The conference is going well, from my end. We’ve had a small handful of puzzling discrepancies, sudden challenges, and semi-serious issues. But nothing was left unresolved.

I love my team in the bookstore. I love my job in the bookstore. (I know, it’s a little weird.)

Heidi is here. She has been teaching me lots of new things. (For those who don’t know, Heidi is the Canadian Angel of RMS Magic who graces the Forerunner Bookstore with her ever-brilliant presence about twice a year.)

Yes, my brain has been mush at several points throughout the last few days. Yes, the bottom of my feet are killing me. Yes, I die a little on the inside every time I see cash.

And yet, it has been an overall pleasant experience… somehow.

I’ve been enjoying myself so much that I am experiencing strong and baffling urges to return to the bookstore after the conference has ended. Perhaps that will pass. Perhaps it will not.

Well, I do not anticipate spending more than 5 minutes on the Internet until the conference has ended. So … goodbye… until 2009!

Well, I did end up going outside and playing in the snow after that last snow post. I couldn’t take it anymore. The snow was too amazing to not be in the middle of it as it fell.

I bundled up well. I would spend three paragraphs describing how awesomely warm-sustaining my outfit was… but I would probably be the only person who was excited about the drawn-out explanation of my moose PJ pants, wool socks, boots, jeans, scarf, two pairs of gloves, and leather jacket.

My curly hair is great for snow… it keeps the fragile little flakes far enough from the heat of my head that they are unlikely to melt unless I go inside. Thus, wearing my hair down practically functions as a hat. I love it.

(The melting of the snow when I go inside is a really awkward feeling, by the way. I had been in thick snow for about 45 minutes before I finally went in earlier. I had collected quite the layer of snow on my hair. Which quickly began trickling down my head as I stood in the coffee shop.)

It was such a great morning. I went for a backwards walk in the snow with a friend (no, really… we actually walked backwards down a hill… completely blind to the road behind us). I walked on my knees in the snow… I rolled in the snow… I crawled on my stomach through the snow… and I did that wonder/gratitude explosion thing that I predicted would be a significant portion of my “playing”.

I also spent A LOT of time in the bookstore. The first chunk of my morning was spent running between the snow and the inside warmth (and company of my friends). Later, I spent some time having a very good conversation with another friend in the back office.

It was such a good day that I didn’t leave the bookstore until nearly 3 PM. Yeah… that’s when I am supposed to be getting out of bed. The best part of this is that it will help me stay up all day when I  fly to Montana after our set tonight (Wednesday/Thursday). The worst part… I forgot to drink again. Until about 2 or 2:30, I consumed no water in those hours of being awake.

Now, a little over 24 hours after the magic began, everything is still beautifully white outside.

It made my heart really happy when I walked over to the prayer room at midnight. There was still snow everywhere. It was so perfect. So peaceful. And so not icy. I love it when the snow isn’t icing! I don’t like it when my friends fall and hurt themselves.

This is a good winter, thus far. (Even with all this pain junk… you know… the really unpleasant stuff that is causing my heart to mature, work through offense, grow in love, and find strength in the Lord.)

I am writing this post to commemorate one of those rare occasions where I actually join the rest of humanity in the making of mistakes.

OK, whatever. They aren’t rare occasions.

Anyway… I’m still laughing at myself for this one.

Around 3:15 AM on Wednesday night, I was going about my job as usual in the bookstore. I noticed that we were completely out of an EGS CD and sent a quick email to Mandy to order more.

The CD that we needed was 7.13.08.

The CD I ordered was 9.23.08.

Not even close.

I got a simple response from Mandy, saying: “I think that this date hasn’t happened yet. I could be wrong…”

I laughed so hard. And I’m laughing again.

What happened to my brain?

I had the honor of attending David and Kristen’s wedding on Friday.

Few weddings have impacted me as deeply as this one. Part of the impact is too personal to write about here. But there was one moment in particular that I really want to make note of.

Usually, at weddings, I watch the groom as his bride is coming down the aisle. I just love to see his expression–the ridiculously huge grin or the flood of tears.

I’ve known David for 5 years (a long time in IHOP time) and he is one of my absolute favorite people. So you would ESPECIALLY expect that I would be watching him watch Kristen come down the aisle towards him.

But I hardly even glanced at David in that moment. I did… I glanced. But there was something else that stole my attention.

Kristen was so indescribably beautiful. I couldn’t stop watching her… I couldn’t stop looking at her as she moved towards David.

On an elementary level, her dress and her hair were perfect. But I don’t think that was even it.

I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t even really know what it was. But it was absolutely beautiful… whatever it was that I saw.

She was herself… perhaps more remarkably and beautifully herself than I have ever seen. Though surely nervous, she seemed to be ultimately at peace. She seemed whole-hearted and resolved.

She was stunning, walking down the aisle with her father… step by step getting closer to the biggest leap of her life.

I am so grateful to have witnessed that moment of beauty.

I only have one full day left on the road with Eddie James Ministries. By Thursday evening, I should be back in Kansas City.

… I paused in my writing just then to take a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

OK, now I’m yawning.

Back to the point.

I’m really excited to be coming home. I miss my friends. I miss Richard. I miss the prayer room… my worship team… my bed… my towels… more than three remaining clothing options that are clean… things that make your feet stop hurting.

At the same time, however, I have really come to enjoy myself here. Now, by here, I mean “wherever Eddie’s team happens to be.” I kept catching myself referring to it in that way tonight. And I’ve decided that it is okay to do so.

I might as well be defining here relative to a body of people. Using it to refer to a geographic location isn’t necessarily any more stable. We don’t typically refer to a precise location in space when we say here. The planet is constantly rotating and orbiting the sun. Here is always moving.

So… here is wherever Eddie’s team happens to be at the moment.

I’m beginning to realize that, once I have left, I am actually going to miss being here.

Eddie James Ministries is comprised of a fantastic group of young people. They love the Lord. They are people of prayer. They dance their hearts out whether they are being watched or not. (OK, I’ll be honest… if I’m around, they’re probably being watched. I love watching the dancers when they aren’t on stage… when they’re back in a dark or hidden corner of the room, loving God and worshipping him through dance. These guys are for real… and it fills my heart with joy.) They’re genuine. They’re grateful. They’re funny. And they make sacrifices daily for the sake of those they serve.

It’s a little sad, to be missing home the entire time we are here, and to know that we will be missing here as soon as we go home. And I’m not alone: I said something to Alicia about it and she said she’s “bitter about having to love something that moves around.” I think she captures well my present frustration.

Our most recent geographic location is Shelbyville, Tennessee. We’re at a tent revival. No joke. There’s a big yellow and white tent, a sound system, a little stage, and a bunch of chairs. The staff members’ badges say revival on them. (I won’t get into the use of the term revival and how accurate that label may or not be in the majority of the instances where it is used. I will just leave it at: “We have a tent and it’s a revival.”)

Fortunately, we have only had meetings in the evening. No scorching Tennessee afternoons in the summer sun.

You only need a few things to survive such a tent revival:
Sleeveless shirts (… and something other than jeans might have been nice)
Bug spray
The ability to come to terms with the fact that you are going to sweat and be surrounded by others who are equally (or a great deal more) sweaty
Water
More water
Vision for what on earth it is that brought you out there in the first place
An air-conditioned hotel room to return to at the end of the night
Some sort of fanning device (whether that be an actual fan, a piece of humidity-drenched paper, or whatever… as long as it will move air around your face)
A good shower before bed

Each night in TN, we’ve had dinner with the team. It’s not because the food is all that great. (Not that the food is bad. I’ve just never been a huge fan of fried chicken.) It’s because we enjoy the team, and spending time getting to know them really helps us do what we do.

I’m not coming back here until the middle of August. And that should be my last time to come. I almost feel like I’m leaving Narnia and Aslan is telling me that I won’t be coming back… while he looks at my companion and tells her that she will again return.

ALMOST. I really love my life in Kansas City. And I am looking forward to being back in the prayer room, night after night, for several consecutive nights. (I won’t actually return to that kind of blissful IHOP existence until September. But… September isn’t too terribly far away.)

So, I will be grateful when it ends. I will be sad, but grateful. My life will be much less chaotic. And I’ll be with the people I love. Not the people I have come to love in the last couple of weeks… but the people I have loved for years… the people who I live in community with and pursue the Lord with every day.

One more full day and a day of travel. The end is in sight.

Our trip is actually 9 days long. I thought it was 8. Apparently, Alicia is the only one, between the two of us, who can actually count.

Fortunately, I tend to overpack when it comes to underwear and… well… everything. The underwear are just of particular importance. I care about good hygiene.

Sigh. Kansas City feels so far away.

We’ve been gone for… wait, let me ask Alicia to count…

OK, we’ve been gone for 5 days. That’s a long time. We still have 4 days left.

Oh my gosh, I could cry. I’m so incredibly homesick.

So, I’m in Dallas right now. We set up Eddie’s product table at an International Worship Institute event. I don’t know anything about what that is. I just know I was there.

Eddie’s team left tonight. We will be here until Friday afternoon. Do you know what that means?

That’s right. I get a day off. Praise the living God. He is good. Really good.

AND… we’re in Dallas. So I get to spend some time with my dad, drink bubble tea at my favorite coffee shop, and relax.

It looks like we get Saturday off as well. Only the dancers will be at our scheduled Saturday event… which means that there will be no product present for us to sell at that point. So we get a day off in Alabama. I’m thinking of spending the entire day reading my Bible and sleeping. Or engaging in activities of a similar nature.

My new Bible, by the way, is AMAZING. TNIV – The Books of the Bible. Its introductions are amazing. I almost started crying when I read the little heading on the cover page for the New Testament. And the lack of chapter and verse references makes it an entirely new reading experience. I’m falling in love with the Bible in a whole new way.

So… I am breathing again.

I’m also making a lot of big decisions right now. So I guess the breathing room is especially good at this time.

OK… time to sleep. Ah… sleep. I get to sleep. I like this new thing we’re doing here… this sleeping and resting thing.

We did inventory this week. Three days of sorting, counting and recounting.

I actually really enjoy inventory. I probably would have enjoyed it more this year if I wasn’t so exhausted. But I still found myself delighting in the activity from time to time. I truly do love to count and organize things. And that’s what inventory is all about.

Warning: the rest of this post goes into unnecessary detail, summarizing the activities of each day of inventory. I can’t imagine why that would be interesting to anyone else. But… I wanted to write about it, so I did. Read at your own risk.

Sunday was just the managers. We spent about 12 hours getting both stores ready to be counted. Most of my time was spent checking 10-digit item numbers on stacks of EGS CDs. This was the day that I kept imagining the number 3 when it wasn’t there.

Monday, the cashiers came to join us. I spent the day working with my recently married friend Darin on team X. (The other teams were labeled A-F. They each had two cashiers and a manager. Darin got the special letter because he was working alone on a special “fun” section.)

X seemed to be an appropriate name for us. We were the first and only team to kill one of the handhelds. (Which wore a post-it labeling it as “crabby” for the rest of the day.)

Team X. We kill ‘em ’til they’re dead.

Alicia was in charge of one of the hardest sections in the store. As we were prepping on Sunday, she mentioned that mine was the only section she would want to have even less than her own. And it’s true… the EGS stuff is pretty tedious and… well, unpleasant. But maintaining EGS media is a large part of my job in the bookstore, so I work with that stuff every day (thus making it considerably easier for me). I probably would have been horrified to have anyone else working on that section.

David jumped in with Darin and I for a little while towards the end of the main store count on Monday. I think he just wanted to be a part of team X… because we’re so stinking awesome. Ummm…. yeah…

While David was with us, it was especially fun. I got to jump back and forth between double-checking Darin and David… so there weren’t really any dull moments. By the time we were done, Darin and I had counted all of EGS and half of the conference and Bickle media. And David, Darin, and I had counted all of the candles, oils, cards, and art.

Starting around 4:30 PM, we transitioned over to the FSM store. Actually, everyone else took a break, but Josh and Andrew needed to leave early and Darin and I were hoping to get out of there a bit sooner as well, so we worked through the break instead.

FSM ended up being a lot of fun as well. Because no one else was there, I was able to utilize as many of the handhelds as I needed. I was spot-checking for Andrew and Josh and double-counting for Darin, so it was actually very helpful to have the extra handhelds, as I had a lot to keep up with. I had Darin using three of them for a while, and Josh and Andrew were rotating between two.

I think that was my favorite part of the day. I pretty much never stopped moving.

Josh and Andrew had a pretty tough section: office supplies, candy, jewelry, and water bottles. It was tough primarily because they were working with things that had MASSIVE quantities. But… Josh and Andrew are pretty much amazing. It feels like they counted about 25% of the first store. So they were definitely qualified to be working with the intimidating numbers.

The large quantities made spot-checking a little slow. But, again, the challenge was fairly exciting.

Fortunately, Andrew and Josh finished up right before everyone else came back from their dinner break. That allowed me to get everyone going on their sections (David and Kristen were late in getting over to that store) and keep up with Darin.

So… counting was a lot of fun. But, by the time the night was over, my brain was only partially functional. Which is unfortunate… because it was date night (rescheduled because I will be out of town for the rest of the week). I didn’t have much capacity for conversation. Or decision making (and this was supposed to be my week to choose where we went and what we did). Or… well, much of anything. Quite sad, really.

And, at last, we did all of the final double-checking and error-finding today. The most tedious and least enjoyable part of the entire task. (You don’t want to find counting mistakes because it means that we messed up. But you WANT to find counting mistakes because it feels like you are wasting your time if you don’t manage to find and fix at least a few things.)

Biggest error (involving me) that we (we meaning Amber) found today: Darin and I completely skipped one of the EGS boxes. I don’t know how we did it. The box was marked like it had been completed.

Oh my goodness… I think I might have just figured it out! I wonder if that is the box we had just finished and saved when we killed the handheld that day. I thought we were OK, but maybe that count never made it.

Well, either way… we missed a box. An entire box. Sigh… I’m not perfect after all.

Andrew, Josh and I also found one mistake in the upstairs warehouse when we checked that today. (I took a few people over to do inventory in the warehouse for several days around the middle of the month.) The mistake: I had entered a quantity as 2… when the box CLEARLY said 3. (And the expected quantity was even 3.) I REALLY don’t know how I did that one.

So, that was a long, drawn out explanation of inventory fun. And the reason it was so drawn out is because I really love this stuff… all the little details of what we were doing.

And… writing all about it gives me a sense of closure with inventory. I’m done. Officially done. The cashiers will return tomorrow to put the store back together and make it shopable. But I will be in Texas with Eddie James Ministries. So I am done. DONE.

Though I love it, I think I love the fact that it’s over even more.

My life has been a little too hectic lately to sit down and blog. It is a fact that makes me sad (for more reasons than one). But, being fact and all… it is what it is.

Here is a rough outline of what I have been up to.

June 14-15 –> Switch to days by staying up all night
June 16 –> Get the store ready for me to be gone for 5 days
June 17-18 –> Warehouse inventory; continue prepping store for absence; rush packing 
June 19-23 –> In Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee with Eddie James (long and tiring trip)
June 24-25 –> Manager meeting; catch up from absence from store; prepare for inventory; schedule adjustments
June 26-28 –> Fascinate ‘08 Conference that my boss is letting me take off to recover… praise the Lord.
June 29-July 2 –> INVENTORY (long days… one of the two major bookstore events of the year)
July 2-July 9 –> Texas and Alabama with Eddie James

So… when all is said and done, I will have been on days for almost a month. And, if Kristen had not let me take myself off of the conference schedule, I wouldn’t have had a single day off for that entire stretch.

Now, the Eddie James trip itself (the 19th through 23rd) was one of the most absurd and horrendous things I have ever been forced to do. (I have done worse… but always by choice. I didn’t even have the opportunity to say yes to this one.)

I haven’t complained this much since I was in junior high. But that’s all we did for those five days. Prop ourselves up against the wall to remain in a sitting position, groan about how tired we were, and whine about how absurd and impossible the whole trip was.

We were gone for a total of 114 hours. 75.5 of those hours were spent working. For the entire trip, we had 12.5 hours of free time (including our time for meals). We got a total of 22 hours of sleep (which would have needed to be 28 if we were to get 7 hours of sleep each night). And we had about 4 hours in the entire trip to attend to hygiene needs… showers and all of that. And both of our hotels were just short of an hour away from the church or conference, so we spent ridiculous amounts of time in the car.

If you break that down into daily averages, it looked like this:
15 hours/day working
2.5 hours/day free time
1 hour/day of hygiene stuff
5.5 hours/night sleeping

Every day… for 5 days.

Needless to say, it was exhausting.

The worst part of the trip came on day three of the conference. Once the last session began, we took advantage of the free time to go and eat dinner. (Some days, we only had enough time for one meal.) We then packed everything up and left it for Eddie’s guys to put on their bus when the session ended. And then we hit the road.

I had slept in that day in order to switch back to nights. Yes… I had to switch to a night schedule in the middle of a trip for which I had switched to days. I then proceeded to drive for 6.5 hours, through the night, to Tennessee.

When we arrived, we were quite tired. The girls were able to catch short naps in the car, but sleeping in the car is never as restful as sleeping in a bed. And our handy little navigation system (Betsy) was talking to me all night, which can have a tendency to disturb someone from their slumber.

When we got to Tennessee, we had lost an hour due to time zone changes. This meant that we had one hour to sleep before we needed to get up, shower, and get on the road so that we could set up in time for the church service that Eddie’s team would be ministering at that morning and evening.

We were completely spent.

Somehow, though, it was all worthwhile by the time Sunday night had ended. As Eddie shared on Sunday and as we learned some of the guys’ testimonies, we began to understand why we were there. We began to get a glimpse of Eddie’s ministry and see the great value of what he does. We began to fall in love with all of these amazing young men and women who praise the Lord with all that is in them and daily make huge sacrifices to see others come into the same freedom and hope that they have found in God.

Sunday morning was the morning we’d had about an hour of sleep. Which is just enough time to make you realize how badly your entire body hurts and how desperately you need real sleep. But somehow, that morning, I found myself jumping up and down while Eddie led worship. I sang with all of my heart… and a great deal more energy than it seemed possible for me to have at that time.

I cried a lot that morning. I was on the verge of tears (or crying) for most of the trip, though. But I cried a lot that morning because I finally got it. I finally began to understand what I was doing and what the whole thing was all about.

So… my time in Alabama and Tennessee (our hotel was the thing in Mississippi) with Eddie James and his team was awful… but amazing.

I’m going back out with Eddie James Ministries in a week. This time, I’ll be in Texas and Alabama. I guess we’ll be in the Dallas area July 2nd through 4th. Which means that, if we have more free time than on this last trip, I should get to see my dad. And I’m pretty excited about that. And I’m going with Alicia. And Alicia and I have been trying to get together to do lunch for a long time. Now we get to do lunch AND dinner AND coffee with each other for several consecutive days.

So… if I continue to neglect the blog for a while, hopefully you can see why.

I’ve finally reached a point where I am beginning to reevaluate some things in my life. I can’t be THIS busy all the time. So, I’ll keep you posted. But I will hopefully find a way to be more consistent about keeping everyone updated on what I am doing in Kansas City.

Please be praying for me as the summer of chaos continues!

I just had my first experience with the knuckle crunchers at the bookstore. And this joyous opportunity (to experience a very long and drawn out process with every single customer who approached our counter) came when I was deliriously tired.

Shortly before I went to bed last night, a friend of mine told me some potential bad news concerning a mutual friend of ours. I was stirred up to talk to God concerning the negative report that may come later and to ask Him to act on behalf of the ones He loves… to do what is in His heart.

Well, I went to sleep anyway (because sleep is important). But it didn’t last for very long.

I may have woken up because I wasn’t feeling very well. In any case, I woke up. But I couldn’t get back to sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend. I just lay there praying… and praying… and praying… and thinking about who God is and what He loves… and praying.

I have a relatively full day ahead of me and I knew that my present sleeplessness would keep me from making it into work at 3. So I decided to just go and get some things done at the store while I was going to be awake anyway.

And that’s where the knuckle crunchers enter the scene.

I got a few things done, and then I wandered aimlessly by the prayer room for about 5-10 minutes. And then I came back to the office and was very busy trying very hard to be mentally present… when Nadine came in to tell me that the system was down.

The IT office was closed. No one in sight. And we weren’t having much luck reaching them on the phone. The rest of the managers (except for Linda, who was on her way out) were down doing inventory for FMG. I was just here because I couldn’t sleep.  (And I knew I was too out of it to try to drive and then count things.)

So out came the knuckle crunchers… the clunky little gadgets we use to record credit card information so that we can still make credit card sales when we can’t open up our POS system. (Actually, to be completely accurate… out came the knucle cruncher. I could only find one. Fortunately, the transactions take so incredibly long that it really isn’t difficult to share this piece of wondrous technology.)

I’d never used a knuckle cruncher before (praise the Lord). Not once. But I, in my great expertise, taught the cashiers how to use it and then wandered out to help while we waited.

At one point, I looked at the carbon copy sheets and thought to myself, “Hmm…  I wonder what we would do if we had a transaction with more items than there are spaces on that sheet.” Yeah… that ended up being my transaction. (I came up with a solution, but I may think of something far more logical after my next full night of sleep.)

David came by and left his phone for me while he went to lunch. (Mine is still sitting by my bed, I think. You don’t always think of these things when you should be sleeping.) Eventually, IT called… they had me do something over the phone… and then a couple of their guys came… and left… and returned. (I know. I am giving a thrilling narrative right now.) And, at last, the misery ended.

It took me a while to get the transactions entered in, once the system was back up. That’s not because there were many transactions or they were super complicated. I was just moving slow… because my brain is a lump of putty right now. And it is very difficult to make a lump of putty think.

And now my lump of putty and I are going to stop rambling on my blog… and we are going to attempt to get a little bit of sleep before I have to get up again… in about an hour and a half.