Tea for Two? Tea for Preachers? and what in the world is that?

Did you know that this week is Preacher/Pastor Appreciation week? Well, it is and I am blessed to work on staff at a large United Methodist Church. Our friend, Jan, who used to work with us started serving us tea during the long dark winter days. It is a tradition that we have continued. Yesterday we honored our preachers at "tea time."

In the circle, we have Dave and Suzanne and Buzz and Andy and Mack and David and Tim. We truly appreciate them and all that they do. They are each so different and it is so cool the way the Body of Christ fits together. Buzz is a "retired" UM minister who works part-time and I think he knows everyone in the greater Birmingham area - maybe even the state and beyond. He is a wonderful story teller and has entertained us many times at tea with stories.
We served lots of delicious food. We served apple slices and caramel dip. We served nuts. We had a wonderful pumpkin dip with ginger snaps and graham crackers. We also had a chicken dip and a sausage/cream cheese/rotel dip and fritos and crackers and cheese cubes. We had chocolate cake and of course, we had tea. It is funny that I'm spending more time describing the food than the preachers!
Your eyes are not deceiving you. Yes, it is the swine flu season so there is a bottle of hand sanitizer right in the middle. We did move it from the center of the table!!


I decided to take a couple of pictures of my incredibly messy office while I had the camera handy. I am the membership secretary and I support two of the associate pastors and am in charge of the prayer ministry. I don't know if I just love chaos or if it is because I'm always working on multiple projects . . .but my desk looks like this every week. I clean it off on Thursday afternoons and by early Monday morning, the mess is back. But it is organized chaos. I can usually put my hands on what I need quickly. Those are reading glasses hiding under a piece of paper. Most of us "middle-aged moms" require reading glasses.

Does anyone know what this is? I just had to take a picture of this antiquated cabinet. This is the way membership records were kept before the computer. My project (in my spare time) is to slowly transform these paper records to a much easier-to-access system. The data is already in the computer, but our church has a need to have a piece of paper in hand . . .so I continue on.
I was blessed to be able to stay home with our kids for many years. Now that they are "grown", I must admit that it is wonderful to be able to go to a job that I love (on most days!) . . . and a job where we can have tea every once in a while :-)