Rainey Days

For 25 years now, the Rainey family has been coming to Ocean City for the last weekend of September. Over the years the family has grown and gone through seasons of life that change our vacation dynamic. There have been years where everyone was in college, overseas, or working. There have been years where there were more invited friends than family members, but the tradition has lasted through all the many changes. Now, the family is too many people to fit in this 2 bedroom condo. Good thing we can all escape the crowded conditions by going to the beach!

Fall is my favorite season. What's not to love? The best parts are: sleeping with windows open and burrowing into the blankets on chilly nights. picking out the perfect pumpkin in a field full of orange the changing leaves, especially the beautiful maple tree in my front yard. the brilliant blue skies that only come with low humidity--we never get them in summer the kids shouting and laughing at recess at the school next door to my house burning scented candles eating soup on a chilly day How about you? Any favorite things about fall?

Okay, you wanted to know. . . well, my friend Jenn wanted to know, anyway. My thoughts on The Shack are found here.

Since I've mentioned lately that I'm reading certain books, based on other people's questions or comments, I figured this would be a good time to launch a book review wing of this blog. If you are interested in my opinions, you can click on the link "Black and White and Read All Over" under the link for my brother Ben's blog. I'm not such a narcissist to believe that everyone wants my opinions on books, so when I do a review, I'll mention it here, and leave it up to you to follow the links. I've already reviewed a book, Strengthsfinder 2.0, and you can find my thoughts here .

When I was in Senegal four years ago, I bought these little dolls as a souvenir of my time in Africa. These figures represent the villagers deep "in-country" that I met as I traveled: women carrying their babies on their backs, grinding millet into meal, carrying their burdens perfectly balanced on their heads; and men who buy and sell in markets, traveling distances with their bags slung across their torsos. These little figures are about four inches high and were only a few dollars. I display them in my room on my dresser. My nieces Sydney and Olivia are old enough to come upstairs to the attic where my room is, and they love to explore the place they regard as so mysterious, so fascinating. They are always drawn to these little dolls, and they play with them and chatter about them. When I was a child, my pastor's home was filled with objects from other countries. Many were gifts from missionaries, who knew that my pastor loved missions. I used to spend a lot ...

Yesterday evening, I got the chance to go to my niece's soccer game. I hadn't been yet, but seeing her face light up when she saw me on the sidelines will definitely keep me coming back. She scored five goals (by her reckoning). The kids are all 3 or 4 years old, so the rules are pretty lax, but they did a pretty good job for their petite sizes. Sydney loves her soccer team; her purple soccer shirt (#3) is her favorite thing to wear, and we've heard all about her soccer shoes and the other kids on her team. It's fun to see her enthusiasm!

Thanks to Lois Henning, I've just gotten a copy of The Shack (which I mentioned last week). I'll be reading it shortly, and I'll be sure to add my thoughts to this blog. I really appreciate those of you who read the blog, whether you comment or not. It's a real encouragement to me!

Recently I bought a new laptop from Dell. It is normal procedure for Dell to call its customers a few weeks after a purchase to do a follow-up: is it working normally? Are you satisfied? At that point, they make a pitch to upgrade your warranty package, to cover more accidental damage or perhaps to cover you an extra year. I'm used to their sales program, since this was my third Dell computer. Honestly, I've never had one problem with my Dell machines; I've been happy. On Saturday morning, when the guy called from Dell, I was actually suckered in to upgrading my coverage warranty to include accidental damage. The man quoted a price to me, and then asked me confirm my personal information, including my mother's maiden name and my SSN. He gave me an order number and assured me I would receive an email confirmation. However, I never received the email. As time passed, I started to worry that it could have been some sort of phishing scam. One the one hand, he knew...

I love to read. In a different life scenario, I could have been a proofreader or an editor for some book company, because that would be the perfect job for me: reading all day, every day. I always take advantage of the excellent library system in my county when I'm at home. Several people at churches had remarked how much they enjoyed the Middle East-based novels of Joel Rosenberg, so I did some research and got a few from the library this week. I've also added my name to the lengthy list for The Shack , by William P. Young, since I keep hearing buzz about that one, too. Anybody out there read these authors? What did you think about these books?

John Bueno, the executive director of the Assemblies of God World Missions organization, sent out this newsletter today: During an open forum session at this year's Missionary Renewal week, questions arose about why growth of the U.S. church has flat-lined while the overseas church is growing phenomenally. Four months ago, the Executive Presbytery asked me the same question and requested that I write a paper on the reasons for this difference. Below you will see five factors I brought to their attention. I've included them in this month's Missive because we need to be careful not to miss these salient issues as overseas churches grow and require larger, more complicated projects that occupy our time and energies. I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list and that many other reasons could be presented. I pray sincerely that God will keep us true to the great principles of New Testament growth in these challenging days in which we live. Churches are growing overseas at an u...

You know those Mac - PC commercials with the two guys just standing there comparing their operating systems. I've been thinking a lot about those lately, particularly the one where the Mac offers a "genius" to transfer all of your files for you. I'm still transferring files from my old computer to my new one. Yesterday's project was transferring my old Outlook files (all my archived emails and calendar and my address book entries) into the "new and improved" Outlook. It wasn't that hard actually, but whoever wrote the "guide" on the Windows Vista help site didn't do a very good job. The steps were often ambiguous; with several windows open, the step would tell me, "Click on File," without indicating which program it was talking about. I'd have to click "File" on all of them until I found what I was looking for. Annoying, but it worked. I got it all done, and I can cross one more major line off the to-do ...

The vacation was lovely last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed the break. However, now that Labor Day is over, I must get back to laboring. I generally use September as a time to get everything back on track after the laziness of summer; I spent so many years teaching that September seems like the beginning of a "new year" for me each fall.