Last night at SNL one of my students showed me her new cell phone that she received in her stocking!

“Your stocking?”, I asked.

“Yes, my stocking!”, she replied.

“It’s December 9th, did you know that?”, I asked.

“Yah, I got it in my St. Nick’s stocking!”, she replied.

“Your what?”, I asked.

Thus I was introduced to “St. Nick’s” – a Wisconsin-tradition that I had never heard about before last night! More information here on Wikipedia.

So after my introduction to “St. Nick’s Day”, I happened to hear about another German-tradition familiar in most Wisconsin-homes called “Hide The Pickle”. An interesting title for an interesting tradition.

I laughed about these traditions last night and this morning happened to open an early Christmas gift from one of our students’ mothers and what’dya know – we are now the proud owners of a glass pickle ready for hiding! More on the Christmas Pickle tradition which seems to actually be a mythical German tradition and actually an American tradition here on Wikipedia.

01. rock tumbler
02. book with a secret compartment
03. treehouse
04. potato cannon
05. baseball bat

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UPDATE 12.08.07 | 3:30PM
#2 is now complete.

I’ve tried now for three days to fight off whatever cold I’ve been catching and it officially took control of me yesterday. I thought I had turned a corner by the afternoon and even ventured out for the second of three funerals this week. I went to bed feeling better and then this morning awoke to the pain of realizing I was officially still sick.

It’s just a cold, thankfully – and will pass in a day or two, but that doesn’t help the fact that this is one incredibly busy weekend coming up. I’ve got to finish preparation for Sunday morning’s message and for Sunday night’s youth service, too! I will do my best to attend the third funeral tomorrow, too at Noon.

On top of being sick we got a fresh load of snow through the night last night! Probably another 3-4 inches on top of our already fallen 10+! Cool, huh?

I love Wisconsin. This is my first sickness in 5-months of being here – that’s not a bad track-record! Maybe Wisconsin loves me too?

Did some early-Winter Spring-cleaning today here on stevansheets.com

Please enjoy the cleanliness.

Heading to the funeral of one of the three Mukwonago High Seniors tonight. There will be two more in the next few days.

I had a great “dialogue” with Pastor Dan Bickel yesterday (he’s our Wisconsin District Superintendent). He meets once-a-year with each pastor on the district for a 2+ hour dialogue about ministry, family, and whatever else we could think of! It was great knowing that my D.S. cared about me enough to spend two hours of his day with me talking about me-stuff! I felt loved and appreciated for sure!

Working on a message around the theme of the Three Wise Men for Sunday morning this week. I’m also working on a God-as-comfort-giver message for Sunday night this week.

We got a huge snowstorm yesterday afternoon and all night. We now have about 8-10 inches of snow on the ground. I used a sweet snowblower this morning to make my way from the house to the church – and I only managed to fall on my butt twice, once-again throwing my back out-of-whack and causing me great discomfort most of the day today!

The snow is beautiful! I hope it stays and gets added to soon!