At the beginning of December, I sent a quick e-mail to my parents and brother to let them know about a big meeting I was going into that morning. They were aware of the project that I'd been working on, so they understood the importance of the meeting. It was my biggest meeting to date at the newspaper.
I joined my boss that morning to present to the board of directors over our newspaper a plan to upgrade our masthead on the top of our front page. In the process, we were basically redesigning our paper's logo. Not something to be entered into lightly--especially with the VIPs present.
So we made a presentation to the men, showing that we'd planned carefully and that the paper's history (since 1867) was important. After seeing our concepts and discussing them between the five of us, one of the board members said that the press (at our sister paper) would print up some dummy pages for us so that we could see how the masthead options would look on a page of newsprint. They would be discussed further in another meeting two weeks later.
My boss and I took that as a good sign. Apparently we were on the right track and they wanted us to proceed. My boss was a happy man after that. And that's a good thing.
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I went back to my office after the meeting and immediately sent a message to Darla and an e-mail to my family to let them know that the meeting went well.
Mom responded a while later.
Neat, especially when you hear this. On this important and busy day, one of the grads prayed for in Chapel was John Collins, an '01 grad, who is the sports editor at the newspaper in Luray, VA.
After hearing 10 years-worth of chapels growing up, I'd wondered more than once what my situation would be on the day that my name came up on the list of grads to pray for. And with BJ praying for two grads on Tuesday and two on Thursday, how long would that take?
"I was thrilled," Mom said in her e-mail.
Me? I was simultaneously awe-struck, thrilled, and rebuked. I quickly messaged Darla with Mom's news. "WOW!" I said at the end.
"WOW is right," came Darla's reply.
The Lord reigns over all. And I'd just been sent a powerful reminder.
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To close out the story...
Two weeks after the first meeting, the board members returned for the next meeting, where I reprised my presentation. With samples of our current paper and the dummy front pages to peruse, the men came to agree on the same masthead that my boss and I liked the most.
We had done one dummy page, thinking it was what they would choose after hearing their feedback in the first meeting. But they didn't choose it, and instead agreed that our favorite had "grown" on them since seeing it the first time.
At the end, the chairman thanked me for my work and shook my hand. The other men followed suit and then the chairman thanked me again.
"Thank you for your leadership on this improvement, John," he said.
Yeah, well, I had help from Above. And I owe several thousand people a thank-you for their prayers on the morning of that first meeting. Some have mentioned to me that I was prayed for recently in chapel.
I still have the postcard from Bob III saying that I'd been prayed for in chapel. I got it a week or so after that date. Seems to me like a good reminder to keep -- maybe in my Bible.
Now you know the rest of the story.
Posted by JRC at December 23, 2004 04:23 PM | TrackBack