Home from Florida
Our quick trip to Florida is over and pretty uneventful (that's a good thing!). We had to get up at 3 am to catch our flight home! ugh! While my husband was in meetings all day, I had the opportunity to get some serious writing done for my book, Connected Voices. I wrote two additional chapters and am having people review them right now before I submit them to the publisher. I still have to write questions for each chapter, but that will come easier than these chapters. At the same time, good questions are critical for good introspection and group discussion, so I need to move carefully through this stage of developing the book.
We are now focusing on our March 28-30 women's retreat near Dallas/Ft. Worth. This retreat will be here before we know it and we have lots to do to adequately promote it and prepare for it.
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Florida
Well, my husband and I are in Florida for a few days. He has a board meeting and I came along as the "trophy wife" (if you know me, you know that's NOT the case!). Actually, we are not together that often, so this was a way to do that. While he's in meetings all day, I'm writing and working (God bless laptop computers and the
Internet!). We're about 15 miles from any beach, so that writing is taking place in a hotel room and hopefully poolside later today. It's weird to be in shorts when I left REALLY cold weather in Arkansas yesterday (I know . . . if you live in Minnesota, we don't know what cold IS, but it was still cold!). We are here through Sunday, so I'll get lots done and we'll at least get to go to some good seafood restaurants while we're here!
www.committedtofreedom.org
Seminar
The Responsible Care Training seminar went very well at All Saints Lutheran Church in Arlington, Texas this past weekend. About 55 clergy, church staff, and ministry leaders and volunteers attended the training. The church is beautiful and the people who organized this were very
accommodating and organized.
The only glitch in the entire weekend was my travel. My husband says I have a "travel demon" and I sometimes wonder if he's not right! I live in Hot Springs, Arkansas and we have a small airport. Mesa Airlines flies from here (five minutes from my house) to
DFW. It's a puddle jumper, but very convenient for me. If I flew from Little Rock, it's an hour drive, an hour wait, an hour flight, so this is a great alternative for me.
Anyway, Mesa is notoriously unreliable - so much so that I always arrive at the airport with a full tank of gas as a precaution. Well, once again, Mesa didn't fly due to mechanical problems and I had to drive to Dallas. It's about a 50/50 chance that this happens. Somebody needs to get their act together.
Other than that, the weekend was great, and I suppose I had lots of "me time" in the car for ten hours!
www.committedtofreedom.org
Dallas Seminar
I leave in a few hours for Dallas to teach a Responsible Care Training seminar at All Saints Lutheran Church in Arlington, Texas. They have sixty people registered to attend. This is always encouraging to know that so many leaders want to become better prepared to help survivors of abuse.
My Christmas tree is down and my house is beginning to look normal again (although I miss the soft glow of those tiny white lights!). I just submitted my last paper and am done with my first quarter of grad school. I have a solid "A" in Research in Human Development. I'm patting myself on the back. I begin a new quarter, full time, beginning Monday. I look forward to new ideas, information, and challenges as I inch closer to my degree.
Happy New Year!
www.committedtofreedom.org
