But, anyway, it's kind of like this: My dad occasionally helps promote products on the weekends, stuff like Coke Zero, or a new video game or something like that. The people he does it for mentioned that they had an event planned for Saturday, but that really a teenager or someone younger would be better. So he suggested I offer to help, which I did. What the product was was a game for the Nintendo 3DS, off the Nickolodeon TV show "iCarly", a puzzle game, where she and her best friend have to run this restaraunt; making food, getting it to customers, trying to keep them happy; that kind of thing. So that was what I was doing, trying to get kids interested in testing the game, and maybe telling parents or grandparents about it, maybe for them to buy as a present for later on. The GameStop employee I was working with was named Heather, who was about the kind of person you expect to be working at GameStop. Late twenties, sort of completed school at the community college, about all she does in her free time is video games. Trying to possibly get into store management, would like to write comedies for TV, who was chosen to help with the event because "I'm the only one of us who isn't, like, allergic to little children." (Funny the things you find out about strangers if you just listen.) About fifteen or twenty kids tried the game, and one set of parents bought it; a couple others seemed to be thinking about buying. A little adopted Asian girl; her newly-found friend, a black girl; a family of Spanish siblings; and several kids who looked like they might have special needs were some of the testers.
When Mom and everybody came to pick me up, we then went to pick up a load of horse manure for the garden and a to-be-built-soon worm composter. That doesn't happen every day, either. The place where we got it was one of those fancy high-end horse stables for rich kids to learn to ride, we were met by the manager's husband, who not only filled up the pickup bed with three large tractor-scoops(for free), but also showed Caleb how to tie down a tarp in a way that won't mess up the paint. Several poor motorcyclists on the BA Expressway got facefuls of the stuff.
While we were unloading the pickup a few hours later, I got to thinking and planning a blog post, since showers, campfires and manual labor are good times to think. Did I have to shovel manure, so that it could be turned into garden food, or pile it up in a large pile, for my siblings to start a worm farm? Not really, I probably could have gotten away with not helping, saying I was worn out from being a friendly, outgoing, non-threatening marketer, but it needed to be done, so I did it. And the promo event was kind of the same thing; pretty unimportant, but it was a small thing that needed doing, and I fit the description of a person who could help and was willing to try. Kind of out of the ordinary, more extreme examples, of what I usually do most days; of just trying to make sure the mundane tasks and chores in life get done. My life motto is that "Little things aren't the most important, but you should treat them like they are.", sort of a rephrased version of Luke 16:10: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." (NIV)
If we do a good job on the little, small, non-important things in life, whether it's making sure the house stays clean, dishes and laundry kept running, or that the softball team gets mentioned in the paper every week or so; then maybe we'll get a little more to work with later on. My writing articles for the local three-town newspaper led to a small role with a statewide sports website; and so to way more exposure and a lot more teaching than I would have gotten otherwise, and maybe I can use that experience as a key to something else journalistic in the next few years. Wasn't that much money, and it wasn't that hard, but maybe being willing to do promo for that event will lead to more opportunities in the future, we'll see.
This attitude can be seen in a pretty good amount of men in my family, whether your day job is marketing or a school bus driver, or you're technically retired, of being willing to do whatever else needs to be done to keep your family running should be done, whether that's working as a security guard on the Illinois River or at college football games, or pitching in at the junk store the family runs, or chopping wood and raising cows; helping set up garage sales and single-handedly wiring the electricity for an entire town.
It's the little things in life that makes us who we are, and if we practice these little acts of servanthood, we're growing a bit closer to Christ, reflecting His image better, and shining a light out to the world, even if we(or they) don't really stop to think about how it's happening. So clean up after your little sister leaves her stuff all strewn out on the floor. Don't take quite as many coffee breaks during the workday. Milk the goat in the mornings. Small things like that are important, and you never know what might be on the other side of an ordinary-looking situation.
If we do a good job on the little, small, non-important things in life, whether it's making sure the house stays clean, dishes and laundry kept running, or that the softball team gets mentioned in the paper every week or so; then maybe we'll get a little more to work with later on. My writing articles for the local three-town newspaper led to a small role with a statewide sports website; and so to way more exposure and a lot more teaching than I would have gotten otherwise, and maybe I can use that experience as a key to something else journalistic in the next few years. Wasn't that much money, and it wasn't that hard, but maybe being willing to do promo for that event will lead to more opportunities in the future, we'll see.
This attitude can be seen in a pretty good amount of men in my family, whether your day job is marketing or a school bus driver, or you're technically retired, of being willing to do whatever else needs to be done to keep your family running should be done, whether that's working as a security guard on the Illinois River or at college football games, or pitching in at the junk store the family runs, or chopping wood and raising cows; helping set up garage sales and single-handedly wiring the electricity for an entire town.
It's the little things in life that makes us who we are, and if we practice these little acts of servanthood, we're growing a bit closer to Christ, reflecting His image better, and shining a light out to the world, even if we(or they) don't really stop to think about how it's happening. So clean up after your little sister leaves her stuff all strewn out on the floor. Don't take quite as many coffee breaks during the workday. Milk the goat in the mornings. Small things like that are important, and you never know what might be on the other side of an ordinary-looking situation.
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