A Sweet Book Review

What could be better than a good book with chocolate? Maybe a book about chocolate!

At Dinsmore’s World Famous Chocolate Factory, everything is not as it seems. The mysterious death of an  inspector working undercover. A janitor exploring the business he will inherit from the inside out. A manager set on exploiting the man who took him from nothing and made him something. A young woman, sent to finish the inspector’s job and discover if the accident that killed him was truly an accident who has a heart to see that children go to school instead of spending long hours working. As the worlds of these characters collide, they discover that God’s mercy and justice are ever present.

Kim Vogel Sawyer’s Echoes of Mercy is a very good read and will keep you wondering as to what will happen next. So, grab a box of chocolates and enjoy!

http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?work=221540

I received this book for free from Waterbrook Multnomah Blogging for Books for this review.

Yea! Today is my birthday!

  34 years…

The Heat of Winter

So, yes, maybe the title of this blog is a bit of an oxymoron. But spend a winter in Minnesota and you might not think so...

I can officially say I lived in the state of Minnesota during the record-breaking winter of 2014. And we're not talking snowfall. To be honest, we haven't had tons of snow (especially compared to the eastern regions of the nation). But every single inch we have received since November, we still have. Why? Because of the record-breaking cold.

I'm not sure what the count of days was - somewhere in the 40s - but during those days in a row, it was below zero every single one of them. Disclaimer on that: it did rise above zero during the day for at least half of those days. Not much above zero - always single digits - but it might of hit 1 or 2. And it stooped to at least 26 below where I live. And that was during the day. When you come through the entire month of January, plus some of December and half of February with temperatures like that, well...let's just say some perspectives get changed.

Like today it snowed. A lovely wintery snow for the entire morning We probably got about 3 or 4 inches. But best of all, it was 18 degrees when I woke up. EIGHTEEN!!! We're talking heat wave. Just need a light jacket. If they had actually plowed, great temps for a morning run. 44 whole degrees warmer than it had been a month ago.

And tomorrow it is supposed to be 30. It might even get above freezing!!!! I'll have to wear a t-shirt to run in that! Maybe even get my shorts out!

It's a sad reality that no matter where I live, there is always a spring thaw around my birthday. It drives me crazy because I really enjoy having a winter birthday. This year will be same. Instead of hovering around zero, it's supposed to 18 degrees on my birthday. And in Minnesota, that's a spring thaw.

My Favorite Part

I always knew the favorite part of planning my wedding would be the invitations. Not the designing of them or the wording or anything. Just the putting them in envelopes, addressing them, mailing them. So Melissa. Yes, sometimes I wish I could break my mold. Be a little more creative than stuffing envelopes. Oh, well.

And it’s true. While it was very exciting to get my dress on Monday, I think I was even more excited when my invitations came on Thursday. I wanted to go home that night and address them. But I put it off till today. After all, I don’t want to the fun to end too quickly!

My second favorite thing to do is the registry. I started on one at shopworldkitchen.com a little bit yesterday. When I moved here, I got my one set of dishes from them. So, I decided to register with them so I can just continue the set. Today I’ll start on one bedbathandbeyond.com. Neither will be complete. It’s just to get it started since the invitations are going out. And Ed will have things to add that he’s more particular about than I am. (And they all come after the Kitchen Aid anyhow – there’s not much more important than that!) It’s not really that I get jump-up-and-down excited about dishes and linens (except maybe the Kitchen Aid) or that it means I get gifts. The thing I like about it is making a list. That’s even better than stuffing envelopes!

Thus, the march to the wedding continues.

Wedding Plans

A few weeks ago, someone asked me if I was getting everything planned for my wedding. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Aaron told the person. “Melissa will have everything planned and ready weeks before the wedding.” Guess I’ve made an impression over the year I’ve been here…

But I’m no wedding planner. I can make lists til doomsday. And I can organize in my sleep. But centerpieces on a table terrify me. I can look at pictures of dresses and forget what they look like the next moment. My music repertoire is miniscule. And it’s not like I’m just getting married. I’m also moving half way across the country. I have to find a job there…and finish my job here well. I’ve only seen the church we’ll be married in once. My wedding party is scattered from Indiana to New Hampshire. So, yes I have shed a few tears over the past month. But, yes, I have also checked several things off my list. And God has reminded me over and over again how faithful He is down to the smallest detail.

For example: I had enough frequent flier miles to fly home for along weekend at the end of the month. Katey is coming too (and bringing Jay!!!). Abby will be on spring break. All my sisters will be gathered in one place. And we’re going to knock out as much as we can in five days: cake, music, dresses, suits, décor. While Dad tries to save Jay from seven females planning a wedding…

Sally is working with her cake “professor” (she’s studying culinary arts) to make a cake. Jenny is doing all my music (and playing the piano). As she also works for Joseph Banks, we’re getting great deals on the suits! Grace works for Jo Ann’s, so she’s keeping an eye on fabric and ordering that. Katey will be a lifesaver when it comes to décor. Abby is simply there to keep us all in line. And my mom is proving over and over that she is the most wonderful mom in the world. Hasn’t God blessed me with an amazing family?

I discovered after adding a few grey hairs to my head over my taxes (come on, Minnesota, could you possibly add another dozen forms for me to fill out?), the refunds I am praying I get in full will nearly cover my moving expenses. I got a coupon just in time to order my invitations last week. And my dress…well, that’s a story only my Heavenly Father could write.

Yesterday, I went dress “shopping”. That’s a loose term because Mom had agreed to sew my dress, but I wanted to try on things to get the right measurements and make sure the rough idea I had in my head would actually look decent on me. Jaci, Tirzah and Andrea from work joined me. To be honest, they were looking forward to it more than I was. I’m not sure a dress style has ever been prayed over more, but I was asking God to show me exactly what would work and that I would even enjoy it.

Well, as many brides know, there are so many dresses in the world it’s alike a forest one pushes and shoves their way through to find something. I picked out a few to try on and ducked into the dressing room. The first one proved the idea in my head and how I’m actually built weren’t completely in line. The second proved that even more. Then I tried on a funny third one. Then came the fourth dress. And silence fell. Followed by a multitude of chatter. This dress fit like a glove: the perfect length, the perfect waist, the perfect size around the hip, the perfect style. It was a little loose under my arms as I’m not that big up there and it was sleeveless. But everyone agreed it was the dress. The lady dashed off to see what the price was (even though she knew my mom was sewing my dress) and came back.

“Well, I’ve got a deal for you. That dress is $599. But it’s on sale for $149.”

You could have heard a pin drop on that floor.

Where do you find a wedding dress for $149? Especially one that is 95% perfect for you?

The lady set the dress aside for us. We went to lunch. We chatted about this and that. I thought, and prayed, and then texted a picture to my mom which I followed up with a phone call. She agreed I should buy it – she could never make a dress for that little. And she would help me adjust the top so it wouldn’t be sleeveless.

So, guess who has a wedding dress in the back of their closet…anxiously awaiting the arrival of June 7? Isn’t God awesome?!?!?!

Me looking through the forest of wedding gowns.

Jaci, Tirzah, Andrea and me.

Leaving with my dress!

Memories of...Sally!

Today is my sister Sally’s 26^th birthday. Wow. Just writing that makes me realize how old that makes me…

I do remember when Sally was born. I remember when all my siblings were born, but hers was a bit different. Born in 1988, cell phones weren’t around. If they had been, it would have been easy to text or call Dad and get him out of his deacon’s meeting. As it was, no one at the church office was answering the phone that evening. So, my grandmother drove to the church and got him. Sally kindly waited through all this and was born later that night at the hospital.

Sometimes I think Sally could be called a miracle child. She managed not to drown herself…and not for lack of trying. Mom had to keep a close eye on her when we’d go swimming at the lake. Sally would walk out into the water and just keep going. As long as she could bounce up and catch a breath, she plowed ahead. Until Mom grabbed hold of her and dragged her back to shore.

As I think back over Sally’s life, I smile at the memories I have of her. She always seemed like an oxymoron. As a little girl, Sally loved to wear dresses. She enjoyed tea parties. She played house. And yet she couldn’t keep clean to save her life. Nor did she flinch at any rough-and-tumble game Daniel would suggest. She wasn’t about to be beat at anything. And nothing stood in her way.

Sally grew up loving horses. She enjoyed reading. She tried sewing for a while and did rather well. Now she has moved on to cooking and baking. She’s even in school for culinary arts. She can be loving and sympathetic. She has a servant’s heart. But she is still that little girl who won’t be beat. Or who will keep going as long as she can bounce and take a breath. And I’m glad.

Happy Birthday, Sally!

Camps, Camps and more Camps

Like most of us, it’s a bit amazing when you start a job in a new realm how big that realm ends up being. I didn’t grow up going to camp. I spent a few summers at a camp our church Girls in Action went to for a week.  I loved it there, especially the first year, when I decided that when I was “old”, I wanted to be a counselor like Miss Becky. By the time I was all of “old” (which was nineteen), I was busy with other things. So, it wasn’t until I was twenty-six, that I spent a summer working at camp. And not as a counselor. I was afraid I would tie ten eleven or twelve-year-old girls to their beds and leave them there if I had to spend two weeks listening to how one didn’t like the other because she had brown hair. So, I wisely worked in the office of a boys camp. I enjoyed it so much, I went back the next year.

Of course, in those mountains of North Carolina, I knew there were all sorts of camps hidden away among the trees and ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains. What I’ve come to realize is that there are camps hidden all over the place. Just over the last two days, I’ve met people from over twenty such camps in Minnesota and the eastern part of the Dakotas.

I spent Monday and Tuesday with most of my co-workers at Big Sandy Camp two hours north of here. It was our sectional conference of the CCCA (Christian Camp and Conference Association). The days were full of camp related workshops, mingling with other camp staff, talking to different vendors and attending larger sessions about the CCCA. To be honest, none of the workshops were related to my line of work. If you talked about what I do, everyone would fall asleep. There’s just not much to say about data entry, phone answering and registration. So, what I learned came from other registrars or office workers who do similar tasks. We compared notes on summer registration days, health forms, care packs and on-line registration. It was very interesting to learn how other camps do things. With conversations like that…yeah, we probably all need to see therapists.

Camping ministry is an interesting area of God’s vineyard. There are more aspects to it than most people think: youth programs, women programs, buildings, maintenance, housekeeping, fund raising, volunteers, donors, guest groups, food, clothing, sports, registration. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And what most guests never know: programs, visionary fundraising and the black-and-white of numbers don’t always mingle well behind the scenes. It’s takes all kinds of people, skills and gifts to keep a camp running. But, in the end, isn’t that the way God created it? A body. All with different parts. All of them do different things. None of them are more or less important than another. And all have one Head.