chicken

This is my "Girl Power" "Grill Power" project for the weekend. Empowerment through poultry?
It's spring time, and these "spring chickens" were delicious. Look how crispy golden brown the skin is, and the meat was tender magic lemon herby goodness.

It was fun to have friends over for a good meal. Thanks!
Angie, a friend from high school said that they look like they're sumo wrestlers, I thought it looked like they were having a deep conversation.

How Rich are You?

Thanks to Chris Brooks for posting this, I played with this when I was in college, but forgot about it. I'm richer now. I like to joke that Methodists pay me a lot of money, turns out they do.

http://globalrichlist.com/

How to Build Community - Ask For Help When You Need It

HELP!

Oh, I needed it this weekend.

The Junior High Volunteers and I took 20 kids to camp in Minnetrista on Friday Night for a retreat called, "Can You Hear Me Now? - Hearing God's Voice."

Right before we left, one of the volunteers called, she had bad migraine, was seeing spots and felt nauseous. Quickly I started making calls, a friend of mine, Julie, was able to drive my car up to camp. Another friend came up to camp a few hours later and helped with the kids for a couple hours and even drove a child home who was having behavior problems.

I asked for help again Saturday afternoon when I realized that I hadn't planned a restaurant for dinner on the way home, a quick call to my dad, who is like a Lake Minnetonka area EXPERT, and I had directions to a sandwich place in Wayzata.

We ate our sandwiches, got back in the church van and started our trip down 394.

All of a sudden, I needed help again. The van was overheating and died on the freeway. "Ok, guys," I said as I coasted up the exit ramp. "We're going to pull over now, because the car is dying."

"You're funny. . . . . Oh, wait, you're not kidding."

I pulled over and started making phone calls, again asking for help. "Can you come pick up kids and luggage in Minnetonka?" "Do you know the name of a good tow-truck company?" "Can you bring me a bottle of coolant?" "Will you stay with me until the tow-truck comes?" "Can you drive me home?"

After the first few phone calls, I stopped for a minute, turned around and asked the 8 kids in the van with me to pray. Asking for help, and asking them to ask for help for me. An 8th grade girl who is super outgoing, but unsure what to make of the God thing started to pray.

Throughout the whole ordeal, not one kid freaked out. They got a football out of the van, they played 500. They prayed, they laughed at the cars driving past us, but they were so calm, so great. We watched the sunset over Ridgedale Mall, so lovely. :o)

Here's my favorite voice mail message a 6th grade girl left for her parents:
"Hi it's Sam, I'm stranded. . . so I guess I'll be home later. Bye"

So for this weekend, let me just say thanks to:

Matt
Sarah
Dad
Tessa
Julie
Rachael
Lura
Michelle
Dwight
Tina
Katherine and Otis
Susan
Becky
My prayer team
The staff at Kingswood
My roommates who have heard this story 87 times
God
The people at Jimmy Johns in Wayzata
The people at Matt's Towing Company

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

I've got a great community! Thank you!

Links links links

Here are the links that are challenging me this morning:

In WWII our Grandparents and their parents planted victory gardens, local homegrown produce to help with the war effort. What if Christians planted Cristus Victor Gardens to help the Kingdom Come? How would local community gardens help our environmental stewardship efforts?

Cristus Victor Gardens


It's no secret that I love Jon Stewart, or Eugene Cho, so here's Eugene Cho's take on the Jim Cramer/ Jon Stewart interview last week on The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart - Prophet not the creepy kind

I grew up Catholic. I love the Catholic Church. The contemplative prayer traditions, the emphasis on justice, mercy, service and identification with the poor. I am so angry this morning at Pope Benedict. Sure, abstinence and monogamy are probably the most effective ways to not get AIDS but is it realistic to expect every person to do this?

Pope Rejects Condom Use in Africa

Valerie and I were talking this morning about AIDS in Africa, "What the pope doesn't understand, is that wives might be in monogamous relationships but their husbands might not be faithful. It's not just single people dying of AIDS it's whole families being destroyed by it."

Audrey, a friend of my sister's, and Brethren Pastor had this to say when she posted the BBC link on Facebook:

YET ANOTHER example of Pope Benny bent on exacerbating real problems that are killing real people by clinging to distorted, implausible "traditions." Yet another example of a person abusing his authority at the expense of millions of good people of faith.

Hey Ratzy, you really think use of condoms will make the AIDS epidemic worse? Really? Perhaps you have never watched someone die of AIDS. Perhaps you have never read the painful statistics. Perhaps you really do prefer your bubble of ignorance and fantasy from which you can safely dictate morality that makes sense only in fictional universes, and feel clean and pure without noticing all the human blood on your hands.

Enjoy it now, because St. Peter's going to have a long talk with you in a few years.

How to build community - bake extra and share - or at least offer to share.

Today, I tried my hand at sharing baked goods/building community.

M is our neighbor on the 27th street side. He's the head carpenter at Children's Theatre Company, (which, by the way, I think is one of the coolest assets of our neighborhood.) He takes good care of his house and yard, is active in neighborhood politics, and is quiet and pleasant. He's a good neighbor.

Today the weather was in the mid 50s, ice was melting and people were outside. M was outside of his house chopping ice when I came home from work, so I ran inside the house to get a bag of the cookies I made this weekend from my favorite cookbook. I offered the cookies, but M is a diabetic, so he turned them down, but we were able to talk a bit in between chopping ice. Maybe next time I'll bring vegetables.

Noel is on spring break, my quarter is over after tomorrow, Valerie's Master's project is done. You can visibly see the stress lifting from our house. The sunny skies help too.

Tomorrow is my day off, before school, with no homework to do! And the forcast is for 62 degrees. YAY!!!!!!!

I was recruited to run registration for our neighborhood meeting next month. I'm excited to see what that will be like. I really am blessed to live in this neighborhood and I'm looking forward to finding connections.