Honey Mustard Dip

Our local grocery store had samples before Thanksgiving, and one of them was for Bison's new Honey Mustard Dip. It is delicious! Last night I decided to try and make something similar and found this recipe on-line at everydaycook.com:

1/2 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
3 tablespoons honey

Just whisk everything together. I eye-balled the ingredients and it come out great. I would like to try it with dijon mustard also sometime. this is my kind of recipe - cheap, easy, delicious. Enjoy!

Missions & Ministries - Part 4

Today's focus is The Rochester Family Mission. (www.rochesterfamilymission.com) I met the director, Barbara Thomas, a few years ago when our church hosted a missions conference. The mission's outreaches include food distribution, youth programs, tutoring and educational programs, and RICE (Rochester Institute of Christian Education). A couple from our church has volunteered there for years, so I have confidence that this is an organization that is doing the Lord's work with integrity and responsible stewardship.

C. S. Lewis

I have been listening to "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis on audio cassette. As always, he manages to express things with clarity and simplicity. Here is a quote that especially jumped out at me:

"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul."

Ouch!

Missions & Ministries- Part 3

Today's focus is a radio show aimed at working women, "The Christian Working Woman" with Mary Whelchel. (www.christianworkingwoman.org) In addition to her daily radio show, every summer Mary and her assistant Lucinda travel to Africa for 2 weeks to minister to women there. Part of that trip involves taking gifts and materials to distribute. Additionally, as opportunities arise, the ministry will do special aid projects. An example is Haiti. After the earthquake, TCWW located a couple of families in Haiti that had been seriously affected by the earthquake. All the special donations went directly to those families. TCWW combines evangelism and discipleship in down to earth ways that are biblically sound and easy to understand and remember,

Missions & Ministries- Part 2.

Another organization high on my list is Logoi. (www.logoi.org) The founder, Les Thompson, was born in Cuba to missionary parents, and lived there until they were asked to leave in the 1960's. He is a missionary, pastor, and author. The ministry is based in Miami and their main goal is equipping Spanish speaking pastors and believers with sound Christian materials. They hold pastor's conferences in Cuba, Latin America and South America. They also have a newly developed website where Spanish speaking pastors can make a wish list and English speaking believers can make those wish lists a reality. I have not explored their new site much yet, but it seems to have great potential and to be using the power of the internet to link believers around the world, to the glory of God.

Missions & Ministries- Part 1

Yesterday, Little Man's Father & I went to a missions conference. At first, I wondered why it had been scheduled in December, when everyone is accelerating toward Christmas. After listening to the speakers, my thoughts and attitude had been re-aligned. Missions is all about glorifying God and telling people that they can have peace with God because of Jesus. Hearing about various mission endeavors in various parts of the world was such an antidote to the commercialization of Christmas that starts before Halloween and increases until everyone is sick of the holiday before it even gets here. How sad. Don't get me wrong - I love all the tradition and trimmings and I'm busy shopping and decorating and moving through the various celebrations of the season. But in the midst of it, I'm trying to keep a place of peace and stillness and trying to take time to focus on the incarnation of our Lord and all its implications.

As part of that, I thought I would focus on some of the mission & ministry endeavors that I've become aware of, in no particular order. The first one is "Come Over and Help", which I heard about for the first time yesterday. Their website is www.coah.org. Their area of work is Eastern Europe and countries that were formerly communist. They don't have missionaries - instead, they partner with churches and ministries that are already established and help them in whatever way is needed to carry out their work. The areas the speaker highlighted yesterday are pastor training, prison ministry, orphanages, church building and humanitarian aid.