Four Question with...Ken Watkins

How were you convinced to join Beautiful Day?
Jon Talbert called me up and said, "Here, eat this apple. You'll like it."

What projects do you oversee?
I'm the Project Director for Camp Coyote (the homeless outreach project), Beautify Buchser (the school clean-up/beautification project) and Life Support (the blood drive). The key is getting great project managers and then staying out of their way.
I've been really fortunate to work with Kim Sherwood and Drew Frosee on Camp Coyote, Phil McCarthy on Beautify Buchser and Julie Simonin and Cris Otonari on Life Support. I do what I can to help them get organized, bring the right people with the right skills together, voice needs, concerns and anything else that needs to be addressed with the Beautiful Day project team, but mostly just act as a dedicated focal point to which they can come for help on their projects.

Talk about being part of the Core Team.
Being on the Core Team has been one big, long lesson in faith. I work in the corporate world, where everything revolves around budgets, timelines, deliverables, etc. Beautiful Day has taught me, more than anything else in recent memory, to trust in God for our needs. It's also made me realize that His will (in this case His vision of Beautiful Day) might just be different from my vision of Beautiful Day. I kept saying "Listen God . . .", and he kept saying, "No, you listen . . ."
I couldn't have asked for a better Core Team with which to have worked on Beautiful Day, their dedication has been inspiring and humbling.

What do you hope the effects of Beautiful Day are?
I've already witnessed how other churches throughout the community are realizing what a great example of loving God and loving our neighbors Beautiful Day can be. It would be great to see this spirit of "servanthood" continue to be core to the identity of Westgate, as well as every group believers in the South Bay and beyond.

When he's not thinking of new and inventive ways to make his wife Monica roll her eyes and shake her head, Ken Watkins spends most of his time working for the man (IBM) when he'd rather be riding his bike...or eating. "I can (and do) eat as much as people twice my size," he boasts. His favorite movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark and he used to enjoy the music of Jimmy Buffett, "but I've sung 'Margaritaville' one too many times."