Carry on the Name

Our oldest is at college, she is 11. Yes, she is gifted, however, she is at college for camp. We could tell she was a little nervous but she handled it very maturely. Our boys are at their grandma Hiebert's. They too are gifted....if bodily noises means gifted! Actually they are the last of the Hiebert men. My cousin only had twin girls and my brother has three girls so it was up to me to carry on the Hiebert name. Seth and Drew.....I wonder what God has in store for you and how will the tradition of loveing God and following Him be carried on? Thank you God for a dad who has been obedient to You. How will we Hiebert men carry the name of Jesus to the world? My prayer is that we will face the odds and be obedient to what God has for us to do and never look back!!

Good Morning

My favorite time in the day is the morning before anyone else is up. I enjoy the quiet. I have began to read a book by Max Lucado, A Gentle Thunder; Hearing God Through the Storm. This morning was about the lengths to which God will go to get our attention. For me, I have become aware of the lengths to which I have gone to ignore what God has for me. It seems that my philosophy has been that I know better than He. Yes, I'm not too bright. What about you? What philosophy are you operating under?
Kirsten has a swim meet this morning. She is starting to dive which improves both her confidence and her times so it is great to see her improvement. She loves to swim and I enjoy watching the competition. The kids walk around with sayings written on their backs such as "eat my bubbles". I want to write on her back "If you are reading this, you are not winning" but somehow they say that it would not be sportsmanlike. Me, I'm a competitor so, deal with it!! Well, I have day old coffee to finish drinking and I am in charge of the pep rally so I better get going. Remember, today is all about the gospel, what does that mean for us today?, only God can tell!!

What's Firehouse Talk?

In the firehouse over the course of 18 years I have come to realize that people are willing to talk about anything. Try living together every third day with a different family who has varying political, religious and social views...and each one believes that their view is right. As the years go on you see their kids grow up, you help them move when they relocate, get divorced, and remarried, you attend funerals of their family members, you play golf, basketball and softball together. You work together and get to see all sides of humanity imaginable from joy to sadness, from laughter to complete terror. When these moments take place you return to the firehouse........and talk. What went wrong? What went right? How can we do better? Sorry for stealing your IV!!
At the firehouse, there is always coffee. Not great coffee but hot black like liquid that we drink. At my house, we sit around our boat that we use for water rescue, drink coffee....and talk. Often the conversation is surface talk, but just as often it is about our individual lives. If we took a poll of our wives I believe that most of them would say that we love our job more than we love them. For some that may be a correct statement and for others, we just love what we do. We love the working atmosphere, the guys we work with and all the cool toys we get to play with. I mean, come on, if you had the opportunity to cut a car in half, a new car, with leather interior and all the bells and whistles, wouldn't you try it? Okay, what if they paid you to do it? And what if they paid you to sleep? Wouldn't you at least try that? Once? What if you could work with some of the best people in the world who are willing to do anything for you? Wouldn't you at least give it a try?
Well, that is what I have done for the last 18 years and I have realized that much of my time has been given to simply talking. Many conversations about absolutely everything that you could imagine. That is Firehouse Talk. I will explain more later because there is more that I want to talk about.