The Power of Friends

Each day I am amazed at the people that God has blessed me with as friends! Last night I had one of my grandmas, Lydia, make dinner for about 30 of us after church. As I sit in my Starbucks before getting the day going I wave to one of my fellow laptop ‘hermits’ at Starbucks. He comes in a couple of times a week to do follow up on his kids who he oversees. He is a caseworker for at risk youth involved in a non-profit. As I walk in my barista, John asks if I have the Starbucks app on my iphone. I do but it isn’t set up for the bar code thing to pay with my iphone vs. using my card. I quickly pull out my iphone and fix the app so it actually works.

A new friend, Thomas, comes in to get his morning coffee and we catch up over the weekend. I tell him about some other friends, Tom and Kim. I share with him about their multi-media company and the potential. I ask him if he ever uses any type of media for his work as safety manager for a larger company that is all over the U.S. He shares that he has a meeting in March that will have a 100 people. He also reflects on the fact that this last year hasn’t been good because of two fatalities in the company. So he needs some type of tool to help get across the need to be more on top of everything.

I will have lunch with a friend from my painting projects, Mike, who has twin sons. I don’t have any sense what he does for work but do know that he has a heart for serving God and the community. It will be an interesting surprise to hear his life story. I will have coffee with another new friend, John Frick, who just returned from a trip to Afghanistan. He was able to visit Anne’s brother who is now working and living in Kabul. We share much in common with our community service passion.

My hope is to continue to always be outwardly mobile in my approach to networking and discovering the world around me. Our next adventure, which will be scary, is short selling our house. We need to reduce our living expenses and also be closer to where we do most of our work. So another newer friend, Jon, who helped us sell our other house will do the same. The challenge here is that our neighborhood already has too many homes on the market. We will prayerfully start looking at rentals in our area and potential homes for our Casa de Anne.

The amazing part of the gospel story is that Jesus calls his disciples his friends. This is far out because really he is our master not our friend. I can’t fathom that the God of the universe cares about me and knows me by name!