Back in the swing of things

Life has gone from 0 to 60 in just a few days. After three weeks of doing next to nothing, we are jumping back into everything at once!

Eric spent some time early this week at beautiful Alton L. Collins with the Conference Camp and Retreat Ministries Board to do some planning, reporting and reflecting. Oh, and eating ridiculously delicious food. He always comes back from those meetings inspired and challenged by the organization and effectiveness of the camp board and by the good people on it. They get things done and they do it well.

The Goose has also been playing music with church folks in our living room, visiting people and planning for his first funeral (this Saturday in Yamhill), in addition to preparing for Sunday worship.

We've both been meeting with folks and planning for Cornelius UMC's new food ministry, Community Table, that will (hopefully!) be launched in February. The awesome organizers of Sherwood UMC's food pantry have been helping us and will come next week with shelving and food to get us going--and some of Cornelius's members will take a field trip to the Oregon Food Bank soon after to learn how it all works. The plan for Community Table is to do more than simply hand out food--we hope it will be a place to gather, practice language skills, share gifts and build community. One meeting today really got me excited: Matilde, who lives near the church and teaches courses in nutrition and health food prep in Spanish, wants to do cooking demonstrations and hand out samples and recipes on the days Community Table is open. How great is that?

Some of the other things I do are organized around a school schedule, so all those are starting up again: volunteering at Cornelius Elementary (in my friend, Leah's 2nd grade Spanish literacy class) and at Adelante Chicas and teaching ESL with the PODER program. I've also recently taken on a third position (the 2nd is with PODER) with PLAN Loving Adoptions as a bilingual birthparent counselor. So far, I have focused on outreach and am learning heaps about the adoption process. So interesting!

So many exciting things happening! Our new year has been full and hopeful so far...