The Methodist Connection

It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected our churches are and it always leaves me desiring that we further utilize our Methodist connection of churches. Last night we stayed at Manito UMC in the Spokane Washington area. Day two had us travelling through the rest of Eastern Washington, the Idaho panhandle and most of Montana. We've now left our Pacific Northwest Conference and can further see our Methodist connection with our jurisdiction - the Western Jurisdiction. Tonight we are staying at First United Methodist Church in downtown Billings. I'm quite excited to see the atmosphere of the church in this urban setting, even if we are only here a short while. A couple of our team members that are pulling trailers have decided to move on a little further tonight. After tonight, we will be taking the Methodist connection another step by traveling into another jurisdiction - the North Central Jurisdiction, my old stomping grounds. It is neat to see our other churches open their doors to us for a place to stay along the way to our service project. It is kind of like trekking across country and hitching a place to stay from a fellow friend you know along the way (even though in this case, sometimes we've never met before). It reminds me that we are not the only ones on this service project, that all the people of these different congregations are with us, all our family, friends, and churches that support us in any way, all those that helped plan our trip, or helped put our team and steering committe in action, and all those that helped stock our disaster response trailer. How can we continue to make this Methodist connection even stronger and utilize this larger community even greater to do more in the world? Please do share your ideas.

We've had good travelling so far these last two days. A nice trip through the Eastern side of Washington yesterday followed by good weather for our time through Idaho and most of Montana today. I haven't been through much of this part of the country since my drive out to Seattle from Michigan some 7 years ago. I'm reminded of that great trip with my friend Amanda as we pass by much of the topography that is familiar. And since my current ride, an electrical engineer from another church in my conference, is quite familiar with much of Montana, I'm learning a lot about the different places along the way that I barely knew during that initial drive so many years ago. We stopped by the Berkley pit in Butte and I learned all about the mining history of the city and nearby Anaconda. I've also learned alot about wind energy, which is great since it offers a clean source of alternative energy and I'm happy to hear of the progress our country has made so far. Well, tomorrow we'll soon be in North Dakota camping for real on a farm. Not sure how much access I'll have to my blog, but I hope to write again soon!