My word, you all are prolific! I had to discipline myself not to even open Google Reader yesterday til I finished my task. After dinner I finally got to “play” a while — and there were over 120 posts! I read some last night and some this morning. Saturdays are typically slow in Blogland, so it is a good day to catch up.

I also missed out on Friday’s Fave Five, Show and Tell Friday, Saturday Photo Hunt, but it is my own fault.

The last week of the month finds me working on a newsletter/booklet for our ladies’ group at church. I never know quite what to call it. It started out as about eight pages with news of our group, our missionaries, and other little bits of interest to women, based on a similar booklet my mother-in-law’s church published. I took some of those to my pastor and asked if we could do the same, and he said, “Go for it!” This month marks my eighth year of doing it, and it has grown to 16 pages and includes a section on devotions, a book summary of a missionary book or biography or an anecdote from a missionary’s life, an “around the house” section of tips or encouragement for homemakers, a “Christian womanhood” section where I rotate topics related to different to women in different situations — single, married, mom, older, widowed, etc. Some of it I write myself, some of it I compile from other sources. It is a blessing to me — sometimes I would love to lay aside other ministry tasks and just do this.

Oh, there is also a “funny pages” section at the back. That is probably what I get the most comments on. 🙂

It seems that most bloggers love to write to some degree — you might ask your pastor about a similar ministry, and he just might say, “Go for it!”

Some months I know what I am going to put in the booklet, and it is just a matter of getting it down. Other times I am not so sure until I get started. This month was about half and half. I usually work on it the last week of the month to have out the first Sunday of the next month. I keep telling myself I should work on it earlier then let it “sit” and incubate for a while and edit it the last week — I would probably catch more mistakes that way and find better ways to word things. But I somehow end up not doing that. This particular week I ended up not getting the bulk of it done until the last two days!

I don’t work best under pressure — but I do get more done under pressure.

But my point in saying all of this is to testify that God is faithful to guide and direct and give ideas even to such small endeavors as this. There was one section I was drawing a blank on until He reminded me of an idea I considered last month, but then went another direction. I hadn’t made note of it and had forgotten it. Sometimes putting the clip art in can be the most time-consuming part of it, but He reminded me of a file I had downloaded some type back under an obscure title. Time after time I see Him faithfully helping things to come together, giving me ideas, etc. And I have seen that in other areas of ministry as well. So I just wanted to encourage you not to refrain from certain types of ministry because you don’t think you’d know what to do. If it is something the Lord wants you to do, He will work through you and help you to do it.

“In other news”… last night was Halloween, and somehow our neighborhood gets flooded with many more people than I ever see on the streets here at any other time. I think people from other neighborhoods, or maybe a nearby apartment complex, bring their kids here. I even saw one truck that hauled a lot of people around. We always get some kids’ tracts printed up for just such a purpose (our local Christian bookstore has them but they can also be ordered at Good News Publishing) to give out with the candy. I bought 114 tracts — about all our bookstore had that I liked — and those were gone within about 45 minutes. I scrambled around between my purse and desk and a cabinet and found maybe 40 or so more. Then we just gave out handfuls of candy but got tired after a while and went ahead and closed the door and shut off the lights. We have much more candy left over than any of us needs — I may send some to the dorms with Jason’s girlfriend.

I used to be very anti-Halloween, and I still think there is a darker side to it. I feel almost oppressed sometimes at the types of things in the stores and on TV — I don’t watch horror movies, but I do see them listed and advertised a lot this time of year. And I think a lot of the really gruesome costumes and decorations go too far. But I can see how it can also be an innocent, fun time of dressing up and having fun.

When my older boys were little, a friend used to host a fall party on a week apart from Halloween. Each year it was a different theme: one year it was clowns, one it was fairy-tale characters, one it was what you want to be when you grow up. The kids just loved that, and I loved the creativity of getting a costume together to fit the theme. If I had time today I’d scan in some of their costumes, but I don’t — and this post is too long already. My friend also had games and goodies, and those parties were some of my favorite memories from my kids’ childhood.

Speaking of going on too long, I need to get going, but I wanted to share one last thing. A few days ago I mentioned I was chuckling over a mom in a store calling to her little son, “Walker, don’t run!” Well, this morning there was a related headline in the paper that made me chuckle again:

Have a good weekend!