Thanksgiving

Our family enjoyed turkey dinner with a twist last Sunday. The seven of us gathered for dinner, as we always do, with our linen napkins, grandma's crystal and great-grandma's china. But at the end of the table sat a laptop computer, tuned in to Skype. And our youngest daughter, Alex, who is serving her United Church internship in Leduc Alberta "joined us." Our dinner was late getting on the table, and she ate early, so we shoved stuffing and mashed potatoes into our mouths while she chatted to various members of the clan. It was new, weird, different, sad and wonderful all at the same time. Luckily she'll be home for Christmas! Here's the menu:

• Roast Turkey with cranberry-apricot stuffing
• Sour-cream mashed potatoes and rivers of savory gravy
• Fresh green beans
• Sweet-potato squash
• Sourdough rolls
• Homemade cranberry sauce or jelly
• Home-baked apple or pumpkin pie with whipped cream
• Fabulous Filipino squash-cake-dessert-thingy that I can't remember the name but thanks to my new in-law sister, Nenita, for making it for us!
  

On the counseling front I've now got a waiting list of clients. That makes me a bit sad. I want to help everyone who emails me! But with the push of marketing I did over the last 3 months, and particularly in the past month, I should have expected it. If only the church could put up a Facebook ad that simply read "For help with your ______, click here" (Fill in the blank with a million things). And if only people would actually click, actually come, and actually be helped. But alas....that was Christendom and this is post-modernity...

Perhaps knocking myself out over the past years in ministry trying to figure out how to "market," where to market, when to market helped me get traffic to my blog and click-throughs on my ads with ease. So my counseling blog should come with a warning: don't try this at church! haha

The other fun piece of news this week is that Alex and Alvin finally got their wedding pictures from the photographer. They all downloaded in RANDOM ORDER, mind you. Geesh! So mom volunteered to put all 240 of them in chronological order, which morphed to "tell the story" order. If you know Alex or Alvin, you can go to their website and see some more, or download all 230 of them if you like. Just click on the picture to go to their site!



Oh ya - and on Wednesday Miri Lee and I made three RELAXATION RECORDINGS (guided imagery). She played harp and piano and I spoke with a soft melty voice.

The tapes will greatly help my counselees, but Miri and I are also going to sell them online. One I made as specifically Christian, since I've never found one of those before, and the other two are nebulous-new-age. But hopefully quite relaxing! When they're ready I'll put a note here and/or on my website if you're interested.

Cheers til next week!