My great granddaughter

This is a recent picture of my eldest great grand daughter. She will be two in September. Her name is Mia Cordas. It seems it is impossible for her to eat anything without getting it all over her face. :)

Her mother, my granddaughter, lives in Manhattan, Kansas. Her father has been in Iraq. He will be home this week. I'm sure my grand daughter is delighted that she is going to be with her husband again.

I hope one of these day to be able to see her and my great grandchild again. It's been over a year.

Big Trip

This has been a huge day. I picked up Juanita at 8:15 and we went to Bartlesville to her doctor's office. She had a good report.

(This picture of Juanita at the right was taken with her first husband when she was in her thirties. She's now 86 but she won't let me take her picture.)

Afterward I took her to a new dress store there so she could look around. We found nothing she wanted so we went on Staples to check on some presentation boards for the MC3 Clinic and from there to Garfield's and had lunch. Then we went to get gas before we started home. She wanted to go to Coffeyville and buy some KFC for their supper so we did that. Then I took her home to Independence and stopped by the Montgomery County Community Health Clinic to get a check and a tax form.

I then went by the cleaners and picked up Ashley's dress and took it out to Leslie's to Ashley.

Then I came home and ate a bite. By then, it was 5:00.

A Hospitable Church

Well, my plan for the Restoration Scriptures Symposium have changed a little. An elderly friend of mine (yes, that's relative) is going with me so I will take a different route. I called my host home and they readily agreed that she too could stay with them. Our church members are so hospitable.

That's one of the lovely things, among many, about our church. Following Hurricane Katrina, a friend of mine needed to go to Texarkana to go through her brother's personal items after he committed suicide. Because of the hurricane she could not find a motel room. I called our pastor there and she readily agreed to let my friend, a perfect stranger, stay in her home. How many people would do that for a perfect stranger. This is not an isolated incident either. I have arranged housing for other friends in stressful and unusual situations. That's just the way our church members are. Since we are so small we are all like family. I guess that is why I have never been all stressed out about the size of our church. I figure that if we try to live our beliefs, people will be drawn to us. And that may be the slow way to grow but it seems to work. We have four people who attend our church who are not members . I have not pushed membership at all. In fact, at business meetings, we set aside the rules and let them vote.

One day, when we are planning a baptism service for a child, I will invite them to join and we will see what happens then. Personally, I am in favor of letting them transfer their membership from former churches if they have already been baptized. I think it's ridiculous that we want to be seen as a part of mainstream Christianity and serve communion to all Christians yet we are still requiring their re baptism for membership. I think that's ironic.

Busy Week

This is going to be a busy week. I am going to clean my house tomorrow and perhaps have lunch with an old friend. Tuesday, I am taking an elderly friend (yes, that's relative) to an eye doctor's appointment in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Wednesday, I going back to Bartlesville to take my brother-in-law to his doctor's appointment there for a colonoscopy and Thursday I will clean the church again, mop floors there and pack to leave for a Restoration Studies Symposium where I am co-presenting a paper. I am really looking forward to the symposium since I have never done that before. At my age, all new experiences are valuable.

I need to change my hair appointment from Wednesday to Thursday if at all possible in order to work all this in.

The Community of Christ Seminary in Independence will be the site for this Symposium. There will also be tours of the Community of Christ Temple shown at right. I've seen it numerous times but there's always something new. There will also be a tour of the archives with Ron Romig.

Today is the anniversary of our church's beginnings. Our church was officially organized in 1830 as the Church of Christ. Later the name was changed twice to The Church of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1860, when some of the people who chose not to follow Brigham Young and his embrace of polygamy to Utah, reorganized the church, our church added "The Reorganized" to the first part of the name, making the name an unwieldy "The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints". After that, much to our dismay, we were forever being confused with the Utah Mormons. But later, in 2000, the church changed it's name again to a name that speaks more adequately to it's mission. We're now officially "Community of Christ" . We are into community building...building communities of love, hope, joy and justice.

It's a great non-creedal church. We are given direction by the church but not directions. That's the way I see God. God gives our lives direction but we are on our own to choose our own path...be it good or bad..God will try to guide us but does not coerce us. Hopefully we all learn from our mistakes and make life lessons from them because we all make mistakes. I know I have made some major ones in my life.

So today I start a major busy week . The highlight will be my trip to Independence, Missouri on Friday. Every time I go there, I see dozens of people I know and have met on dozens of other occasions. That's the lovely thing about being a member of a church of 250,000 members. It is possible to know dozens, even hundreds of them personally. I always look forward to that.

Yes, it's going to be a very busy week but an exciting one.