God Plays Baseball ~ And Uses Drunk Salesmen

God Plays Baseball ~ And Uses Drunk Salesmen

By: HelloGod

Volume 1 No.5

Friday July 4, 2008

My love for music and journalism didn’t quench. I chose to learn real estate and business. I signed up at what I felt was a professional real estate company and went to school to get my license. I went to business school at the same time. Because I need to have my feet wet in what I’m doing, I was the first person in that real estate company’s history to have two listings and two sales before having my license. I teamed up with someone in the office and whatever listing or sale I got, we put those listings and sales on his license. Then he would pay me. Naturally being just a sales associate wasn’t good enough for me; I had to be a broker and then a REALTOR. They say you must always capitalize every letter in REALTOR to properly spell the word. I didn’t give much thought to God at that time. I had achieved the highest level I could in real estate and then the challenge was gone. I decided to tinker with personal investing when I had the opportunity, but I needed to move on.

I had played baseball in an industrial league and had the most home runs and was voted most valuable player by my peers. I enjoy baseball. One time I rounded second base and I lead with my left leg instead of my normal right leg lead and went crashing down to the ground. I had never felt such pain. My baseball days were over. Torn cartilage, shattered hamstring, water on the knee and internal bleeding on my knee were the diagnosis. Couldn’t they have added a few extra just to make it real interesting I thought? After surgery, my leg was in a brace for six months. I knew I would be “out of commission” as they say. Music. I thought, if I’m going to be laid up with a leg brace, maybe it is time to work on my music.

I went out to a local piano and organ store and talked with a salesman (who happened to have a Manhattan in his hand) I wondered why he was slurring his words. I hadn’t played that Magnus Chord Organ in years. Frankly, I think my mom sold it in a yard sale. The salesman showed me a few organs and I determined it would be a theater organ. I didn’t want some boring church organ I wanted drums and neat sounds. Heck, it even had a cassette tape player. I bought a fifty-three hundred dollar organ and didn’t even know how to play. Not a problem I thought, I’ll just read the book. It must be delivered before I go into the hospital for knee surgery and it was. Once the stitches were out (thank you Doctor Schrock) I was ready for rehab. I hurried things on rehab by putting tomato soup cans, peach cans and tomato sauce cans into a fabric bag and hanging it from my ankle. I’d lie on the edge of my bed and do leg lifts. Once I could sit comfortably with the leg brace, it was time. I put a footstool next to the organ and I’d read through the book while propping my leg on the footstool. I’d sit there for eight hours a day, just going through the books and practicing. Was God in this? Did God know I would hurt my knee? Did God plan the whole thing? You could never have convinced me years ago. However, now I see God’s hand guiding me into music. You think you know where this is going, don’t you? Not when it comes to me, you’d never guess but you can find out more tomorrow. Right here at: Listen God.

Chaaps International a work in progress. Don’t forget, you can also read this at: Hello God.

A great resource to learn blogging is John Chow’s website. Thanks John for helping me get started. Thanks to Chris G from Problogger for sharing John Chow and for the Problogger book I just bought.

God Fell Into The Organ

School’s Out ~ Now What

By: HelloGod

Volume 1 No.4

Thursday July 3, 2008

I must back up a minute. I said I liked research and would document my research by writing myself notes. As a child, I did have one other love, music. I loved classical music and still do. My mom had been, before she married my dad, a professional singer and first chair with the violin. She won a scholarship for violin (way back when – which meant she had to be good back then) plus Glenn Miller’s orchestra wanted her to join their orchestra. Imagine where I’d be today, oh well. I know where I get my musical abilities; a gift from God and my mom’s genes.

When I was little, I wanted to play a musical instrument. Naturally, mom didn’t have the money to buy me an organ or piano and that is what I wanted to play. Mom must have seen I was really interested in music because I’d go over to the neighbor lady’s house (who happened to be our landlord) and tinker on her old out-of-tune upright piano. So mom thought she would surprise me one Christmas: she bought me a cheap plastic guitar with cheap plastic strings as a Christmas present. Oh well, she meant well.

A few years later, mom went to Sears and bought a Magnus Chord Organ for fifty dollars. Wow, our family had arrived to upper class I thought. Of coarse, we all had to share the organ. That was mom’s polite way of telling me not to hog all the time up on the organ, but share. As time passed, my brother who went to church school with me tinkered on the chord organ whenever he could shove me off the seat. My first song I ever learned was Silent Night. It was beautiful and I thought God fell into the organ because I would think about God when I played. It wasn’t that I knew God; it was the song Silent Night that made me think.

When school was out most of my siblings enlisted in the armed forces. One brother had already been in Vietnam and my buddy, the brother who went to church school and played the chord organ too; he went in the Marine Corp. Even the girls went in the service. Everyone would come home dressed in uniform and mom would dote over them and I’d get jealous. So guess what I did? You guessed it; I enlisted too. I wanted mom to be proud of me too. She was proud of us all but was tired from working so hard. She didn’t tell us how proud she was, she would show us by always cooking our favorite meals. She would have little things we liked when we came home. She never remarried until we all left home; she was lonely.

My military service is not what you think. All the “guff “ recruits take, it escaped me. Instead, they sent me to school; leadership training school. So I never peeled potatoes or had KP. Never went camping in the woods, I was in school. When I came home I thought, schools out, now what. My next move, you can’t guess, yep, I enrolled in school. There were several things I wanted to do but started with journalism. I’ve come to realize, I get bored easily. It is like I want to conquer the challenge and when I succeed I want to move on to the next challenge. How many different jobs have you had? Would you believe, when I got out of journalism school, I didn’t go into journalism? Not me. I went to another school and you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to see where.

Chaaps International is a network of people helping people. I hope you’ll explore their website. You can also read this blog on our mirror site: Hello God and leave comments there too. Listen God.

A Path of Collectibles to God

The Second Run Started It

By: HelloGod

Volume 1 No.3

Wednesday July 2, 2008

Have you thought about what you collected when you were a teenager? Some collect stamps, baseball cards, ceramic horses, toys, swords, coins or whatever you can get away with hiding in your bedroom. My collectibles were much different.

My dad left my mom for another woman when I was under five years old. I watched my mom struggle to put food on the table. When four little hungry mouths were chirping for food, somehow, my mom stretched a meal. My dad was more interested in his need to impress women than he was with his responsibilities to God or man, much less his children. Mom had to work two jobs to fill our financial needs.

I saw my dad maybe three times in my whole life. It wasn’t because mom stopped us from seeing dad – dad didn’t want to see us. Was that God’s fault? No, God gives free will; that was dad’s choice. You say yeah, but God could have stopped it. No, God doesn’t work that way, as you will see later in my journey. So mom moved us to the country, worked two jobs to take care of us: dad – he did whatever he wanted. I went to a country school, geographically only.

My school had what we called the first run and the second run. Basically, if you were good in school, when the bell rang to go home for the day, you left school riding the bus home on the first run. If you were bad, you stayed “after school” and rode home on the second run. The second run was always about one hour and fifteen minutes after the first run had left. Students would generally get home about an hour and a half later than the first run students: It was punishment for bad behavior. Those students kept “after school” were in a classroom writing I will not (whatever) a hundred times.

But, a couple of local churches offered something called “church school” in my town. Students could go to a church school for one hour one day a week and ride the late bus or second run home. While in third grade, my younger brother and I asked mom if we could stay after school to go to church school on Wednesday nights and ride the second run home. The answer was yes and that is where I learned the books of the Old Testament. I memorized five new books each week but when I got to Amos, the school year ended. They never offered church school again. I’m sure it had nothing to do with my brother and me. But how many third graders do you know who would want to stay after school to go to church school? Most want to go home and play. Was God calling my brother and me or were we just good kids? Let me assure you, it was not the latter.

In my teenage years I liked to go to flea markets. I always looked for books. Reading and writing were two of my favorites. I liked research. I would read books and research their topics and make notes in the columns. I liked books so much I decided to start collecting them. Me, I couldn’t just collect books, no, not me, I started collecting Bibles. I started collecting Bibles when I was sixteen and I didn’t even know God then: but he knew me. I have never met a teenager yet, who is or has collected Bibles. Was God calling me? Believe me, I didn’t sit and read all those Bibles: I just collected them. I would skim them, make a few notes and just see how many I could collect. I would even review my third grade church school knowledge of the Old Testament books, always getting stuck after Amos. Mom was so proud. Remember, we never went to church except for Christmas and Easter, mom worked.

I finished school and then came my, know it all years. Now I was eighteen, I finally arrived. You know, don’t worry mom, I can handle myself now. Decisions, I’ll make my own, I know it all. Yeah, don’t tell me you’ve never been there done that. I confess, some of my decisions were real; well let’s just say they were real. What did you do when you finished high school? Me? You’ll have to tune in tomorrow.

Chaaps International a great resource of people helping people. They have a product in their energy section, which will double your gas mileage or your money back. It’s not their product, but they are promoting the product.

Resource: I apologize upfront for not remembering the source but someone on wordpress posted a link to the entire Bible and I wanted to repost the link here: King James Bible