Sunday Afternoon

So it's Sunday afternoon, I"m sitting here waiting for Justin to wake up and thought hmmm... should probably update the View! So here I am.

Our life for past week or so....

Easter Sunday we went up to visit Mom and Dad. We left right after church, Justin slept, Jim relaxed and I drove. We arrived, Justin stayed sleeping, Jim and I went in and enjoyed soup with my parents. We had a nice visit over our meal. After lunch I checked on Justin who had just woken up. So mom and dad were able to enjoy their grandson for a while too. :)

We needed to leave after a couple of hours because Ina was in hospital (lady from church). She was having some trouble breathing. We had a short visit with her. Then Justin and I left to stretch out little boy legs while Jim visited longer. Justin had a chance to talk with the nurses and enjoy a juice and cookie. Lucky boy! :)

Then this week Jim had a cold so our Monday day away became a Monday stay at home so he could rest up a bit. He was a bit better on Tuesday so we slipped up to London to run a couple of errands. Tuesday afternoon, and all day Wednesday I spent (with Justin) reorganizing the basement. Jim needed to get at the network thing and all my garage sale stuff was in the way, plus we were getting tired of having wood shavings all over the house, so the purchase of three inexpensive shelving units at Wal-mart went a long way to helping get things in better shape. Now Justin can play in the same room I am in while I do laundry or fuss around in the basement. Jim's weight stuff will be kept more sawdust free and therefore more useable. AND Jim can fiddle around with the network thingey to his hearts content.

Thursday afternoon I went fishing while Justin napped.

Friday morning Justin had book club. Boy..all the kids were wild! :) Made me think a storm was coming. I had book club as well. We read "The 100 Secret Senses" by Amy Tan. Some of us liked the book, some of us well....didn't. I read the start, a piece in the middle and the ending. I found it a hard book to get into, the end of the book though made me think I should have stuck it through. I might pick it up again one day.

oh I almost forgot. On Friday night we all had a lovely meal with the pastor from the CRC church in town. They hosted. It was fun and the food was good! :)

Saturday Justin and I left Jim at home and drove three ladies from Church to the RCW ladies conference. It was held at Drayton RCA this year. Mary Clark was the speaker. She heads up women's ministries within the RCA.

Her Topic was "God's hospitality". I found her hard to listen to, not because of her, but due to the fact that she had to keep pausing for the translator. I probably lost the first 10 minutes while I adapted to the listen, wait, listen, wait routine. Most of the women I talked with struggled with the same issue. Although I appreciated the need for a translator, I really wish that there hadn't needed to be one. Her topic was a one that women in our classis needed to hear and probably didn't really hear because of the whole listen and wait routine.

Mary's whole point was the use the gift of hospitality that God has given to each of us, and use it to advance the kingdom of God. Hospitality is the giving of ourselves to others. Once I understood that this was her definition of hospitality it all made sense...but it took me a while to get there.

You see MY definition of hospitality is someone who makes you feel comfortable from the moment you get in their door and who LOVES having people over for dinner or tea or whatever. I DO NOT see myself as having the gift of hospitality at all. NOT saying I don't like having people over but I find it a whole heap of work and I worry about this that and the other thing and AHH. Just fills me with horrors most of the time. What if I can't get the house clean enough or what if I serve the wrong food or what if the cat or the dog or the _____ does something it aught not to. and ... it just goes on and on.

AND THE BIGGEST THING???? What if my guest does something that freaks me out and makes my house feel unsafe to me.???? What if???? STUPID I know. After all...GOD LOVES ME! He won't let anything happen to me that I can't handle without his help. I can trust his promises. I can. See...it's taken me years to realize that! (sometimes slow on the uptake)

Anyways, back to Mary's talk. Hospitality...giving of ourselves to others. This doesn't mean as a church that we need to start new programs. What it means is us, as individual people, stopping to take 30 minutes there, 1.5 hours there just to sit and see the people around us. See what their needs are and just go out and meet those needs. Simple, straight-forward meeting the needs of people. Showing them Jesus through our actions. She kept telling us.. STOP. Think outside box. Think outside the walls of your church. Do it differently.

For instance... we could see a struggling young mom and offer to help her do her shopping. We could do someone's laundry for them. We could offer a cup of tea. Different needs, different ways of helping. We just need to stop and look for those ways of helping/showing/teaching.

Overall, it was a good message.

In the afternoon we watched a skit "what kind of tater are you". one of the ladies from Drayton put on a skit about different types of taters "agi-tator" "peace-tator" "spec-tator" and so forth. It was not bad at all. it was actually fun to watch these ladies be different taters. :)

There were quilts hung all over the church. Made more than one woman wonder out loud what was with all the quilts. Turns out Drayton church, for the Mennonite Central Committee, makes quilts. These quilts are distributed world wide to people in need of well.. quilts to keep warm. They gave them out in Equador, Africa, and other places. Wherever there has been a disaster (God or Human made) and there are people in need. That was way cool to see. This year Drayton made 63 quilts over the winter. Good to see that in action.

I enjoyed the fact that there was a babysit. Justin had a blast. He even napped! :) He ate a bit, didn't drink as much as I'd like, but he had fun. He had a good sleep last night. He was a happy boy, well, at least until he learned that no, he couldn't bring that lovely airplane home with him. :)

I enjoyed the book table. Even picked up a couple of things. One a book that I think will be helpful with homeschooling in the future, some scrapbooking stuff and something else that I can't recall right now. Spent less than $25. (I had a personal limit of 40 so I did well).

So what didn't I like?
1. The agenda pushing... we have a women's conference coming up in Chicago... boy was attendance at this event being pushed. yes, I would like to go. Will I go? No... not at 149$ hotel bill per night and paying daily parking PLUS $350 (about that) for the conference itself. Cannot afford it. WILL NOT ask my church to foot the bill for it. A conference like this should be able to be held elsewhere for a lot less. Also many of the topics seem like "fluff" to me. Denomination wide conferences I do believe should offer more than "fluff".
2. the "tolerance" stuff. We have to tolerate. I agree that we have to tolerate people over things like building structure, clothing, taste in music and such like. Over such things, the overwhelming concern should be .... how do we reach people for Christ and teach them well. I do not agree that we should tolerate bad doctrine. I don't think that evangelism outside the church is more important then having people that will hold to the truth of the gospel. There must be room for both. I think that once bad doctrine is allowed a strong foothold, what is to stop it from becoming more prevalent?