Day 81 - Photos, Slides and Negatives (Throw)

In the box I brought inside the other day from the storage shed, I found some old records and stacks upon stacks of photos.  I actually threw away hundreds of prints, dozens of slides and a multitude of negatives.  I kept only a third or less of the total. 

Getting rid of the negatives was no big deal - with all the changes in technology, there's really no reason to keep a negative strip when you can easily reproduce any picture by scanning it.  Likewise, the slides were nothing special and I have no way to view them anyway.  I did save two slides - they were shots of my father on his fishing boat.  It wasn't until after Dad died (back in 2002) that I realized how very few pictures I had of him...

The pictures I threw away were not hard to part with either.  After years of college, seminary, youth ministry and camp counseling, I have photo after photo of school kids, teenagers, classmates and even coworkers whom I hardly recognize ... or don't recognize at all!

These pictures spanned from my time in LeMars, Iowa (right after college), through seminary days and my time as pastor at Marietta (where I was living when I met Melissa).  Looking through all these pics left me with an "It's a Wonderful Life" sort of feeling... 

My old Kentucky home ... where I lived with my good friend Tim while we were students at Asbury Seminary.

Some of the guys on the Smoky Mountains backpacking trip - I think it was Luke (in the middle) who first suggested I could be the youth pastor at Shelbyville First United Methodist. (See Day 72)

Graduation from Asbury Seminary.  One of the few pictures I have of me with Dad. 
I know, right?

I seriously don't remember having a goatee so often, but it seems like I have one in about every other picture.  And I'm sure I was unaware of how bad my hair looked most of the time.



While at Asbury, I learned many things... including how lucrative Christian marketing can be.  Too tired to write about it tonight ... maybe another time...



Just saw on line that school has been canceled for tomorrow, so I get to sleep in! 

Melissa and I agreed that if we got any snow days this week, we'd use some of the time to move forward on our application for OMS.  Getting the house ready to sell took precedence over the application, but now we need to give it some attention.  Part of what we need to do is get some reference letters out ... and I think we need copies of transcripts.  Melissa had the kids at the doctor's office this afternoon and they all got their Hepatitis A shots - part of the vaccinations they need before going to Haiti.  Apparently The Princess was not at all happy ... or calm ... about it.  She was limping around all evening!