Personal

Monday morning check in

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

Greetings and salutations…and welcome to another addition of “Monday morning check in” (I have no clue what that was…I guess I am just in a goofy mood this morning).

Anyway…

…if anyone is curious, the Twin Cities marathon web site has some pictures posted of me crossing the finish line.  In a couple of them you can definitely see my pain 🙂  To view these snap shots simply go to the website at:  http://www.mtcmarathon.com.  Once there click on “finisher photos” under the marathon section then enter my bib number: 4387.  There are a couple picture there that are not me.  I am the one wearing the dark long sleeve t-shirt with the red hat (or the one in more pain than the others).  Enjoy 🙂

Paying taxes (Matthew 22:15-22)
How appropriate that we get a text that talks about paying taxes.  In a time of economic hardship the last thing people want to hear about is paying taxes.  Here in Jackson, taxes are a huge issue.  There is a battle currently waging about the proposed construction or renovation of the county Resource Center.  Some want to see a brand new building and others want the current one (the old high school) renovated.  Either way, taxes would go up quite a bit in Jackson.  And this is after the new school referendum passed last year that some people believe the district is misusing.  What a time we live in.

Here in Matthew 22:15-22 the Pharisees are looking for some dirt to nail Jesus with so they try to trap him with the issue of taxes.  If he says that people should pay them then his followers would get upset.  If Jesus says they shouldn’t pay taxes, then the Pharisees could bring that info to Caesar and accuse him of treason.  But Jesus is smarter than this as he responds, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s“.  So the question is what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?  Discuss…

…to be continued…

-edh-

A goal accomplished…the Twin Cities marathon

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

Thirteen months ago I set the lofty goal of running and finishing the Medtronic Twin Cities marathon.  Friends and family thought I was crazy but were still supportive.  I began training and losing weight to prepare myself for this grueling test of human endurance.  Yesterday was the culmination of that goal when I crossed the finish line in 5 hours 2 minutes and 28 seconds.  It was a wonderful experience and one that is hard to put into words…but of course you know that I am going to try…

At race time (8am) the temperature was 48 degrees with over cast skies that threatened to rain on us.  As I Stood on the street next to the HHH Metrodome, waiting to begin, I found the 5 hour pace team leader, Lori.  Lori’s Job was to help us cross the finish line in under 5 hours.  Most of the people in this group were first time marathoners with the exception of a couple who were running their 2nd.  The strategy laid out for us was that we were going to run for 5 minutes and then walk for 1 minute through the whole race.  At first I was a little annoyed with the walking part and considered leaving this group, but I didn’t…and I am glad I stuck with Lori and the team.  Those 1 minutes walks were a great way to conserve energy.

The gun sounded, 11,000 people cheered and we were off.  For the first couple miles I never gave a second thought to the fact that I would be running for 5 hours.  I just took in the whole experience:  The mass of people running, the crowds cheering along the way, and the beautiful scenery.  At about mile 2 (the Walker Art Center) the over cast skies followed through with their threat and it started to drizzle, but that wasn’t so bad…I’ve run in drizzle before.  At around mile 3 to 4 the drizzle became a steady rain and got heavier.  We rain in a semi-hard rain until around mile 8 to 9 then it started to let up.  By the half way point the drizzle was gone but it was still chilly as the wind blow off the lakes.

At the half way point I was doing great and our pace team was 1 1/2 minutes ahead schedule.  At this point I became a little anxious though…because mile 15 was approaching.  Back in August I ran a 18.6 mile race where I hit the proverbial wall at 15 miles.  I was wondering what would happen to me this time, but when I passed the mile 15 marker I was still feeling great with plenty of energy.  This was a huge emotional and psychological boost for me.  The next milestone was mile 19 which would mark the longest I have ever run.  It is also around the time when most runners hit the proverbial wall.  Mile 19 passed and I was still doing great…but that was about to change…

Back at mile 17 Lori warned us to make sure we carb up for the mile 20 hills.  So when we approached the aid station at mile 17 we took our gel/energy packs.  I ate a protein bar and took in some fluids.  I was ready for the hills.  But at 20 1/2 miles the very thing I feared the most happened…muscles in both legs started to cramp up.  I remember pleading with God, “Please God, not now…I am less than 6 miles away”.  So I pushed through the pain.  But just before mile 22 the pain became more than I could handle so I had to let my pace team go and say good bye to my 5 hour goal.  Psychologically I was devastated and felt like giving up.  But then a voice in my head (God of course) kept saying “13 months…13 months”…that is how long I had been training for this marathon.  I decided then and there I was not going to let some annoying leg cramps stop me.

After a little walking the cramps went away so I started running again, but after a minute or so the cramps came back so I was forced to walk.  And this was the routine for the rest of the marathon…4 miles worth.  At mile 24 I got an emotional boost when I heard someone call my name out…it was Connie’s sister and brother with our 2 1/2 year old nephew.  Their presence and support meant so much to me.

At mile 25 I knew I was almost there and I knew that I was actually going to do this.  When I crossed the mile 26 marker (with 0.2 miles to go) I could see the finish line…and it was all down hill (thank God).  The street was lined with cheering people and I started running.  My cramps weren’t gone yet but I decided that I was not going to walk across the finish line.  I started running and I was going to finish running.  So through the intense pain I keep my eyes fixed on the finish line banner listening to the announcers call out every name that crossed the finished line.  At this moment I became overwhelmed with emotions and tears started streaming down my face.  And…as I crossed that finish line…and heard my name…I completely lost it.  I actually finished .  For a few moments the pain in my legs did not matter…I made it…26.2 miles…5 hours and 2 minutes (and 28 seconds)…through the rain and wind and lots of pain…I made it.  I clung to my finishers medal as if someone was trying to steal it.  I made it…and no one can take that away from me.  I feel such a sense of accomplishment and it is that I can not adequately put into words.

But before I finish this post (and please excuse me for going on so long) I need to give a HUGE thank you to my family…Connie, my mom and my sister…who ran around town, dodging closed roads to cheer for me at 4 points along the route.  They stood in the rain and showed their love and support…THANK YOU.  And thank you to everyone out there that gave me well wishes and were praying for me.  Knowing that there were so many people praying was also a huge boost for me.  Thank you to friends (like Brad) who gave me words of encouragement and advice through this blog and Facebook.  Thank you to anyone else I am missing.  And of course…I need to thank God, for God alone gave me the energy and strength to complete this marathon.  THANK YOU GOD…TO YOU BE THE GLORY!

Now…what’s next?  Will I run another marathon?  Well…right now my legs are very stiff and sore so I am not thinking about that right now.  I know that my running is not done, but I am just not sure what future races I will enter.  Part of me wants to tackle those mile 20 hills again and try to finish in under 5 hours next year, but first things first…I need to heal and recover then I will set some more goals.

Thank you for putting up with all my marathon talk these past 13 months but I got a feeling it is not going to end.  Being a pastor…I encountered so my sermon illustrations yesterday that they are bound to show up here sometime in the future.

With that…I am going to get up and loosen my legs up a bit and find a couple ice packs.  Take care and God bless.

-edh-

Oh boy…

/ The Pastor / 1 Comment

…this time tomorrow (Sunday, 8am) I will be being my 26.2 mile quest.  It’s hard to believe it is almost here, but first things first…tonight I get to go to the Olive Garden.  Whoo hoo!

I’ll see you next week.

-edh-

The marathon

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

It’s here my friends…

…13 months of training is about done and now marathon Sunday is upon me. The Medtronic Twin Cities marathon starts this Sunday, Oct. 5 at 8am. If you are at all interested in how I am doing during the race you can go to: http://www.mtcmarathon.org to track my progress. On race day there will be a link that will allow you to track runners. When you get there, simply type my name “Eric Hullstrom” or my bib number – 4387 and it will show you where I am at on the course with some times. My goal is to be done by 1pm. At the very least I would appreciate your prayers.

So…as I prepare to run my very first marathon, I thought I would share with you some interesting tid bits about the history of the marathon that I came across:
The modern Athens Marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C., bringing news of a Greek victory over the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message “Niki!” (“victory”), then collapsed and died, thereby setting a precedent for dramatic conclusions to the marathon…

[I am hoping my fate is a little better than that of Pheidippides]

…At the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the marathon distance was changed to 26.2 miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City stadium, with the 2.2 miles added on so the race could finish in front of royal family’s viewing box. This added two miles to the course, and is the origin of the Marathon tradition of shouting “God save the Queen!” (or other words relating to the Queen) as mile post 24 is passed. After 16 years of extremely heated discussion, this 26.2 mile distance was established at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as the official marathon distance.
(Source: http://www.athensmarathon.com/marathon/history.html)

My wife and I are heading to the cities on Saturday morning and will return sometime on Sunday night. I will (of course) have a post next week sharing with you my experience.

I am excited and a little nervous, but either way I am looking forward to shouting “Niki!” (or something like it) when I cross that finish line on Sunday.  Thanks for you support and prayer.

God bless!

-edh-

Sunday morning prayer

/ The Pastor

I don’t know about you, but there’s something so comforting and soothing about a candle burning near by…especially when it smells like Strawberry Cream.  It almost makes me crave a Strawberries and Cream drink at Starbucks.  It’s just too bad that the Starbucks near us is being closed.  Darn it anyway.

But that aside I am enjoying a nice cool morning…with an aroma of strawberries floating in the air…giving thanks to God for another day.  And what a great day it is.  Connie and I have had a fun week with friends and a fun weekend at home with family.  My cousin and his wife renewed their vows yesterday and when we as a family get together (cousins and all) we have a great time.  I just wish I could have stayed longer last night but I had a 2 1/2 hour drive to get home.  Oh well…some time with family is better than nothing.

Anyway…last week I let my busy schedule get the best of me but not today.  I am not going to leave without praying with you this morning.  So let’s join our hearts together as fellow members of the body of Christ and offer our prayers to God.  Let us pray…

Father in heaven we praise you for your incredible love and mercy.  You offer forgiveness; you give us life; you show us your will.  But Lord God, we too often follow the ways of this world.  We too often conform to the patterns of this world.  Instead of standing up for you we take the easy way out.  Loving God, we ask for wisdom and courage to follow you so others may see our good works and give you glory.  All this dear God, we pray through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. [ Reference:  Romans 12:1-8 ]

 

 

May God richly bless your day with His abandant love and mercy.

 

Take care!

 

-edh-

Monday morning (or should I say “afternoon”) check in

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

I am finally back in the office…but a little late on getting to my blog.  If you could have seen the pile of stuff I had to deal with I think you would understand.  I enjoy getting away for awhile; its just the getting caught up that I don’t like.  But I think I am there.

Last night I had an AWESOME night…

…that is Point of Grace and I had third row, center aisle seats for this concert.  AND…it was free.  This was the finale of the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference that I attended this past week…and everything is free…it has been that way for 74 years.  This is an amazing conference and I am always blown away that they can put on such an event based solely on the contributions of generous supporters. 

Each morning started with prayer and then a Bible study.  At 10am we have some fellowship time before we head to the “communities” (small group sessions) at 10:30.  There isn’t anything going on in the afternoon but we reconvene at 7:15pm for the evening worship celebration time with a different (usually a nationally known) speaker (i.e.  Tuesday night was Phil Vischer, the founder of Veggie Tales).  And did I say that all of this is FREE?

The “community” I attended in the mornings was lead by Phil Vischer and his brother Rob (a law professor at St. Thomas Law School in the Twin Cities).  They spoke about Christ and Culture.  I missed the Monday and Tuesday communities but I am glad I made it to Wednesday’s.  Here Rob Vischer spoke about the Christian perspective on family law.  The basic premise was the evolution of the same sex marriage debate.  This is something that has been brewing for quite a few decades.  But what was really scary is where the law is headed in the future.  Basically the family unit is being de-valued and more emphasis is being placed on individual liberty.  Hence…people starting to be allowed to decided who’s in their family.  Rob said that on the horizon the next debate will be polygamy because if two men or two women want to get married, why not expand that definition to include more people.  The direction that family law is headed is very scary.  This was indeed an eye opening “community”.

So much more happened this past week but I am still trying to process everything.  I got a feeling that as other learnings begin to bubble up that they will soon find themselves on the pages of this blog.  But in the mean time I will take my leave of this topic.

In the future
There are some other blog topics that I have started that I haven’t dealt with for a while…and I am going to be returning to these topics shortly:
(1) Evangelism — at the end of July I was invited to participate in a meeting at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago.  My bishop along with a synod minister and our synod V.P. attended this meeting.  We heard a number of presentations and participated in some fruitful brainstorming for the synod.  I also got appointed to the “Serving in God’s World” board (evangelism and outreach) for the SW MN synod.  I am looking forward to writing more about my involvement here.

(2) Business meeting model vs. Ministry meeting model — this was something concerning church councils.  Wrote a while back about my efforts of changing how our church council looks at themselves.  We need to be a group of people focused on advancing the mission of Christ in the world around us.  Someone commented and asked me how I was going to do this and I responded that I was still working on it.  Well…I want to return to this topic in the near future.  I have a council meeting this week and I hope to implement a new “agenda item”.  I will say more about this later.

(3) Learnings from the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference.

Whew…that’s a lot of stuff coming up and I am excited to get started writing.  I guess time off really did me some good.

Anyway…take care and God bless!

-edh-

Sunday morning prayer — unshakable

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

I am on the verge of returning to “normal”. I am still on continuing education so in about an hour Connie and I will be heading down to worship at the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference. So much has happened and I have learned so much that I can’t put everything into one post. But I do want to share one quick thing with you this morning.

Last night our speaker was talking about courage…courage that is not of this world…a courage that only comes through an amazing encounter with God. The theme of the conference is titled “Unshakable”…which has been a great theme for me personally (more on that in a later post). Last night our speaker (whose name I can’t spell off the top of my head, but will get the spelling when I get to my office tomorrow) said something last night that still has me thinking. He said, “To have an unshakable faith we first must be shaken”. And that “shaken-ness” comes from a powerful encounter with God. An encounter like what Peter had with Jesus in Luke 5 or Job had with God. Both were “shaken” to the core and became courageous followers of Jesus/God. Our speaker then said, “When we are shaken by something really big (Jesus) then everything else seems small in comparison.” Wow! Have I truly been shaken by Jesus? Have you? It has really got me thinking.

And with that I will leave you thinking since I need to go and get ready for worship. But I will write more about this later. Let’s pray:
Powerful God, shake us to the core with your love through Jesus Christ our Lord. Transform our view of you from a small God to a powerful God. Transform how we look and treat others. Transform how we share our faith with others. Father God, shake us till we drop to our knees in reverent worship of you. Create in us an unshakable faith…through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray, AMEN!

God bless and have a wonderful day.

-edh-

Wild Goose Chase

/ The Pastor / 9 Comments

I DID IT!!!

Today (Saturday, Aug. 2) I ran a race called “The Wild Goose Chase”.  This is a 18.6 mile (30K) race that goes around Lac Qui Parle Lake near my hometown of Dawson.  Before this race my longest run was 12 miles so I knew this was going to be a huge test for me.  Up until the 15 mile mark I was doing fine, but at the 15 mile mark I hit what is called “the wall”.  Basically there was a lot of walking during the final 3.6 miles,  but I did finish hard.  But more importantly…I FINISHED.  My goal was to finish in under 3 hours.  My time was 3:00:21.  Missed by that much…21 seconds.  Oh well…I FINISHED.

The Twin Cities Marathon is two months away and I still have a lot of work to do, but I do feel encouraged.  I have an idea of what I am going to face in Oct.  Overcoming “the wall” is very much psychological so now I have some experience to draw from.  What got me through “the wall” today?  The mere fact that I would always regret not finishing.  I am hoping that motivation will get me through the Twin Cities Marathon in October.  And…there has to be a sermon illustration in here some place.

So now I sit here feeling very good about myself; nursing some sore muscles.  But when asked by my wife if I am glad I ran this race…my answer is “Yes”.  Sore muscles will heal and I will be back running on Monday morning looking forward to my next race (10K — 6.2 mile) in September.

With that I continue with my vacation so I will be back with you next week.  Take care and God bless.

-edh-

Mid-vacation update

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

Greetings and salutations…

I am sitting here in the Holiday Inn in Willmar as my wife visits the fitness center here.  Since I am by myself for a little while, I thought I would take this opportunity to check in.

It has been a fun an exciting few days.  On Sunday I flew to Chicago for a meeting at ELCA headquarters.  It was called the Synod Mission Table Pilot Project.  Thirteen of the 65 synods from around the ELCA were invited to gather and talk about mission strategy.  I was invited to attend this meeting with three others from the synod office including our bishop, a synod minister and the synod council V.P.  We heard some amazing presenters and spent some quality time together discussing some mission strategy for the synod.  I was honored to be included in this meeting and discussion.  We have a tough road ahead of us as SW MN is a synod that is declining in population and worship attendance.  We definitely need to rethink how we do mission and have to do something to encourage our people to be who they were created to be:  evangelists.  I think we have a pretty good plan in place and I look forward to writing more about our efforts as things unfold.

On Tuesday I flew back home and headed up north to the St. Cloud area to join Connie and her family for some time at a resort.  We had some great weather and some fun times together.  Last night we packed up and head our separate directions.  On the way home to Dawson, Connie and I decided to stop in Willmar at a hotel and have some time together and do some shopping before we head to Dawson on Friday.  On Saturday I am running a 18.6 mile road race called the Wild Goose chase.  This will be a great tune up for the Twin Cities Marathon in October. 

Anyway…I probably should sign off and pack a little bit.  We have a fun day ahead of us.  I will be back next week for my regular posts.  In the mean time, God bless you and I look forward to our continued conversations.

Take care!

-edh-