Tony Wheeler dot Net

Coming to you live from the frozen tundra! No, not THAT frozen tundra, but A frozen tundra. If you have never experienced temperatures that are in the single digits (when I woke up, the temp. was a single digit — 0!), you are really missing out!

I am here in Bixby’s Cafe, a pretty sweet little coffee shop/cafe that is owned by a couple from my Grandparent’s Church. They have some good coffee, bagels and WiFi! Thanks, Terry!

Trying to put to paper/Powerpoint an Orienteering First Impressions class that I am tag-teaming with Pastor Rich. I love doing this stuff, but on a day when the temp is hovering around 0, I would rather be in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa.

Anyway..just wanted to use the little cam on my laptop, its fun! I pray that each of you has a blessed week. We are “vacationing” this week, so I plan to have plenty of relaxation!

Until next time…Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel.

Webster’s defines a miracle as, “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” Yesterday, I could only think about the wonder and majesty of miracles. I thought about how God intervened in my life before I was even born. I thought about how he sustained me through 2 months in the hospital after I was born, you see I was two months premature. There was a miracle in my life yesterday. A transformation of sorts. My wife and I went to the hospital to have a checkup and an ultrasound to see the progress of the wonderous bundle of joy growing inside of her. I have to say that I was absolutely speechless when we saw all of the different parts of our child. I have a love of science and specifically Anatomy and Physiology. I am absolutely in awe of how the human body works. I can’t help but praise God for his creation of man.

The transformation that took place in me yesterday was one of transforming from just some dude to a father. I realized yesterday that I would do absolutely anything for that little life inside my wife. I am so incredibly pumped to be a father. I look forward to all of the joys and sorrows that children bring. I cannot wait to meet our child.

With all of that said, it should be noted that we are having a GIRL! Now, you may hear my wife say that I don’t want a girl. It is really not that I don’t want a girl, I don’t want a teenage girl that wants to go out on dates and I don’t want to have to deal with the boys who will obviously be chasing my daughter. Secretly, I have always wanted to play the crazy dad cleaning his shotgun when the boy comes to pick up my daughter. Then have some crazy “uncle” pop out and act like he just got out of prison or something. My wife would probably not let that happen, though. Too bad, I have been thinking about it for like 10 years now. Ha!

Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Sophia Ann Wheeler!

The leadership team from Journey took a, well, journey to Eagle Brook Church in White Bear Lake, MN this eve. It was a great time to take a team that pours their heart and soul into a young church to a church that has grown and is one of the most influencial churches in the state. It gives a vision for what we can do better and it also gave us an idea of we do really well. I gotta say that I feel pretty darn good about the team that I lead when every person that went tonight said that we do a better job of First Impressions (the team I coach). I wouldn’t go that far, but I am flattered that they think so. Eagle Brook is a different church than we are and by nature have to do things differently than we do. From a different perspective, I think that what EBC did as far as First Impressions was actually very good in regard to their setting and vibe for the evening. Also, they did recently add a second service, so staffing is a huge issue for them right now. I have no doubt in my mind that they take First Impressions seriously and look forward to learning from and with them.
I got to spend a few minutes with their First Impressions Pastor. Sad that I didn’t get to spend some more time with her. I will be contacting her in the near future to pick her brain and see where we can help each other. She also talked about some cool things that they want to do in the future and invited us to be involved in them, so that is cool too!

I think that the pieces that I have been missing from the grand vision for my life are slowly falling into place. Honestly, at the end of the day there is nothing that I would rather do than Church. It is what I love and what I know. I searched for so long because I thought that I didn’t know HOW to do anything, but when in reality I know how to do several things very well and they all pertain to the local church.

I am looking forward to tomorrow. I am looking forward to moving forward with the new wind that is in all of our sails. There are some big changes coming in my ministry area and some huge things in the life of the church..I cannot help but to be pumped and jacked and any other word you care to use here. It is an exciting time to be here! If you are in Rochester and are not apart of a church, now is the time to get involved with Journey. You won’t regret it.

Blessings….

Do I have a sign on me that says, “Please, sir, will you give me a ride and some money?” For those of you who are long time readers, you will recall a post a little over a year ago where I recounted an event where some chick asked me for a ride at Kwik Trip…turned out she wanted a little more than that, including 20 bucks and doing things that shouldn’t be discussed in mixed company. Well, today I was out doing our first delivery for our new business venture and was just finishing up when a woman flagged me down from across the street. The temperature outside was roughly 35 degrees, but the wind is about 25 MPH, needless to say it is not that nice out. So the woman gives me a huge story about how she has two grandkids at home and she is just trying to feed them. I explained to her that I would be glad to help her out with some food and a ride as she lives on my way home. So we went to Aldi to get her some food, only about 10 bucks worth. I didn’t mention any limits or anything and she picked very wisely, so I was pretty comfortable with doing this for her. She was very talkative and sharing about her family; Her daughter-in-law is a drug addict and that is why she has the grandkids; Her son is studying at University of Illinois Champaign; She was just in the hospital with complications from diabetes and MS. Honestly, the story that she gave me, I have no doubt that it is 100 percent true. The part that I am not so sure about is the part of a local home health company going and getting her insulin and coming back to inject her. I was more than willing to help out with her medicine…insulin dependence isn’t something to mess with. She made the call to the alleged company and I ran over to a local business to get money out of the ATM. As I am walking back I see a very nice car pulling up with out of state plates. Friends, you don’t spend the better part of the last five years doing the kind of work I do and not run into some shady situations….I had some serious red flags flying by now. So, in order to not have a run in with two very large African American men from Chicago, I gave her the cash and took off.

Folks, I honestly don’t know if all this was on the up and up, but I am confident that she heard some words from God today. I didn’t have to bring up God, she was the one that brought him up. I don’t wear a shirt that says “I love Jesus” or have a Christian fish on my bumper. This woman was shown the love of Jesus through chicken thighs, sour cream and onion chips and toilet tissue. I have a very sensitive B.S. meter built in me. I like to think that I can read people pretty well. I don’t know that I read this one right. But you know what? That really isn’t up to me to decide. That is between her and God. I was really just being Jesus in a practical way. I did tell her that my church has a food outreach once a month and if we had some food that wasn’t spoken for that I would bring her some. I do plan to follow through on that. Whatever she did with the cash, I don’t really care. She does have two little kids that are depending on her and honestly they are more important.

I guess I just wanted to share. I just felt like this was something that I needed to do. I am praying for them tonight that the choices they make are good ones and that God watches out for them.

I know that I said I wasn’t a resolutionary, so I am not saying anything about resolutions. Resolutions really are just goals. The problem is when we don’t have a plan for reaching those goals. One of my goals this year is to really dive into the Bible…reading every word of it in 2007. I don’t intend to read from Genesis to Revelation, but more or less read through a book at a time and then move on. I will sprinkle Psalms and Proverbs throughout the readings so that I don’t end up with a huge amount of reading in those books left at the end of the year. To further combat my anti-resolutions, I have started this Journey today. Why today? Why not today? If not today, when?

I have begun reading in Romans. Wanted to share some of it with you…Romans 1:19-25 (emphasis mine)

But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them??the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

What are the gods that you have made for yourself? Have you traded the glory of the one, true God for a trinket that is literally a dime a dozen? Today is as good of a time as any to get rid of the trade show trash that clutters your life.

I pray that this year has blessed you so far and continues to do so.

Blessings.

Happy New Year to you and yours….

We are ringing in the New Year with a solid snowstorm! How sweet??!

Be Safe. Be Well.

Blessings