Kevin Presseault

Man oh man... I'm wrecked!! What a crazy day today! This morning the kids were up around 6am! Figures. The day I can sleep in is the day they get up extra early. Oh well. That settled my breakfast plans for the day then. Today in our quaint little town was the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival . We took a tractor ride from near our place to the center of town where the festival was in full swing. There was well over 50 000 people there at 8am! And in a town with a population of 9 000 you can really see the difference! The kids and I stood in line for an hour to get some pancakes! Then we hit some of the candy stands and checked out the antiques and toy collectibles. Very fun stuff. Hats off to everyone who puts this event on! What a great job they did! The kids started to melt down around noon so we jumped on the tractor to take us back to our part of town. We were back home by 12:30... and we crashed for about 30 minutes. We jumped in the car and went into Waterloo. I...

I'm in my office at the church this afternoon trying to finish off my next paper for school which is due Tuesday. With the trip to Ottawa, Montreal and then the visit from my sister from Nashville this week I'm quite behind on where I was hoping to be for getting this homework done. Tuesday's paper is a nice short one... only a five page critical interaction on the book Natural Church Development by Charles A. Schwarz . I'm nearly finished the first draft. Next it will be my 25 page research paper. I've decided to do it on Communion. I thought this would be an interesting topic since it's a topic in churches that seems to cause a lot of disagreement and yet doesn't have much in the way of clear and precise teaching in the New Testament. Should be a fun one! Oh! By the way. I received my first paper back. I got a B+! Not bad at all for my first paper in nearly 20 years :-) If you'd like to give it a read I have it posted online here at this link . Let m...

Since reading Marvel's Civil War two weeks ago I've really caught the superhero bug. I've always loved superhero stories... it's just a part of who am I. Noble, strong and courageous heroes standing up in the face of trial and tribulation for those they've sworn to protect is just cool! And give them some great powers and a cool costume and it's just even better :-) As I mentioned earlier, Civil War is a story-line which forced superheroes to choose which side they stood on the US government's new forced registration act. Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man , thought that he should be a part of the registration and removed his mask on live TV and shared his identity with the entire world. After learning how failure to register is sending heroes to prison in the negative zone (a dimension outside our own) for life, Parker realized that he joined the wrong side and rebels against Iron Man and joins Captain America 's resistance force. That all happens in the...

Yesterday marked six months since our family packed up and left Montreal. I remember the day like it was just a few weeks ago... I remember when the nerves starting kicking in as I realized the huge leap of faith we were taking in accepting this new position. Leaving a great job where you're already established and know the ins and outs for something completely unknown and unfamiliar definitely kept me awake several nights! Was I doing the right thing? Would my family suffer financially because of this switch in career? Those questions would hit me when I least expected them. The reality of the entire move really hit on my last day at work at CGI. Walking out of that office with the small box of my personal belongings was weird. Here was this little box that represented nearly 15 years of my work career. In those years I must of written tens of thousands of lines of code, spent multiple days in meetings and on phones, spent thousands of dollars on hotels and airfare and wri...

We're spending the next few days visit family and friends in Ottawa and Montreal. It's great seeing everyone and just spending some time lounging and relaxing. We're back home on late Sunday night and have Monday morning to prepare for my sister's visit from Nashville. Can't wait to see her and the family!

I gotta admit... I'm not very good at being still! I'm sure if I was in grade school I would be put on every drug that the school nurse hands out :-) At the Purpose Driven Small Group Conference they had several workshops available. Most of these specialised in specific areas of small group ministry (groups for families, men, women, etc). One of the topics really hit a cord with me... contemplative prayer. My wife has some experience in quiet contemplation and, to be honest, I never really got it. I figured that that would be a good workshop to go to, mainly so that this could be an exercise that I could start doing at home with my wife. The workshop was hosted by Judge and Amy Reinhold. If the name is familiar, it is the same Judge Reinhold from the Santa Clause movies. Considering that my kids watch the Santa Clause movie pretty much EVERY week all year long I took that as a sign from God that this session would be of benefit to my family :-) The session was very interesting...

I know I should be spending my time working on my papers for school but I REALLY needed some quality geek out time today so I read Marvel's Civil War seven part series! Now, I haven't picked up comics in quite some time. I buy the occasional issue here and there for my kids. Oh, and I did pick up DC's Infinite Crisis series on EBay last year. I've been hearing about this Civil War storyline for quite some time and have been very interested in giving it a read. Yesterday I found myself in a comic book store in Toronto with my sister. I was actually there for her. It's true! I swear! She's a die-hard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and there's a new comic coming out which continues the TV show and she wanted to buy it. However, that comic only comes out next week. But they did have a ton of Civil War issues... so I bought the "Road to Civil War" trade paperback and the seven issues of "Civil War". Unfortunately they were sold out of Captain Am...

I have a lot of books on my desk that I REALLY need to read. Some I want to read for fun, but most are for school and the church ministries. With only about a month left of this semester I have two papers to finish writing which require a lot of reading and research (and I'm only taking one class! I can't imagine having more then that!) Normally, reading has been for enjoyment or to learn how to better myself, my ministry, or my love for God. I feel like I need to relearn how to read. I need to go through these books to find the information I need for putting together a good paper and stop trying to absurb and learn every word written on the page. Either that or maybe a speed reading class is in order :-)

I'm currently working on a small group campaign to start the week after Easter. Our sermon series around that time is going to be a study on the Gospel of Marc so I was really hoping to have something tied into that theme. I was doing some searching for small group material on PurposeDriven.com and came across the resources put out by LifeTogether . I ordered their small group host training DVD curriculum and it was very well put together. We ran our first host training about a month ago and it was very well received by the 15 leaders who came out for it. I ordered a bunch more of their resources to evaluate and see how we could use them. They put out a DVD series called Experience Christ Together. This series consists of six 6-week studies. The first is a six week look at the life and ministry of Jesus. The topics are The Teacher, The Healer, The Shepherd, The Servant, The Savior and The Risen Lord. The DVD and workbook provide a fantastic look into the life of Christ and help th...

Just received a new book in the mail today. It was sent to me from the book guru himself, Tom Duff (aka Duffbert) . It's always nice to hear from guys and gals from the past life as a Lotus Notes consultant :-) Thanks so much for sending this to me! I really appreciate it! Anyways, Tom sent me a copy of the book The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs by Brian Bailey. Being a church guy and blogging, technology geek, this book seems right up my alley! I would love to jump into this one right away but I have to write another paper based on the book Natural Church Development by Christian A. Schwarz which is due on the 26th. And I also need to get started on my 30 page paper on an aspect of church theology. I've decided to look that the theology and tradition of communion in the church. That's due on April 10th. So unfortunate, The Blogging Church will have to wait a few weeks. This will be my little reward for finishing my first seminary course! A...

I'm currently working on a critical review paper which is due on Tuesday. This is the first time I've written a paper for school in over 15 years! This is a LOT tougher then I thought it was going to be! Sure, I write somewhat regularly in this blog. And I've been know to send out the frequent 4 to 5 page email on church ministry issues or geeking out over the latest movie or Warhammer miniatures... but this is so much different. When I blog, I don't particularly care if my grammar comes out okay, or even if I come across as a simpleton :-) Blogging and emails are a simple, fun, form of communication between friends and colleagues. But for this school paper... Man oh man! The instructions to follow on the layout, format, citing sources, review criteria and all the other aspects of the paper are 30 pages! The paper itself only needs to be 5 pages (and that's double spaced so it's actually only 2.5 pages). Normally, I could pump out 2.5 pages in about 30 ...