Introducing Blessing Buckets

Sunday morning during Worship Service at South Lansing Christian Church, I got on stage and introduced Blessing Buckets to the congregation. Let me tell you how we developed the program, how it will work and how it felt to make an announcement from the stage.

Bucket History

About 10 months ago, Frank Weller came to me with an idea he called Deacon Dollars. He had just come back from Andy Stanley's Catalyst conference and wanted the deacons to have a renewed focus on benevolence with dedicated money in a separate fund to use at our discretion. That program was meant to start in January, but it didn't. In May, I started getting information about Imagine (as part of the video production team), and Frank soon asked me to incorporate the Deacon Dollars idea, now known as Generous Bucket, into Imagine. I introduced the idea to my full team at our July meeting and asked them to brainstorm the various ways we hold random blessing events (similar to the Pass It On Project the church participated in the previous fall). In our August meeting, we put a lot of great ideas of various scales up on the board, and one particular idea resonated with the whole team: "Be specific." Random blessings might address some people's real needs, but could be written off as just a nice thing to do by people who aren't really in need. We decided to introduce a request form at the bucket, and I spent the remainder of August designing that form, building the buckets, and tweaking the name to the simpler and alliterative Blessing Buckets.

How it Works

We've asked each person to slip a dollar in the bucket and let their kids do the same. We will turn those dollars directly into blessings in our community. We will do some random blessing events like bus passes for students, blankets for homeless people, and winter coats for school children. However, we want to directly bless real neighbors, real coworkers, and real classmates. So at each bucket is a pad. If someone knows of a need in their corner of the world, we've encouraged them to write it on the slip and drop it in the bucket with their dollar. For example, John Q. Public works in the cubicle next to me. He complains about getting a ticket for having a headlight out and how he is broke until the payday at the end of the month. So I'd write it on the slip with a way to contact me and drop it in the bucket. If we have enough dollars, we’ll gladly help fix the headlight. We might not get to every request, but one dollar per person per week can add up to some significant blessings!

Making the Announcement

I was a little less than confident when I took the stage. I am typically a behind-the-scenes guy and that is where I'm comfortable and effective. I'd just as soon leave the on stage stuff to others with a passion for it. But as my close friend Ben Cohoon reminded me, I had an intimate responsibility to the program as the leader of the deacons and as the program's champion therein. So I wrote out the announcement and asked for the stage time. Then the nerves kicked in. Frank wanted to review my announcement, and ended up editing a bit of it, so I felt less familiar with the words I was presenting. People started filing in for worship and I realized how much had changed since the last time I spoke in front of the church. That was ten years ago, when I was an 18-year old "cool nerd," weeks away from high school graduation, offering unrefined reflection before communion, with my peers filling the stage. Since then, the congregation has moved to a larger building and swelled in size by roughly two hundred members, and that is before applying Frank's fun fact that "the Sunday after Labor Day is the third most attended service" behind only Christmas and Easter. Three and a half songs into service and it was time to cross the auditorium. The song ended and Frank led me on stage and introduced me while I fumbled to take the mic. My hands trembled, one hardly holding the microphone steady, the other barely holding my cellphone which was open to the announcement on Google Docs. I couldn't see the people with the bright, hot theater lights pointed at me, and I wondered if they could even hear me with the way the mic danced in front of my face. And then it was over. I had read the last line of my announcement and exited the stage. Frank was confidently reiterating the points I had made while I quickly retreated to the safety of familiar duties.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It seems like people are genuinely excited about the Blessing Buckets. It feels like all the planning has paid off, but it is time for the real work to begin. I believe my team and I are ready to thrive in our new responsibilities and effectively bless people immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.

The Foreclosure

This is probably the most stressful and irritating thing we had to deal with in the last 2+ years. We lost our house to foreclosure. We became a zero-down, sub-prime statistic. Here is how it happened.

October 2008, Jenny and I bought a decent house with zero-down. Our budget was a little tight, but we felt we had plenty to live on after making the mortgage payment every month. We probably looked a little sub-prime on paper with our student loans and medical bills hanging around, but we were able to close quickly.

We had a great first year, but in late November 2009 we got a notice from the bank that the escrow account was overdrawn by about $2400. A little investigating showed us that we had been charged the wrong tax rate. We should have been charged Homestead Tax for owning and living on the property, but we were instead charged with Non-Homestead Tax which is about double the Homestead rate.

Escrow wanted to recoup this shortfall within 30 days of the notice, but we couldn't make that happen in the time allotted. Escrow's fall back position was charge the shortfall over 12 months (with fees) as part of our mortgage payment. This increased our payments by about 45%. We had hope that contacting the city would correct the rate and provide us with a refund for the over-payment fairly quickly, so we decided to run a deficit on the checking account at the mortgage bank that we set up for automated payments (and a lower APR).

Time marched on, and we made no headway with the city. They wanted proof of residency. We gave them months and months worth of this bill and that bill and they still weren't satisfied. Even after resubmitting whatever form they said was missing initially, our tax rate wasn't adjusted from that point forward.

By the spring of 2010, the computing power behind the checking account decided to close the account. As we were still unable to make the bigger payments, a deficit began to grow directly on the mortgage account. I began to dread every knock and every call. This began to trigger foreclosure proceedings that culminated in a Sheriff's sale in October 2010.

The six month Right to Redemption period wasn't any less stressful. We were still trying to get things straight with the city and the refund we were sure we were due could get us square with the bank. I was hoping that a private buyer at the foreclosure sale would extend an offer to stay on as renters.

In April 2011, the letter finally came announcing we had 7 days to vacate the property. It hurt. I felt like a failure as a husband and a provider. We yelled. We cried. We prayed. It became clear that it was okay to walk away. We found an apartment, and we found a storage unit. We had loads of help from those nearest and dearest to us, who were all shocked by the news. It turns out we had a little more than 7 days to get everything out, but by the time we were served with the court papers, we were at peace with the situation. We handed over the keys with out a fight, and found a little more room in our budget by letting go.

It seems like the deck was stacked against us from the beginning, but we weren't financially ready to be homeowners. That was a very hard lesson to learn.

The Buyout

I mentioned in last week's post that there were several intertwined reasons for my silence here. I will tell these stories individually these next few weeks. This is the first.

In spring 2009, a dark, tense cloud hung over P.I. Engineering. The recession had taken its toll on the company's bottom line, and micro-managing had driven morale to an all time low. By looking at the books, the TrainMaster group was showing negative return on investment for the company.

From inside the TrainMaster group, we were starting to see the first fruits of our labor as we were finally courting new customers beyond our initial R&D contracts. Our first strides of sales growth were quickly squandered by the "leadership" at P.I. Engineering.

Early autumn 2009 brought us the dire news that P.I. Engineering could not afford to keep the TrainMaster group on the books for very much longer. The rest of the team and I began prepping our resumes while P.I. Engineering searched for a buyer for our division. Later that autumn, the news came that Union Pacific Corporation had entered negotiations to purchase the TrainMaster group. Over six months of haggling and double dealing, contract scares and power plays stood between us and the eventual purchase date, June 1, 2010.

After those dark days, being a Union Pacific employee felt like I had reached the Promised Land. On the day of the buyout, we hired one of our most satisfied customers as our full time salesman, turning our now "off the shelf" training simulation into quick profits for our new company. It is such a great feeling to know that the people in charge actually care about our team and want to help us flourish.

I probably could have told this story soon after June 1, 2010. However, those dark days toyed with my emotions in a way very similar a more personal struggle that took place over the same two years. That struggle is a story for another day.

The Phoenix Rises from the Ashes

Two years is a long time, especially on the Internet. In the time since my last blog post much has happened that had to be kept quiet, both legally and self-imposed. However, those are stories for another post. Today, I want to talk about my goals, the grand plans for my life that I don't want to fall by the wayside of neglect and apathy.

Make video games

This is my dream career, but I won't just fall into the field. I'll have to work at it hard. I'll have to study up on game engines and platforms. I'll have to turn my stack of great ideas into working products and get people to notice. And it starts with Unity. Unity is a middle-ware product that can release onto the web, Android, iPhone, Wii, X-Box, and PlayStation platforms. I need to learn the interface, scripting, and overall design philosophy. And then do it. For free at first.

Meet my favorite makers

I want to be able to meet some of the celebrities that inspire me. The top three are:

• Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of many of Nintendo's best franchises.
• Steven Spielberg, arguably the best storyteller in Hollywood today.
• Felicia Day, the web's most inspiring rising star.

I'd also love to meet Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, M. Night Shayamalan, Weird Al, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas.

Get out of debt

This fall, Jenny and I will be leading Financial Peace University for our small group as part of Imagine at South Lansing Christian Church. We took the class a couple of years ago and started getting better, but never really got that Gazelle Intensity to tackle our debt problem. Nothing lights that fire like having to teach the material. It is time to be done with debt.

Build a house

One of the earliest shared goals between Jenny and I is the desire to build our dream house in north-western Lower Michigan. It will be a large house on a lot of land. It will have an arcade, a pool, secret passages, and enough room to host youth group and business retreats. I also want to build faux ruins in the woods on our property, including an amphitheater and an observatory tower.

Have children

Jenny and I have had trouble with this so far. I've had a surgery, and Jenny has tried several medications to no avail. We have hope that we will be so blessed in time, but we are ok with the wait for now. We will probably start working hard for it again after Jenny graduates next spring.

Be married 80 years

That means Jenny and I will both have to make it to 101 years old, and not get on each others nerves too bad. In a culture where spouses are changed as frequently as tires on your car, we want to stand out as a testimony to what marriage can really be. Part of this is living balanced and healthy lives.

Be gutless

I've had a tummy hanging over my belt as long as I remember. Its days are numbered. I started using MyPlate at LiveStrong.com back in May. You can see my current results to the right. My original goal was to be gutless by Halloween, but that may have been enough time to achieve the desired results. So if I don't make it by Halloween, I will do so soon after, and I won't let that belly fat come back.

Learn the ways of the sword

Part of being healthy is finding some activity to be your key exercise. Jenny and I plan to study sword fighting with the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. I've always loved to pretend sword fight - with sticks, toy lightsabers, and NERF swords - but I've also paid attention to forms and maneuvers while doing so. When I stumbled on to ARMA's website, I knew it was the perfect match. I'll be joining the organisation soon to begin my training.

Grow as a lay leader in the Church

I am currently the Chairman of the Deacons at South Lansing Christian Church. I manage the team of deacons and try to be the best deacon I can be. I know my path leads to Eldership, so I must grow that I may be worthy to serve as an elder. This requires improvement in all areas of my daily walk with Christ.

Pray more

And better. Prayer is probably the weakest part of my daily walk. I don't make it the priority it should be. This needs to change. I need to schedule prayer times and topics until it becomes as natural as breathing.

Eliminate bad habits

To reach these many goals, I'll have to stave off the time-sink surfing and other things that rob me of my potential. I'll have to get focused to reach most of these goals. So I'm asking you, the reader to keep me accountable to all of this, including this last one that makes an even dozen...

Blog more

Right now, I want to post a new blog weekly. Hopefully, I'll have enough to write about. I have 28 years worth of stories, that should be plenty.

April Fool's Day

I love all manner of games and jokes. This makes April Fool's Day significant for me. I have never pulled a huge prank like filling a friend's dresser drawers with packing peanuts or rotating all the furniture in room by 90 degrees. However, subtle pranks can be just as fun if executed well.

Last year was my first April Fool's Day as a professional programmer in an office environment. I hoped to make an impression by "infecting" some of my coworkers computers with a little joke program. A quick Google search lead me to a list of free possibilities, but my Anti-Virus software wouldn't even let me try them. I then decided to replicate my top choice by hand. I picked a few people around the office and found images that they would hate, such as an MSU Spartans logo for the die-hard U of M fan and a Green Bay helmet for the Lions fan. The program briefly flashed the selected image periodically, after the idea of subliminal advertising. It worked well to annoy the targeted individuals, but it felt like a rush job.

I realized about a month ago that I hadn't put any thought into a joke program for this year. As I was pouring over the possibilities, two memories collided in my head. The first was a programming term that I must have read somewhere: "Trapping the mouse." The term means restricting the movement of the mouse cursor to a particular range, such as the canvas of a photo editor or to the window of a game. The second memory was of a TV show I watched on PBS as a kid, Ghostwriter. The show featured a ghost that could only communicate by manipulating written words, but had free range to create text in a computer. The collision of the these memories sparked the idea of having a ghost randomly appear and drag the mouse cursor around the computer screen.

I started by mocking up quick version with a stick figure graphic and simple angular movement. Once I got the mouse trapping to my liking, I upgraded the graphics to the little ghost you see to the left. I then set about making the movement based on the rotation of a simple vector. I started experiencing some "rotational loss," meaning the vector would shorten each time it was rotated, which lead to the ghost eventually coming to a standstill while still trapping the mouse. After I solved that problem, I added some bounds checking to keep the ghost on the available screens at all times. My first pass at the bounds checking would occasionally lead to an infinite loop of corrective action, so I added a loop counter that would bailout of the corrective loop and allow the suspect move, assuming the next move would also need bounds correction, but would be easier to calculate. As a "finished product," I settled on each trap event lasting only 3 seconds. I had the program compile to the innocuous "afd9.exe" and stored it on my shared folder, so I could launch it from any computer on the network.

I started the program secretly on 6 coworkers computers. I also demonstrated it to 5 other coworkers. All responses were positive, from "That's cute, now get it off my computer" to "Very clever, well done." One of the secretly started instances was never trigger, but I showed him how it triggered when he said he felt left out. I am very pleased with the final product and the response. I think it was a good pick me up for the office morale. Now, what should I do next year?

Benjamin J Hobbs: Terrible Blogger

I wanted to start this blog to tell the anecdotes of my life, but I left you all with a cliff hanger almost 2 months ago. I could give you the very valid excuse that I've been busy with new customers coming online at work, but that feels like a cop out. So let me give you Cliff Notes version as a catch up.

The car was only down for one week. The day after the accident, Enterprise switched us out of the Delivery Van and into a Nissan Sentra. Nice ride, but not really my size. State Farm completely covered the repair, so we threw in some maintenance work while it was in the shop. The Malibu ended up coming back to us in better condition than before the accident.

The weekend before the accident, we added two new members to our home. Harvest and Whinny are a male and female, respectively, from the same litter. The names are actually verbs that cats cannot perform. The picture to the left is from there first weekend home, and they have practically doubled in size since then. They have been such a blessing and stress reliever. They love to cuddle, which is a must at our house, but also chase each other around the house, making us laugh every time.

Jenny and I filed our taxes in late February and got a sizable return due to the First-Time Home Buyer's credit. I've got to thank President Bush for getting that one through congress. The return allowed us to each get new computers. Jenny got a little pink Netbook from Dell, and I built a cool looking powerhouse for gaming and development. The return also helped us make some much needed repairs around the new house. We gave a list a mile long to our plumber friend, and bought paint for every room.

I decided to do something significant for Lent this year. The Church I attend doesn't make a big deal about the forty days of Lent, but I still try to use the time to make myself a better person and a better follower of Christ. This year I decided to do quite a serious fast. I didn't give up food altogether, as that is reckless and dangerous for a 40 day period. I did reduce my intake to one meal of my choosing each day. Jenny worried about my health, and encouraged me to supplement my single meal with juice. I took her advice and started drinking V8 Splash and V-Fusion during the mealtimes I skipped each day. The goal of the fast is to improve my Bible study. I have not seen as much improvement in the quantity of study as I originally planned, but the quality of study has made a marked increase so far. There are two more weeks until Easter, which will mark the end of my physical hunger and hopefully a continued hunger for the Bread of Life.

I think that covers the major bullet points of the last two months. I hope to write more frequently in the near future. In fact, check back this Thursday as I will have a scheduled post telling of my April Fool's Day joke program for this year.

Accident in the Early Morning

It started like the last few Wednesdays. Jenny and I left really early so I could drop her off for class at Great Lakes Christian College. As I headed back to the freeway, I had to drive three-quarters of the way around the round-about at Willow and Canal. Just as I passed the halfway point, the car coming from the opposite direction failed to stop in time, and hit my car. I managed to control my car and get out of the round-about. So did the other driver. However, she did not stop on the other side of the intersection. She hit me and kept driving. The elderly couple that were driving behind her at the time said they couldn't get her license plate number when stopped to check on me. I didn't see any damage right away, so I decided to drive on. The rear of my car was throwing violently as I drove, so I stopped at Horrocks to call the police and report the accident. The police officer came, wrote up the incident, and went on his way. Jenny managed to borrow a friend's car and met me at the store. We made the calls to Shroyer's for a tow, State Farm for the insurance claim, and Shaheen Body Shop for the repair. And as quickly as she came, Jenny returned to class. I waited about an hour for the tow truck to pick me and the car up. By the time we got to the body shop, I had missed the opportunity to catch a ride to work with my dad. The estimator at the body shop told me they would probably need three day to repair the damages. So Enterprise picked me up. The only vehicle they had available to rent at the time was a full size service van. I got on the freeway as soon as I could and got safely to my cubicle quite late. My coworker Peter took the follow photos during lunch.