A Bit of a Ramble

Life has gotten a bit chaotic over the past two weeks and I feel like so many of my blog posts are serious so I decided to make this one a bit of a rambling post. 

I'd post some pictures of outdoors, but it's the same unending scenery, day after day. This has been the longest feeling winter since we moved here. I'm quite over it all and am longing for green grass and sunshine. But instead we have another winter advisory for tonight. 

We've been making frequent trips to help with my in-laws. My mother-in-law will be moving directly to a memory care unit at an assisted living facility today. We are moving my father-in-law in on Saturday. It's hard for them both and I know today will not be pleasant as my mother-in-law will not understand and just wants to go home. Alzheimer's really stinks.

In between all the trips, I was able to make my son his favorite birthday meal and his request of a pumpkin pie. Stephen turned 32 yesterday. We are also thankful that he was hired by the same company our eldest works at and will be starting his new job soon.

I have been busy with multiple ministry projects. I'm heading up a writing team for our National women's ministry and we are putting together devotionals/Bible studies for distribution for the upcoming year which runs from July through June. I'm excited that they are going to be distributed to our broader denominational worldwide fellowship and translated into French and Spanish.

I have an upcoming conference in April that I'm putting together with my planning committee and that's always busy. Ministry at church has kept me hopping as well.

In between, when I get a moment, I've been putting together videos for my YouTube channel which demonstrates how to make delicious plant-based meals on a budget. I'm busy, but this has just been a fun project for me. I'm so close to being monetized which will help us financially so I keep plugging away when I can. To get monetized you have to have at least 1,000 subscribers (which I have) and 4,000 watch hours and I'm about 1,200 shy of that mark. You can find my channel here: The Frugal Connection.

I'm getting more adventurous with this way of cooking and I have come up with a few delicious "winners," such as vegan Buffalo cauliflower and chocolate peanut-butter cups.

For my birthday last month, my family all chipped in towards a new living set. This is the first nice piece of furniture I've owned that wasn't a hand-me-down. Our basement family room isn't huge so I did have to break up the sectional, but I'm so thankful for new and comfortable seating.

The plan for today is to transport my mother-in-law to the assisted living facility and deal with that. Then tomorrow I need to make about 9 dozen cookies for a couple of events - a benefit fundraiser for one of our elders going through cancer, refreshments on Sunday and some for cookie baskets.

Our church is putting together cookie baskets as an encouragement to the refugee families we work with here in our city. Some people in our church have donated cookies and I bought some boxes of chocolates to put in each basket. We are putting together 25 of them for the families here, along with a note of support from our church translated into the different languages they speak. 

Saturday morning I am doing a craft at our monthly English coffee hour for the children of these families. I found little Valentine's Day kits on sale as Joann Fabrics yesterday. I have found that I need to keep it super simple as the children range from 2 all the way up to about 12. The language barrier makes it a bit challenging, but children are the same no matter what language they speak. It's so interesting to see the cultural differences among the different children as well. I truly enjoy this time. One of my favorite days was making paper airplanes with a family Congolese little boys and having a competition to see how far they would fly. 

As I'm typing this I just remembered that I need to bring some refreshments for that as well. I also am putting together a basket of handcrafted items for a raffle at the benefit we are going to on Saturday night. 

Busy times, but meaningful as I continue to serve where I'm needed. This morning as I was doing my quiet time, I was reminded that our very lives are to be a reflection of God's glory. As we go through each day, no matter how good or bad, we represent Him in our actions, our reactions, our thoughts and attitudes. 

I want to represent Him well.

2 Corinthians 2:14 ~

But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.