This is shaping up to be a busy week.

Every year around this time our church has a “missionary Christmas” endeavor. We e-mail the missionaries our church supports in late July or August to ask for “wish list” ideas and then have folks at church sign up for items they’d like to buy to contribute. Then at our October meeting we wrap them. Then I get to package and address them and fill out the customs forms.

I’m working on getting as many of these out as soon as possible. It will be interesting this year as the post office has done away with what used to be called “surface rate” (as I once heard it, that which ships by boat, train, or llama). So the packages should arrive more quickly, but will also be more expensive. I consulted with our pastor about whether we should do anything differently in light of that, but he said just to do everything like we have always done it, and we’ll see how it goes, then we’ll reevaluate for next year. This is a joy to do, and is such a blessing for them, so we’d love to keep doing it. It’s hard sometime to balance being generous with the expensive reality of shipping, but so far the Lord has blessed.

I’d love to hear how your church ministers to your missionaries. Besides their regular support, of course, we also have a missions closet that we take them through when they are in the States for furlough. We have a mission’s display with their pictures and copies of their most recent prayer letter. New prayer letters are usually at least mentioned and often quoted from during Wed. night prayer meetings, and we glean some of the prayer requests and put them into our ladies’ ministry newsletter. I like trying to keep them before the folks so that they are familiar with them and so that they’re not just encountering them once every four years when they are home on furlough. We have a missions conference every fall, and usually at least one of our missionaries that we support speaks at that as well as some others.

I also have another dental appointment tomorrow. The same tooth on the opposite side of the one I just had extracted and a bridge made for is having the same trouble, but I am hoping this one can get by with just a crown. If I can persuade anyone, please don’t do what I did and let the dread of going to the dentist keep you away. It causes so many more problems (and is much more expensive! Yikes!!) than getting those regular cleanings and small fillings taken care of.

When someone called me to help with a meal for an expectant mom on bedrest this week, I agreed, thinking my dental appointment was on Wednesday — but I just checked this morning, and the appointment is on Tuesday, the same day I am supposed to make the meal. Though I’d rather have those things occur on different days, I think the timing will work out ok. I know what a blessing it is to receive meals when Mom is out of commission – -we’ve been on the receiving end many times — but I always struggle with what to make. I have a couple of cookie recipes that regularly turn out fine, but my main meal skills are a little iffy, at least for the kind of meals you want to take in a situation like that. The other lady helping wants to make macaroni and cheese as a side dish because that’s her best thing, so I am thinking of roasting a ham. Can’t go too wrong with that…let’s hope, anyway. The other lady is also doing some kind of bread or rolls, and I’ll get a little bagged salad and make cookies. I’m sorely tempted to get some ready made sugar cookie dough and use those little autumn mini cookie cutters I mentioned earlier and sprinkling them with fall-colored sugars. There are two little children in the house who might like those. I also thought about a peanut butter and Hershey’s kiss cookie my son’s girlfriend made this week with just peanut butter, sugar, and an egg — so simple but so good! I don’t often make peanut butter stuff for a meal for others since so many kids have peanut allergies, but that wasn’t on the list of things they couldn’t eat, so it might be ok.

Somewhere along the way I got the idea (not from my mom, I know) that any food you do for company or a church potluck or a meal for others should be totally from scratch with nothing store bought and ready-made. That’s still my ideal, and I do think it shows a level of care put into it. But sometimes it’s a matter of pride.

Then, my step-father and two sisters are coming to visit from Texas at the end of this week, and my other two sisters who live about 30-45 minutes away will be over some as well. It’s awful that I don’t see the two nearby sisters much at all except when the rest of the family comes — our schedules and days off just don’t mesh. But I’m saving most of the cleaning til later this week in preparation for their coming. Normally when company’s coming I’m inspired to get a lot of house projects done, but they’ve seen my house “as is” before and I just don’t have the time and energy, so I think I’ll stick with basic cleaning and just enjoy the visit. I did finally get the fabric for curtains I need to make for the family room and got it all dry-cleaned and ready to sew:

Where I am “stuck” with that project is trying to decide what kind of trim to use on the valance or whether to make them without it. I’ve checked in all the places nearby for trim and just haven’t had made the time to look in the next towns. I could go ahead and maybe get the main curtains up, though — they shouldn’t take too long to whip up. We’ll see.

But I guess I should push away from the computer now and get busy, huh?