Youth vs Experience – The challenge and the lesson
In the small Bible college we attended, the Hendricks brothers were well known as their father had been a long term pastor at a church in southern Arizona, then retired and was living in Phoenix. He was rumored to be quite a racquetball player. So fancying myself to be a pretty decent r-ball player, I let my friends know I’d love to play him some time. So when he called we set up some court time.
What chance did a man in his sixties have against a young, strong, active 21 year old? I figured I’d be kind, but I was determined to beat him and lay to rest the rumors I had heard. I was quick, responsive and all over that court. Deo, as he was called, barely moved from his spot it seemed. He wasn’t extremely powerful or responsive in comparison. Yet, when the proverbial dust settled and my youthful physique lay panting in a heap on the wooden floor, he extended his hand and said, “Good game son. Now you go tell ’em you got beat by a 62 year old man with a colostomy.”
Pastor Deo Hendricks had learned one of the most important lessons of growing older. The farther we get past our prime, the more important it becomes to work smarter. He was obviously no sloth on the court, but he had learned how to place the ball to make his opponents run around the court and wear themselves out. I learned a great lesson from this man who was simply out for a bit of exercise and fun – it’s good to work hard, but even better when you work smart. From the humiliation of only having scored 2-3 points in each game, this lesson has been dear to us throughout our ministry and influenced how we work today, even as we switch to a new website.
Why Change?
We started Yodis.org years ago before the advent of Facebook, MySpace or even Xanga. Yodis.org did so many things that are no longer necessary or which are now facilitated better by other websites. Our videos are now hosted on a youtube channel. Music sales are now hosted by cdbaby. Weather in Ukraine can be found with a simple google search and facts about Ukraine (history, culture, geography, etc.) can easily be accessed on wikipedia. Even our new website and blog will be hosted by wordpress.com. These internet resources were not available when yodis.org was born and being developed, but now we are happy to let them do the dirty work of developing, purchasing and updating software, keeping up with latest trends and technologies, and working out the constant bugs that occur from the incongruities of all these different technologies.
Working Smarter
There is no doubt about it. We don’t have the energy we did 30 years ago and without a secretary, we have to be even more clever about how to get other people to do our busy work for us. So we’ll let all those other web sites do our/their job as we refocus on what is really important.
There are two priorities we carry over from Yodis.org to Yodis.live. The first of which is to facilitate communications with our friends (including ministry partners) and family. The second purpose is to be a place where people can go to learn more about our ministry. The new site should be less complicated, easy to maintain and have an updated look and familiar feel to it. Currently you can still type yodis.org into your browser, but you will be directed to this new site. Have a suggestion? Drop us a line by email, Facebook or by clicking Contact in the menu above.
Eric Yodis 