Weekend and week

The weekend whirled by leaving us with more to do and less time to do it. Praise God for helping us stay at the end of our rope.

Those of us who could attended the birthday party of one of the kids in the neighborhood. He's 13 now and insisted on sitting with the adults now that he was one of them. His parents were very grateful to us and made it clear that they viewed us as the guests they most wanted to attend.

We had an excellent ham and rice and beans and coleslaw-type-dish and biscuits and cinnamony carrots Lord's Day prepared by Brian and Laura and followed by sweet potato pie for dessert. It tasted very good. We then proceeded to the room designated, though not currently laid out like, the Library. We played Traffic Jam which is a game where you have to get the red car out of the parking lot without breaking any of the other cars in half. Jeannette and Brian played some piano too.

Sunday we had HH meeting about the common spaces in our houses and how to best organize them for our lives. Many subsequent discussions will trace their origins back to that one. Dan Dal Pra arrived on Saturday night and he and Ricky Thomas accompanied us to the volleyball court where some serious comebacks were staged and the side facing the street never lost.

Then we came home, showered, the women met about Genevieve's shower and the men went out on some missionary work. The shower is now in a much more organized state than it ever has been and we made some real progress in the neighborhood as well.

Breakfast this morning was buttermilk pancakes, hardboiled eggs, and assortment of fruits, and French pressed coffee. The Lord is afoot here, going to WDMO, the clinic, '34, and elsewhere.

The best laid plans

Now, the end of August, our household has taken a look at itself and found that half of us were not in Allendale for the last few months. And no one in that group has spent more than 9 consecutive months here at any time. So we have a situation where we need to start making some plans and laying some new foundations.

That's all good fun though. The newest folks in the HH are Laura Brummer, Jeanette Zimmel, Genevieve DeCelles, Brian Couch and Tom Duddy. None of them could described as rookies to this kind of work. We have a high powered group here, in fact, and all of us are in search of ways to out do the others in love and service of one another. It's a friendly competition, involving only nominal amounts of pranking and struggles for control of the throw pillows.

Brian took an amazing picture of a wasp caught in a spider web.

Tom has started attending nursing classes.

Nathan's been working on action items for the HH to discuss.

He and Genevieve are planning their wedding with great fervor.

Joan's got two kinds of school going on at once.

Cathy has been working on a new menu plan for a new year.

And I'm behind on everything. That's what lunch time and days off are for though.

Couldn't think of a good reason not to do a short post. After all, this is the 4 month anniversary of the blog that I started. The long absence will go basically without comment.

The newest things around here include a heightened awareness of the importance of serving my brothers and sisters in People of Praise. In a conversation at the recently concluded Company convention Nick mentioned realizing in prayer that serving the body of Christ was a way that he could serve the Lord. I took a note on that and forgot about it until my prayer time today when the Lord suggested that I serve others as a way of serving him. I think we're on to something here...

My money-making work continues to surprise me. I've interviewed for my bosses job over the weekend and hope to hear the result of that interview within the next week. Wild.

Joan, Brian, Cathy and I went shopping for emergency supplies for the household. In compliance with PoP suggestions regarding disaster preparedness we're packing away enough stuff to keep us alive for a week in case we suddenly become cut off from all grids and infrastructure. We're not done yet but major progress has been made.

By the way, if you ever get a chance, Szala's on Archer Ave in Chicago, just a half mile away from Midway airport, is a nice place. It has the taste and spirit of Europe, primarily Poland, and includes some pita bread with lard and cheese as an essential appetizer. Pope John Paul II, I kid you not, penned a letter to the proprietor of this fine establishment and gave it his blessing. As if authentic pierogi was not a good enough reason to go already!