“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time” I remember asking this question years ago to one of my youth group kids, they replied “I don’t eat elephants!” but metaphorically this student was trying to eat the proverbial elephant in one bite. I think sometimes we all try to do jobs in one full movement, metaphorically eating the elephant in one bite, but sometimes our perfectionist side takes over and we won’t start a job unless we can finish the job, in one fast stroke of intention. In the first case of eating in one big bite we usually become discouraged and stop. Giving ourselves the freedom to quit because we feel defeated. In the second case, we never start because we can’t imagine leaving something half done. 

In the first case we are highly motivated and step up and to play the game, energized and willing to fight anything in our way to make big results! Then we don’t see the results we expected, and we start to lose the drive to continue …This is self-evident in-house repairs, WE never seem to finish the trim until it’s time to sell the house. It also seems like my sons started out this way in life, starting a job and leaving my tools everywhere and the job half done (notice I didn’t throw myself under the bus?)

In the second case, when we see the project, we may even plan it all out but then we stop short of starting. We feel we can never carve out enough time to start and finish a task in one smooth block of time… So, the job just sits there, waiting to see the starting line.

So how do we decide what the correct level of motivation is? Too much at first? we burn out and quit… not enough at first and we feel like it will never even get done… I think this is easy to define, we just need enough to not quit. Enough to feel successful and productive start to finish.  And I believe this can be one of the most difficult things we face, starting and not quitting.

This project management requires discipline and dedication, experience and endurance, planning and perseverance… and in some cases it requires humility. Sometimes to make progress we need to ask for help, beg for help, and maybe even guilting people to help. Do you think guilting is manipulation? If I guilt my wife into cooking my favorite meal and she guilts me into a vacation because of the meal, don’t we both win? (maybe it’s because we both love to give the other whatever they ask for?) Be careful, manipulation can be from a selfish motive. But it may very well become a blessing to be guilted into helping… We can become a part of the bigger picture and discover success, satisfaction and symmetry of life. Take Road clean-up, by yourself is a daunting task, but shared with others becomes a community event. 

We are slowly making progress at Sam’s Place. HUGE thank you to the Bigfork 6th grade class a week ago on Wednesday… We filled my dump trailer three times with yard litter and branches… I got our new sign installed as they helped me with yard clean up. Then we turned our attention to the shed that was full of junk left behind from years of stuffing things into corners… the grand finale was cutting down the old sign, it fell and broke into pieces… ironic? 

We met with another inspector; this time we are looking at grants. We learned a lot and found out what we may qualify for, Jess is now doing paperwork and sorting out deadlines. 

The electric panels are all in, but we need to wait for Minnesota Power to install our overhead lines. We have a huge praise!!! We have been approved for a grant that covers about ⅓ of the electrical work so far, that leaves us to pay the remaining monster sized bill of about $40k, but it’s a necessity. We got another grant for the front door replacement, and now we need to finalize that project. Jess and I have made a few hard decisions and a few short cuts that we needed to settle on to make things work. It’s always hard to cut things out to keep in that budget, but it’s all part of being a good steward.

The electrical work came with a few expensive hidden gems like an electrical panel had caught fire and the breakers were “by-passed”. This was, I am pretty sure, probably from using all those electric heaters, because the boiler was dead. The upgrades do really look great, and it allows us to replace 1938 fuse technology with circuit breakers, safety first. 

These past two weeks I have been so busy getting the small things lined up, it feels good to be emerging on this side of these events:

• Broiler chickens are set up in the brooder
• Piggies are in the pen learning about fencing.  I picked up Mangalitsa pigs this year… Did you know this type of pig is called the “Kobe Beef” of the pig industry?  On a side note, why is it that every year it takes two days of fence repair before I can bring home the pigs? Seems odd to me. 
• Caught two escaped piggies
• The water line froze and burst in a few spots, that’s a future repair… Dragged out all the hoses for now. 
•  Jess is running a fever, and I am running the program solo…
• It’s not often I get a truck stuck in my own yard. But when I do, I bury it up to the axles.  I knew it was a bad day when I backed up, the truck slid sideways and immediately sank into the soupy mix… two days later, a lot of hand digging, a stuck bobcat… I can go to work again… 
• 4000# of flooring is picked up from the cities and unloaded into Sam’s Place
• I picked up al from his dad’s place
• Jess planted her flowers this week, she loves her flowers,
• Drax knocked one flowerpot over to sleep on the flowers
• We bought more flowers 
• I installed the brother in laws mini-split
• Got the inner tubes installed in the lawn mower
• Spent time with my bride

I love having weeks like this where so many things just fall into place and click, but it’s also nice to sit down and write my blog post, it is truly one of my all-time favorite things to do. I am exhausted just writing about the week!

Random thoughts, back to Sam’s Place… Our original hope “was” to maybe be able to reopen in only a few weeks, but we quickly determined, before we bought Sam’s Place, that it would take months… We still moved forward, trusting that God was and still is leading this mission.

Anyway, thank you for checking in with us and we look forward to getting the boat in the water and catching dinner soon. 

“It’s time to remember the important things, 

perhaps forgotten or maybe never known.”

Sky Pilot Frank Higgins

From Jess and Charlie at Livinghazzardously, 

God’s peace be your blessing until we talk again next week.