Dave Cesari posted some great bird photos from his improved bird feeder and up-state NY – click on TGO Photo Club in left column and then return to read my story on friends and opportunities below.

 

…………MY STORY ON FRIENDS AND OPPORTUNITIES……..

The subject of opportunities crept into a discussion my daughter and I were having relative to my granddaughter.  We envied the opportunities of our youth. 

How did she get into the college of her choice. Some said friends of her Dad help her assure early admission.  I believe her friends helped her prepare for the opportunity, seek the opportunity, and  accept the opportunity the moment it was available. In any case, friends were a part of her being at the college of her choice today.

Friends are the most important assets we have. Our friends are from our families, our spouses, and our communities –  neighbors, social media,  clubs, churches, and the list goes on.

In this writing, I want to look at only one  aspect of friendship –  Opportunity!  

What did I say?  We select friends because we want to use them for opportunity – that sure sounds terrible.  Well, read on.  I hope to illustrate that taking an opportunity from friends is an honorable arrangement. 

I found the following suggestion on the internet:  “You can attract opportunities to you by selecting  friends that have a strong focus in life.   Be curious to learn about their focus. Give praise to your friends. Give to support your friend’s focus.”         .

 First, let me add this caution: You must take opportunities and actions  that reward you in your own way.  Mine would not necessarily work for you.

Think about what YOU want as YOUR opportunity, how YOU will grab it, and  how YOU will attract YOUR own opportunities.  

Here is an opportunity given to me by my friends – It is just one of many opportunities I have taken. I strung them all together for a full life of extraordinary phases.

Here is a story of one of my opportunities  – “Block Island Preacher Man.”

Receiving my retirement check.

Right after retirement from IBM, I wanted to give a year or so to the church on Block Island.  I discussed it with my friend Reverend Tony.  From that came an opportunity beyond my greatest expectation.

Tony gave me responsibility to help him expand three service’s offered by his church: 

 

 

  1. Develop a  leadership program for small churches using his book, “Seeds of Renewal”

Leadership training program – We preachers all enjoy a good fellowship meal.

2. Run a church camp program for Rhode Island youth,

Can you find the cross and the bible in this photograph. This was a great youth group. That is me on the right.

3. Offer “church weddings” to non-members – couples who fell in love while visiting the island and wanted to return to the Island to have a church wedding. Tony could not take time from serving his church members to do the pre-wedding counseling that the church required.  I needed to go to school to learn to do that. Then I was locally ordained.

One of dozens of weddings on the beautiful resort Island – Block Island. Can you tell which is me?

To me the rewards were many. Here are a few:

I studied and learned much in order to be prepared to take on the responsibilities – I love learning.  Gloria and I worked together – she organized weddings – I performed them – We were a team doing a fun service for the church. Twice while doing leadership programs, I had the opportunity to live as a guest with a family on the Hopi Reservation – It was like a vacation trip to experience a different way of life.  Later in the year, several parents of young campers from Rhode Island told me the youth Camp program change the direction of their teenagers – that was a remarkable reward.  On down the road, couples I married, sent us photos of their new-born child and told of how wonderful we made their wedding day at the church on the Island.

These young folks from Arizona – They grew up on the Reservation – came with their parents to our Texas ranch to visit and prepare a traditional Navajo Christmas dinner for us.

The rewards continued long after we left the Island.  For example, at our ranch in Texas, a Navajo family I worked with in the leadership program, came, at Christmas, and prepared a “Navajo Traditional” Christmas dinner for us.  Here is an other example of continuing rewards:  Can you imagine, 30 years later, how much fun I have telling folks to speak nicely because “I am an ordained minister” and then watching their mouths drop open?  Finally and most valuable reward I received was an insight to Tony’s strong focused philosophy.  That philosophy forever changed my concept of the rewards of giving. I would need to write a book to tell you of all the rewards I received from this experience on Block Island.

Using my friends was a great arrangement for both of us. So, say I, make friends, use them, and most important – help them use you! 

Oh my – as you swing through life – love your friends and help them use you to have rewarding opportunities.