Category: Autobiography

This summer has been great. Since I stopped driving a school bus for the summer in late June, I’ve devoted more time to reading, working at the church more, and wedding planning. School started again last Wednesday, and despite the fact that I won’t have time to do those other things as much, it is good to get back to work.

One major change from last spring is that I am now working much more than I did at the end of the school year last year. When I was hired on as a bus driver in April, I got the route that nobody else wanted: a 4.25-hour route where I was only driving elementary school kids to school. Most other routes have a high school/middle school route in addition to elementary, which kicks them up quite a bit in hours.

There was some shuffling that went on this summer, though. Because of budget cuts, three routes were eliminated. This would have put me and the others at the bottom of the food chain in jeopardy, except for the fact that four drivers left, three of them through retirement. The day before school started, all the bus drivers got together in a room, and when the “bidding” process was over, someone had taken my 4.25-hour route (which had jumped up to 5 hours over the summer because it was combined with another route). That was the bad news. But the good news is that instead I took a 6.25-hour route. And not only that, but it is the same route that I drove for five months last school year as a substitute – so I know most of the kids already. Despite the fact that it is a longer route than my former route, nobody wanted it because it mostly picks up kids from the “projects” (subsidized housing) on a nearby Indian reservation. Because of that, it has a bad reputation with the other bus drivers. And honestly, the elementary kids on the route can be a little wild – mostly, I think, because some of them don’t have a lot of structure and parental supervision. But the middle school and high school kids are no worse, behavior-wise, than any other route. So, despite the fact that I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning, I’m satisfied with where things sit. With a wedding coming up, I can use all the extra cash I can get.

I got a letter recently that made me angry. It was from the U.S. State Department. It was writing me with regard to my recent passport renewal application.

It said, in part:

There is a discrepancy between the data written on your current passport application and the data shown on your previous passport.

To which I responded, in my mind, “No S%$#, State Department.”

Let me explain. In 2000, before studying abroad for a summer, I sent in a passport renewal application. I filled out the required form, and wrote down my birth date: April 6. When my shiny new passport came, it contained a birth date that was almost, but not quite, my own: it had the same year and month, but read “16” instead of “6.” I thought at the time, “This is unfortunate. But my trip is coming up too quickly for me to do anything about it now. Hopefully it won’t cause any problems.” And it didn’t. At least, not then.

Two years later, in 2002, I was teaching English at a secondary school in Prague, Czech Republic. In order to have this job, I needed a visa provided by the Czech government. I waited a very long time for my Czech visa. I wasn’t too worried about it, though, because other foreign English teachers at the same school were waiting a long time for theirs too. But when December rolled around, and I had already been teaching at the school for four months, I got the bad news: my visa application was rejected. The Czech government never told me why my visa application was rejected, but my guess is that the birth date on my visa application and on my passport were different. The State Department peon who mistyped my birth date had, most likely, now cost me a job.

Now that I realized this birth date discrepancy could cause me problems, I went immediately to the U.S. Embassy in Prague. There, I was able to talk to the appropriate people and produce the appropriate paperwork, and an official stamp was added to my passport. It said, in effect, “The birth date of the bearer of this passport has been corrected to read April 6.” There the matter has rested for seven years.

Fast forward to July 2009. I have applied for a renewal of my passport, and what has reared its ugly head again? What has returned from the dead like a monster in a B-movie!?! This mistyped birth date!!!

The frustrating thing about dealing with bureaucracies as large as the U.S. State Department is that there is no way I can find the person who originally mistyped my birth date. He or she may no longer work in the State Department. I can’t sit down and have a heart-to-heart in which I share, perhaps with tears, how much trouble this mistake has caused, and urge him or her to be more careful next time.

However, there is good news (I think). Despite my misgivings about navigating such a huge bureaucracy, I called the State Department, talked to a couple of different people, and referred the second one to my corrected birth date. She said that I would be contacted again if there were any further problems. Otherwise they would just continue to process my application. That was a week ago, and no news has been good news. So perhaps bureaucracies can work efficiently at times, after all.

No, I’m not talking about myself (though “Big E” is a nickname that my brother has had for me for years), I’m talking about “engagement” – which happened to Mary and me yesterday.

Here’s how it went down: we went down to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in the morning to look at the fields of tulips.

Then we headed back north to Bellingham on Chuckanut Drive. We had brought food for a picnic, so we stopped at the Larrabee State Park parking lot and walked down to the beach. It was an overcast day, so the beach was totally deserted except for us. We set up for the picnic, and after I was done taking the food out of my backpack (I was already on one knee), I asked Mary to be my wife. And she said yes!

We both called several people that afternoon, updated our Facebook statuses (a necessity in this day and age), and went out to eat that night at an Italian restaurant in downtown Bellingham. All in all, a fantastic day.

You may recall that although I am technically a substitute school bus driver, I have been driving the same route for the last five months. It is widely regarded by the other drivers as a “difficult” route, student-wise, but I’ve really come to enjoy it. I’ve gotten to know the students and their personalities, and while most days it is still no walk in the park, I recently got to the point where I actually looked forward to taking these kids to and from school.

Then, about a week ago, they decided to let the regular driver of the route go. Letting her go meant that the route could finally go “up for bid,” which means that it is posted for three days, and all the other drivers have the chance to take it if they want it.

Well, two days went by and I was feeling pretty good about being hired on to keep it. It seemed like an ideal situation: I’m the next substitute in line to be hired, and I would be hired to take on the same route that I’ve already been driving for the last five months. Then, on the afternoon of the last full day it was posted, another driver signed up for it.

It was disappointing, but I can understand why. He’s a retired guy, and when he rode along with me yesterday morning to learn the route, he told me that in recent months his retirement has been hit hard by the stock market. Instead of driving the 4-hour route he had taken just to have a little money to support his boating habit, he decided to move up to a 6.5-hour route because he actually needed the money.

So yesterday was my last day. And I got the same feeling that I’ve gotten on other momentous occasions that I recognized as momentous occasions. On the last day of school, or of a job, or living someplace, I become removed from what I’m doing. I always think, “This is the last time I am doing this. An era is coming to an end, for better or worse. Even though I’m looking forward to what is next, I feel like mourning what is going away.” While I do everything for the last time, it feels almost unreal, as if I am floating.

That happened yesterday, especially in the afternoon. I knew that I had to tell the students on both runs that they were getting a new driver, but it took me a while to get up the nerve to say it. When I finally did, there were a lot of questions, and several students seemed genuinely unhappy (though there were many for whom it was hard to say what they were thinking. They could have been sad, or cynical, or they could not have cared). Even though it certainly was a “difficult” route, I will miss taking those kids to and from school every day.

Yesterday Mary and I had the joy of attending Severin and Shandra’s wedding at the ferry terminal in Bellingham. It was great fun, and wonderful to have so many friends from Alaska, Regent and Bellingham gathered together in one place. May God bless their union and use them as a blessing to many others.

Here are some pictures:

On the school bus that I drive, there is a camera mounted at the front that records everything that happens. The purpose of this camera is for drivers to find out what happens on the bus when he or she is looking at the road, and to protect the driver and students in case there is a disagreement about what happens on the bus. I’ve used it several times, mostly to find out who left food garbage lying under the seats or to find out who was at fault in a disagreement between students.

It’s a strange thing to know that everything on the bus is being recorded, even when students aren’t on. I was thinking about this the other day when “The Final Countdown” was on the radio and I was singing along as I was driving to the elementary school. I thought it would be pretty embarrassing if there were ever a reason for someone to watch that tape.

Usually, I try to come up with some sort of lesson that I can learn from these sorts of ruminations. I can’t think of one at the moment, other than to acknowledge that we live in an age of surveillance, where we are all watched more than ever before. I’m just glad, in this instance, that generally I am the only person who ever wants to watch these tapes, and even then I fast-forward them to focus on a particular event. It would be creepy if someone watched them every day.

I preached a sermon at church last Sunday, and I hope to get the full transcript of it posted soon. I didn’t quite complete the manuscript before I started condensing it into an outline, so I will have to go back and finish the manuscript with what actually came out of my mouth.

Yesterday I went to the memorial service of a little girl who died tragically in a car accident, just two days before her eighth birthday. Her family is friends with Mary’s family (I have met the girl’s aunt and grandparents), and so I went. It was very sad, but also hopeful: the little girl knew Jesus and her family looks forward to being reunited with her someday. I’m thankful for the support that the community has shown the family – it looked like there were over 1,000 people there yesterday – and I hope that some who are far from God would be drawn near as they contemplate this tragedy.

After the service, I was milling around with Mary and her parents when a man came up to me and asked if I had preached at the Covenant church the day before. I said yes, and he said it was “awesome.” I’m very thankful that he decided to come up to me and give me the compliment, but as I reflected on it I thought the interaction was more momentous than just the giving and receiving of a compliment. If I’m a pastor, I thought, I’m a public figure, and there is at least the potential for people to recognize me wherever I go.

This means I really need to make sure I don’t act like a jerk to people. I need to not be rude or impatient when I am waiting in line, at a store, or in traffic. Of course, it’s always important to make sure I don’t act like a jerk, but this interaction drove it home to me that now I am accountable in a way that I didn’t necessarily ask for. Becoming a pastor doesn’t necessarily make me on a higher, holier plane than any other Christian, but I am already much more in the public eye than I used to be, and I should be conscious of that.

I posted this a few days ago on Facebook, but I thought that perhaps my readers who are not on Facebook would enjoy a chance to hear 25 “fun facts” about me.

1. I rarely respond to anything forwarded to me, so it is a surprise that I am doing this. If I haven’t responded to something you have forwarded, don’t take it personally. And I won’t take it personally if you don’t respond to this.

2. I’ve been to 41 states, and will probably go to Oregon this spring. The hardest state to get to that I haven’t been in is Hawaii.

3. I’ve worked at a camp, taught high school English, and now work as a school bus driver, even though I’ve never thought of myself as “good with kids.”

4. My girlfriend and I met in Alaska, where we were both tour bus drivers in 2006.

5. My favorite team sport to play is Ultimate Frisbee. I used to enjoy playing soccer, but haven’t done it in a long time. Aside from that, I only exercise because I think I should.

6. I’ve never read the Da Vinci Code. I used to want to, but then I heard a very smug professor (not at Regent) say once that he always asks at the beginning of his religion classes who has read the Da Vinci Code (usually many people) and who has read the Bible (usually not many). He does that to illustrate how lightly Christians take the Bible even though they think it is God’s Word. I have read the Bible, and I kind of don’t want to read the Da Vinci Code because I don’t want to give that professor the satisfaction.

7. I’d rather be very hot than very cold.

8. I like chocolate, but I don’t like chocolate flavored things much. This includes chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream.

9. I feel guilty about spending money on things I regard as nonessential.

10. Books are essential.

11. For many years most of the clothing I bought was from thrift stores. Now my girlfriend and her parents like to buy me clothes, and I like this arrangement.

12. One of my favorite things that I bought at a thrift store was a navy blue set of coveralls with a United Airlines logo on one side of the front and the words “Ramp Service” on the other.

13. I love reading P.G. Wodehouse novels.

14. After many years of using PCs, I bought a Mac in December.

15. I hope I don’t turn into a Mac snob.

16. More of my iPod is sermons and lectures than music.

17. But I love ’80s pop.

18. My favorite football team is the Detroit Lions, and this is a major reason why I don’t watch the NFL much anymore.

19. The first tape I received as a gift: “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C + C Music Factory. The first tape I bought myself: “Classic Queen” by Queen

20. The first CD I received as a gift: “Bach’s Great Organ Works.” The first CD(s) I bought for myself: Led Zeppelin’s box set.

21. I think of myself as being kind of shy, but I don’t mind public speaking.

22. I’d like to write a book someday, but I’m not sure what about.

23. I’ve gotten three speeding tickets, and have been in two accidents.

24. I think John Calvin is not as bad a guy as he’s sometimes made out to be, but I wouldn’t call myself a Calvinist.

25. I’ve never smoked a cigarette or cigar, but have smoked a pipe – once.

It has been almost two weeks since my last post, so I’ll emerge from my silence to tell y’all what is going on. I don’t normally say “y’all” when speaking, because of my longstanding resistance to acquiring a southern accent (this is a story for another time), but I think it is sometimes appropriate because there’s no third person plural pronoun in English except for “y’all” and, if you’re from certain parts of the Northeast, “youse guys.”

What has been going on in my life in the past almost two weeks has been this: mostly work. I continue to drive the same bus route every day, because the regular driver continues to be gone. I also have begun an 8-week adult Bible study class on Sunday mornings, using the John Stott study book on the Beatitudes. I also meet with the pastors once a week. I am scheduled to preach next week as part of a series my church is doing on worship, so I’m studying up on communion in preparation for preaching on I Corinthians 11:17-34. And finally, I continue to spend as much time as possible with Mary, because I like to.