The Con

e’ve been learning about “cons” here at the ranch.  The first we heard of this was in a conversation yesterday at lunch with the Max, 10-year-old.  He mentioned a list of cons and we had to ask him, what’s a con?  “It’s a consequence”, he told us.  There’s a list of cons for when the boys mess up.  Shoveling manure is one of them.  I learned what another one was when  I was talking to one of the staff and a trailer full of junk went by.

“That’s all stuff from the thrift store,” Tim told me. “Stuff that can’t be sold gets thrown in a trailer and brought here.  The trailer is parked next to the dumpster and one of the cons for the boys is sorting out all the plastic, making it into smaller pieces, if necessary, and putting it in the dumpster.  The rest of the stuff goes to the burn pile.”

With a clear list of chores, expectations, and consequences, the boys are generally compliant.  They work hard, and that takes care of a lot of the pent-up energy that teenage boys have.  One of them was having a bit of a hard time complying a couple days ago and ended up doing 50 pushups and several laps.

Deb helped sort incoming stuff in the thrift store this morning.  I finished milling baseboards and then I spent the rest of the day painting them.  Fifteen pieces, each twelve feet long.  Because of the rather rough raw material, there were quite a few areas with knot holes or chips or other blemishes.  I figured I would just carefully sort this all out when installing and use the imperfect ones for closets.

I seem to have a lot of closet pieces.

Painting baseboards and working in the thrift store is only part of the story.  The other parts are the conversations with the boys about cons and the conversations with staff about their involvement with the ranch.  During our devotions this morning, we were joined by a couple of staff members who shared their testimony, a story of how God took two people who were a marital train wreck and reconciled them and put them on a path to ministry here; a story of reconciliation, mix-ups, and grace, and an on-going story of how God is still shaping their lives.  We’ve been told we will hear from others here, and we look forward to that.

While we had hoped there would be other SOWER couples on this project, partly because we hear some amazing stories and have good conversations with them, we are hearing similarly amazing stories from the staff right here. We did hear at lunch today that there was an apparent paperwork mess-up which is probably the reason we are the only couple here.  Normally there are four or five, and other couples we have talked to that have been here have said this was one of their best work projects.  Not sure how we managed to sneak through the paperwork snafu, but, here we are.