. Incredible.

Diana and I had been praying about how we would be able to fit two baby seats and two adults into a ’96 Neon. We hadn’t really told anyone we were concerned, but we just weren’t sure how we were going to make it happen since we don’t have the cash to buy a new car right now.

We are so blessed‚Äö

Jenny failed me.

At least she was nice to talk to. Unfortunately she just didn’t come through. Despite her efforts, the iWork package was still shipped to the physical address. I ended up having to call FedEx and then go track down the truck in some industrial park across the city. But‚Äö I got it!

For the record, iWork ’08 is a fantastic piece of software.

As a bonus, and one that makes the whole frustrating thing worth while, on Tuesday I received an email from Apple with a serial number for iWork. You know, the thing I had tried to purchase the previous Friday? So now I have two legal licenses for the software, and one boxed set. I’m likely going to be gifting the additional serial number to the church, so we can run Keynote off the back computer instead of having Pastor Mike and I use up our laptops when we preach.