Five Minute Friday: Story

I'm joining up with Lisa-Jo and Five Minute Friday. This weeks topic is "Story." If you haven't tried it: writing for five minutes, without interruptions, edits, or breaks-I say grab the Nike adage and just do it. Well, here goes...

On your mark.

Get set.

Write.

Life unfolds before us.

A seemingly unending ribbon of highway going on

as far as our eye can see.

The story unwritten.

The pages of the story of our life sit blank and unstained.

Unmarred by life's mistakes and tragedies.

Unblotted with tears and slash marks of anger.

Precious.

White.

Pure.

Full of promise.

Potential.

Hope-filled leaves fluttering in the winds of future promise.

The story of life.

Stop.

Writing the pages of my story one day at a time as I live, love, and luagh,

Lori

Moved The Secret Life of a Pastor's Wife

I have moved The Secret Life of a Pastor's Wife to Life, Love, and Laughter in a Large Family! Same juicy secrets, same great sense of humor, plus a ton more blog posts on all you ever wanted to know about me as a pastor's wife, a mom, and a writer. So please take a minute to stop over at Life, Love and Laughter in a Large Family to follow me there and say hi. I love to read your comments!

Just a new secret in the life of a pastor's wife,
Lori

Dress A Girl--Pillow Case Dresses

A couple of years ago, I met Rachel Eggum Cinader at a the Colorado Christian Writer's Conference. She was passioante about many of the same things I am: writing, adoption, missions. She has a great organization that turns pillowcases into dresses with Dress A Girl Around the World. The Lydia Ladies have taken this idea and had a group sewing adventure last Sunday night. We've spent the last month taking donations of pillowcases, thread, bias tape, rick rack, sheets and fabric. We had so much fabric turned in we will have to have several more sewing events to finish all of the dresses.

Here are the piles of finished dresses. At the end of the evening we had 46 dresses finished and another 30 in various stages of completion. A couple of the ladies took these home and were going to finish them.

 Here are a couple of finished pillowcase dresses...they are simply adorable.

 These dresses are awaiting bias tape to finish off the sleeves and ties at the top.

 Dresses awaiting elastic.

The original design uses a pillow case:  Pillow Case Dress Pattern.,  but our innovative sewers figured out how to use fabric and sheets to create the same simple dress. There are a couple of added steps, but when using sheets often the hem is still already finished! Fabric waiting to be sewn into dresses.

 Anne and Gloria: Anne strung elastic through the casing and Gloria ironed the casings before they were sewn.

 Tammy also ironed casings. We found the more hands helping made everything go faster.

 Judy sewed on bias tape while D'Laine sewed the casing and the elastic. Having so many machines and sewers was a blessing as each one could focus on one step and keep the line moving.

 We all enjoyed great fellowship while serving during this dress a girl event.

 When Tammy wasn't ironing, she cut bias tape. We had several others helping earlier in the evening cutting tape, elastic, and the arm holes out of the dresses, but I had forgotten my camera. Selah was the runner for the evening taking piles of dresses from one stop to another.

 Several of the ladies stayed past the stopping point and sent our for sandwiches...here is our fearless leader, Laurel and her mom making their sub order.

Suzanna sewed whatever came her way!

The dresses we made will be going with Laurel when they travel Ethiopia to adopt another daughter. We also have another opportunity to send dresses to Mexico. Everyone had such a good time we are hoping to hold another event this fall!  Many hands do make light work!

Keep up the God Work!

Just another secret from the life of this pastor's wife.

Lori

Camp Shetek Ladies Event

Friday night found several women from Faith Baptist Church at Camp Shetek Ladies Event. We started off the evening with a drive from Rock Rapids to Camp Shetek. After a bit of a rocky start, we finally gathered all of the ladies into one vehicle and set off. We had a great time fellowship in the van.

After arriving at Camp Shetek, we signed in and found a table. A Festival of Tables was the theme and our table was decorated with items from the Phillipines. The exotic decorations gave a festive air to the event. Other table decorations included twins regalia, army fatigues, Christmas motifs, and more.

Shari and Kristal look through the table listings trying to find the desciption of ours. We later found out that ours hadn't made the report and the missionary who had decorated the table gave us a personal report on the each item on her table.

Linda and Deb peruse the schedule for the evening after taking a trip through the silent auction items. The items up for auction ranged from kitchen cooking utensils to bath soaps, books to blankets, and many other various items. Several items were bid on and then bid on again. I had never participated in a Silent auction before and found it fun and great fund raiser for Camp Shetek.

Gracia decided to taste the program and see if she wanted to participate...she did! The program started off with a great time of praise and worship through song, then Colleen shared about her work with Ruby Shoes Company, and Jean Hoffman, a mother of 10 and sheepsheareres wife, shared her testimony.

D'Laine and Judy were our two overnight representatives. They had gotten there a bit earlier than the rest of us so they could settle in the sleeping rooms. The supper was delicious: orange chicken and rice, oriental salad, fresh fruit and Grandma Judy's homemade sweet rolls. The meal was topped off with our choice of either cocunut cake or chocolate mousse brownies. YUM!

Sunset on Lake Shetek was gorgeous.

After the meal and program we spent a few minutes outside taking in the beautiful view, visiting and just having fun together.

A beautiful group picture by Lake Shetek.

The evening ended with a drive home and more great fellowship. We had a great time and look forward to other Camp Shetek events.

Just another secret life of a pastor's wife,

Lori

New Shelves for the Library

The beautiful handcrafted bookshelves were full, full, full so I brought in some cheap (read: ugly), used (read: highly distressed) brown faux (read:wood-grain sticky paper) shelves. They did not go with the lovely shelves but what else is a church librarian supposed to do? I had culled as many books/dvds/stuff as possible. But as you can see in the picture below the shelves were stuffed. Then the wonderful man who built the first set of shelves was so moved by the hideous extra shelves that he built another set of shelves for the other wall! Yeah! Here is Leroy and faithful minions Jay and Gary assembling the new set of beautifully handcrafted shelves.
Put this here. Nail that there. Put a little glue on this. Clamp that. and Voile! a new set of shelves.
The really great part about this whole deal...now there is room for more books!

Just another secret from the life of a pastor's wife.
Lori

A Wish-List

Here is my partner in crime...er...ministry. He has his own blog called A Musing Minister. He wrote a great article last week on making a wish list of how you want people to treat you. Hop on over there and read about it. Then leave him a comment on your own how you'd like to be treated story.

Have a great day.

Just another secret from the life of a pastor's wife.

Lori

Great Freezer Meals

I posted the other day about Take Them a Meal. com. I really appreciate that site for fresh meals delivered of an evening so the family has a piping hot meal ready to go. But that is not ideal for everyone for a variety of reasons: timing for delivery/eating, unexpected deliveries, or a change in menu/plans for the day.

Another great way to provide meals for new moms or for those who've been in the hospital is through freezer meals. Freezer meals are simply a hot dish or other meal that can be frozen and pulled out and heated as needed. The advantages to freezer meals are as follows:
*the meals can be delivered to one central location, stored and then delivered all at once
*the recipient of the meals can make them as needed
*the meals keep well and provide relief over a longer period of time.
*those making them can do it at their convenience.

We had two needs very close together and one of them asked for hot meals (as their freezer was full of meat) and the other requested freezer meals (as they were unsure of hospital dates and they knew too that close family were planning to bring meals as well). Both systems worked, but we had a greater response to the freezer meals. I think the flexibility worked for most people. We asked for a certain number of meals, set a date when they could bring them to the freezer, and voile! we had meals everywhere. It was fantastic.

One question I did have was what does one make for a freezer meal? Since all the easy recipes had been taken: tater tot casserole, BBQ's, tacos, a couple of soups, meatballs, I recommended this site for more tasty ideas--Freezer Meal Recipes. It worked out very well. They have a lot of great ideas.

Tips:

Provide the disposable containers for people to put the freezer meals in so that dishes to don need to be returned.

Be sure to include cooking instructions on the dish.

Tape a copy of the recipe to the dish along with your name. (If they love it, they're just going to ask you for recipe anyway!)

Well, there's another secret from the life of a pastor's wife,

Lori