A Friday

The countdown in my mind to vacation is definitely starting to be a loud voice in my head. Thirteen days from now, Dan and I should be laying on a beach or at least be able to see one from the pool. That is a very nice thought to me. It's been forever since we've had a real vacation and I am ready! Okay, I have that out of the way....

The other day, I ordered a beach bag from a company called Trade As One (thanks, Joan) and I have to say, I really like it. It is made from lime green rice bags and appears to be quite sturdy and just the right size. I am glad I went with the medium sized one, because from its size, the large one must also double as a sleeping bag in emergencies. It folds nice and flat so it won't take up much room in my suitcase, which is good. It would also seem to be quite water resistant - also good. The other thing I like about it as opposed to other big beach bags I've seen, is that it is lined, has pockets on the inside with zippers and the whole thing actually zips closed. I also have a feeling I won't mix it up with someone else's bag as it is quite unique. All of that, and the money actually helped to further someone's craft while supporting them financially. Good buy.

After my last post, I had been searching the internet for a place to buy some coffee for our church. I just wanted to buy a little to see how it tasted, etc. I was becoming quite discouraged that we were not going to be able to buy enough to make it cost effective due to the shipping prices, which were about as much as the coffee. I finally had the idea to go to a local co-op grocery store in Ft. Wayne and - yeah - they had it there. It is quite a cool place to go as well and their produce department makes the ones at some of the regular groceries look pretty bad. I also bought an onion, by the way, which was quite yummy in our omelet last night. Our son, Isaac, also informed me that you can buy fair trade coffee at Kroger as well, so I bought a little bag there to try. (It was a little cheaper, but the other place is, well, more interesting). I think supporting the local produce growers would be a good thing this summer and we actually have someone right down the road!

Last week Dan and I had an "interesting" experience at our usual Sunday night location. There were a couple of people in there who were more than just "under the influence" and the whole thing, although somewhat annoying, was really quite sad. The two people in question were really quite different from one another. One was a young man, late twenties who was giving the impression that he was quite successful in his work and quite popular with the ladies in the towns he traveled to. The other was a woman who was there with a person who appeared to be her husband. She was probably in her forties. Both of them were being quite loud and then they started in on each other. From a personal standpoint, I was getting quite uncomfortable with the whole situation and probably could have just left. There are many different angles to take in observing this event, but I'll just go with the one that really struck me. This woman's husband, or whatever he was, apologized, said she was an alcoholic and tried to get her to leave. She was not cooperating in any way and was finally asked to leave by the manager. The man with her never raised his voice or seemed to get angry. I watched them walk out the door with him holding her hand the whole way, talking quietly to her. Now, I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what their story was. But it seemed to me, there was someone who really cared about this woman, even with all her apparent problems. You just don't see that too much in situations like that. However, I think that is what is expected of all of us. You know, to care about each other even with all of our obvious flaws and problems. Not to condone everyone's actions, but to still care about the people. You know, "but for the grace of God, there goes me...." Maybe that's what I saw that night, grace in action.

Finally, another class is checked off my list and I am glad for that. Of course, the next one begins next week and I have a bunch of reading to do.

That's all for now...

JAH

Coffee Anyone??

Yesterday our Sunday School class took off on a slightly different path than we had been. Since teaching a class at our church, I've always seemed to have an interesting mix of people. We don't do the "age segregation" so the people can have a pretty wide range of life experiences from being a current college student to having grandchildren in college. Personally, I like it - having all of those different perspectives.

Anyway...our class had been using a service called The Wired Word which takes current news events and tries to discuss them from a Christian-Biblical perspective. I have to admit, some weeks they really had to reach to get a lesson, but they did it. Well, thanks to my friend Joan who is currently working at Sojourners, I found that they also had some "current events" studies that I could download for little of nothing and make copies of (I stay within the 10 copy limit). I have had this study sitting in my basket on the bookshelf for a long time and kept thinking it probably wouldn't work for my current class, but yet I kept looking at it so I went for it this past week. To sum up, it deals with the current issue of slavery in our world today and it went over better than I had expected. One woman in the class had actually read all of the articles and started several sentences with, "I never knew..." Now she does, along with a handful of other people, so this is progress to me.

One of the quotes we focused on in class was in an article entitled "A Soul On Fire":

I claim my own name and my place in society daily in confrontations with what I am prepared to live with and what I am not. My claim is implicit in my ability to say yes or no. It asks whose rules have power over me and whose do not.

Sometimes I think the problems in our world, although this is a big oversimplification, I'm sure, boil down to the fact that most of us have decided that we can live with more than we should. When I asked why, the woman who had read all of the articles made a great observation when she said, "because if we think we can't live with it, that means we have to do something and most of us don't want to do that". Bingo.

In trying to bring the class to a close and in trying to say, maybe we should do something, I suggested that we take on the project of buying Fair Trade Coffee for our church. I asked them not to answer but to think about it because this was going to require a commitment. They agreed and I am supposed to get the numbers together for them. Now I know we could do this, I just hope we do. I put it to them this way, we will not stop the problems in the coffee world by buying this for our church, but at least we can stop contributing to them. I also gave them some info about a great company called Divine Chocolate.

I'm not sure why this idea of Fair Trade has been on my mind - I'm quite certain the morphine from the previous week has worn off, etc., but I think I need to do something about it. Again, my friend Joan was the one who first pointed me in this direction and I had kind of just been looking down the path but not really moving that way. I'm not sure what will happen, but I think I'm learning to think a little differently. I am going to try to attempt to put a couple of links on my blog - one for the chocolate and a couple that are for other fair trade items. Yes, they are more expensive, but maybe we would all be better off with one fair trade purse than three from Walmart. I did actually buy a recycled beach bag today for our trip (the one I had did have holes in the bottom). I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well, I have successfully put off doing my homework for an hour, but I had better get to it.

Hoping to contribute to the good -
JAH

Time for A New Look

Today seemed like a day to try out a new look. This past week has been kind of a crazy one to say the least, so why not go all out and change up the format a little bit. I didn't realize how easy it was to make this change or I may have done it sooner, but I'm not a real "experimenter" when it comes to blogging.

For those of you who may not know, I got to have a surprise surgery this week. That's always a fun time - especially when the first ER visit takes place in another state when your daughter is sick in bed next to you and there has been a blizzard happening for the past several hours. I guess if a person is going to do something out of the ordinary - well - I guess I picked as good of a time as any.

I don't plan on going into all of the gory details of the past week's events, but let's just say, I've gone through labor and delivery with two children and this pain was worse. Given how long some people have problems and are sick with this type of thing, maybe it is just better to just get hit over the head with it at 3 am and then just get it all over with...maybe...I'm not sure on that one. I am thankful that my friend Robin was able to get me to the hospital and then get me home where Dan took over. I don't think anyone really knew what to do with me, but they were there and that was a good thing. Morphine became my temporary friend on Monday afternoon by giving me a bit of relief and a little bit of sleep. The doctors and nurses at the Bluffton Hospital were very nice and I have no complaints there. All went well and I got back home Wednesday night. It was funny during the night after my surgery I asked for some Tylenol and they said I couldn't have that, but I could have some more morphine if I wanted. I decline and waited until I was approved for Tylenol consumption Wednesday morning. Crazy.

Well, I just wanted to let everyone know that I was alive and well and very thankful for that and after thinking about it realizing that if this had to happen it all happened in a pretty good way, if that is possible. I just know I dealt with the 90 miles from Findlay to Yoder, but trying to get from Punta Cana to Detroit on a plane in that conditioned would not be an adventure I would ever care to take.

Thanks for the prayers and well wishes. Now all I can say for today is GO ILLINI!! :)

Peace to all -
JAH