Well,
I just wanted to give all of you a quick update on my life. It seems that I am enjoying two significant
transitions in my life, all at once. Our
church is transitioning to a new pastor, and I am transitioning to a new
schedule at work. Going to be a lot of
bumps in the road for a while.
In
the United Methodist Church, the District Superintendent has the option of moving
a new pastor into a parish every few years.
And, the church sometimes has a say in it, but not always. Though there are pros and cons to this, it’s
a part of life. We’ve enjoyed our current
pastor for over 5 years now, which is a real blessing. Especially since he was here to help us during
a really time during the life of the church, the loss of the church building to
a fire. In fact, at one point, the
District Superintendent wanted to move our pastor to another church, but our
congregations ‘persuaded’ him not to. We
are all thankful that he listened to us then.
I
have not met the new pastor, though my wife has. She seems to like him so far, and from what she
has told me, sounds like he will do well here.
Lord willing, the transition that all of us, as a church, will have will
not be too difficult.
The
other major transition that I will be facing is a change in work schedule. After a major riot at the institution that I
work at several years ago, we have been working 2x 12 hours shifts, 4 days a
week. It has been very challenging for
all of us. Especially since we do not
have enough staff to fully staff those shifts.
Long hours, mandatory overtime several times a week, and only getting
three days off each week has been very draining on all of us. Thankfully, several staff members from other
institutions have been coming on a regular basis to help us out. That makes things a little better.
Unfortunately,
though, we have been forced to return to 3x 8 hour shifts this week. Some staff members and administration are
very happy about this. On paper, it
looks much better, I am sure, and it enables administration to potentially
cover a whole shift if they have to mandatory someone (we are only allowed to
work up to 16 hours in one day). And,
yes, I do understand why some would really want use to return to 8 hour shifts.
However,
the problem that we will be running into is lots of people being mandatoried
for overtime, potentially for a whole shift (16 hours). When we were working 4x 12 hour shifts, we
had three days off to recover. And, many
of us would volunteer to come in early and o that we would not be mandatoried for
that day. And hopefully, we would not
have to be mandatoried for several days.
But now we are spread out onto three shifts and will only have two days
off per week to recover. If staff is
juggled really well, the mandatory over time might not be too bad. However, it could get really bad.
When
I returned to Corrections in 2013, after being gone for about a year and a half
to pursue what I hoped to be a dream career as a pastor, we went from a little
mandatory overtime to being hit three to four times a week. And, since I was working 2nd
shift, I would typically have to work the full third shift. Needless to say, all of us were chronically exhausted
for the 6 or 7 weeks that this went on for.
And, I am concerned that this will be the case again. I may be wrong, and I do hope that I am. I really, really do hope that I am wrong. Your prayers for all of us would be very,
very appreciated!
I
am not trying to be overly negative about things. However, if I suddenly am not on Facebook,
blogging, etc., that is probably the reason why. I will try to be on when I can, but right
now, I have no idea what my free time will look like.
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