More on Missions and some other stuff

Well, now the struggle begins. I'm the treasurer for the Cedar Falls Ingathering Site. It's my job to get the figures straight in the spreadsheet we use to record vouchers, as well as to send the information to Des Moines. We have a Bazaar and Quilt Auction where the items are donated by the churches. I have to record on the individual vouchers what each item sold for and then send a copy of the voucher to the church. Not that much work, but tedious and time-consuming. After the spreadsheet is complete, I analyze the data for our local Ingathering Committee and for the state committee as well. But that's the fun part. I love to play with numbers.

I've made a decision on my weight loss. For the last month or so, I haven't even been trying to lose weight. The best I can hope for is to have maintained my weight. I'll weigh myself later and find out what my current weight is. I am going to restart the lifestyle change with small changes now and going more full scale in December. It's kind of a cop-out, but it's the way I have to do it. I'll try to keep you posted on how things go.

Some notes on Missions

Had a great day Saturday. The Laity of the United Methodist Church in Iowa have what we call Ingathering on the 1st Saturday of November. We have five sites in Iowa where we collect money and various types of kits. Some of the kits go to Nigeria as part of Iowa's Iowa-Nigeria partnership. Most of them go to the UMCOR depot in Louisiana, where they are stockpiled for disasters around the world including here in the US. Our site raised $235,000 in cash and kits for Ingathering. The preliminary total for all five sites is $965,892. We filled at least two semi's with kits. When people and churches work together, a lot can be accomplished.

Nice day yesterday

Well, had a pretty good day yesterday. Got a lot accomplished in getting ready for Ingathering. For those of you who don't know what the Ingathering is, it's a missions celebration of the Iowa United Methodist Church. It's a laity driven event, with presentations from various mission fields as well as an opportunity for the individual churches and their members to give to missions. The people give money for various projects and a variety of kits are put together and brought to the Ingathering. There's worship and a quilt and woodcraft auction. Last year the five sites took in almost one million dollars in money and kits. It's this Saturday, November 6th, from 9 to 3. Well worth going to.

Had a good time with the kids I'm helping to learn to read. There was real improvement from the previous time I was there. That is encouraging and keeps me going.

Had a WON (Worship Outreach Nurture) meeting last night. Some things were accomplished but one person is trying to control the who shebang and not letting the committee chairs do their thing. Oh well. I'll do what I can within the limits I'm allowed.

Too bad the Giants won the Series. I was rooting for the Rangers. The Rangers aren't one of my teams, but I had to root for somebody.

Thank God it's election day! I can hardly wait for the commercials to end. We'll go and vote later today.