A New Story

Well I received a call today from a lovely woman who lives in an assisted living facility where I preached some time ago. She called to ask me if I could come back in January to recite another story! The last time I preached there I incorporated acting out the Samaritan Woman at the Well and the residents said they enjoyed it very much. I guess it was well-received after all!

I am scheduled to preach at the facility in December as part of my Lay Speaking duties and I haven't decided yet if I'll come up with yet another character to portray, either as the message or as part of the message in December. Since my writing goals do include developing one character per month, I imagine I'll begin working on December's soon!

I had considered developing the character of the Innkeeper's wife for January, but I may move do her story in December - I'm scheduled for the Sunday after Christmas so it would be very appropriate and timely.

I thought I would also offer to tell a story at one of the United Methodist Men's meetings next year. One of the men had suggested it, I may contact the program director to get on their calendar. At the time it was suggested I immediately knew I wanted to portray the wife of someone in the bible so I could be a little bit humorous and play the 'long-suffering' wife. Not sure if I'll take that approach or not, but I'll see.

After I met with one of my friends the other night to help her set up her blog, she emailed me to say she already had tons of ideas for blog posts! I am excited for her, even though I realized I had better be 'practicing what I preach' when it comes to maintaining blogs--post often!

I mentioned in Divinely Designed blog that I have been praying the Prayer of Jabez, asking God to expand/enlarge my ministry. I believe the phone call I received this morning confirms that He has already begun to answer that prayer and I imagine He will continue to do so.

How blessed I am!

Fitting God In Just Published at CWAHM

I just received an email from a wonderful Christian 'friend'! I put friend in single quotes because we have never met in person but have corresponded for several months. Takeila Bynum has several websites, a podcast and is one busy lady - public speaker, wife of a pastor, mom to three active pre-teens, in other words - one of God's Wonder Women!

She has generously and graciously offered me many opportunities to contribute to her sites - a book review, several devotionals and most lately, an article on a topic that is near and dear to my heart: God’s Wonder Woman: Religious and Spiritual Tips for Women . I originally wrote this piece as part of a women's retreat presentation I did some time ago and it has been the foundation of and framework for my women's ministry since then.

God is so amazingly good to put me in contact with such godly "wonder women" on my journey! You might want to stop by her site and see what she's up to!

Back to Basics

I had gotten out of the habit of carrying a notebook with me. I have my daytimer with me everywhere, all the time, but I used to keep a spiral notebook handy to jot down ideas for articles or poems.

This week I grabbed a brand new spiral notebook that has been sitting on the shelf and I've already filled up about 5 pages! Some of the entries are just addresses for article submissions. Sometimes I've written a sentence or most of paragraph so I'll be able to recall what I thought of later on (essential when I'm in the midst of a day with the 3 little ones I nanny for!)

I have 3 articles already written that I plan to submit as reprints to Parents Magazine!

The other night I "made up" a recipe (adapted from someone else's on line) and my husband raved about how good it was that he suggested I submit it to contest! So I did! I figured while I'm in the contest searching/submitting mode, I might as well go for it!

I'm really thinking seriously about the "godly child" series. This weekend I'm going to do a bible search on all the 'parenting' biblical references and fit the bullet points I've already developed to them and see where things go from there.

I also think that as soon as I get Woman at the Well uploaded to lulu.com I'm going to upload all my frugal cooking/household articles into a free e-book format.

Woman at the Well

I've been working on Woman at the Well (poetry and devotional book) for a long time! A couple of times I felt as if "this is ready" only to find that God had other plans - either by way of a comment or suggestion from a friend or from some scripture that resonated with me or a new poem. I'll upload the files to lulu.com this week if all goes as planned.

Yesterday I made what I believe is the final edit and hope to have it printed within a week or so. I'm not stressing about it because each time I have been delayed in my plan, I found that God had a better one, so I'll wait:-)

After the annual RCWW dinner, I'm psyched and have set some ambitious writing goals for myself! I have no doubt I will miss some goals and/or modify some over the months ahead, but I have learned the importance of at least having a benchmark. I want to get back in the habit of submitting to contests and pick several publications to focus on for submissions.

Also Takeila Bynum has indicated she has several contacts that may be interested in some parenting artices, so I started on what may be a "single" or first in a series article today.

One goal I didn't post on the side bar: do 15 minutes of cleaning for every hour of writing! That will be a change and will afford us a cleaner house!