IT'S FEBRUARY AND TIME SEEMS TO BE FLYING...January seems to have completely melted into thin air. We missed the first week since we took our Christmas break in Seattle then and caught colds from the grandchildren that carried over into our time back home. I've been in the middle of starting a women's Bible study at the church and although most of the hard work was done--choosing the book/materials, deciding on the day/time to meet with the leadership team, and publicizing it. There is the constant work of preparing the lesson each week. For some, that isn't any big deal, for me it is agony. Preparing a lesson does NOT come easy. First, I have to prepare it for myself, then I have to plan how to teach/lead it. I am NOT a teacher. I can facilitate group discussion and add in points. I can even make some good points, but I am not a teacher. My transitions are NOT smooth. I guess I know enough about what makes a good teacher to know that I am not one. I do know I married one. I consider myself fortunate since I have had to listen to him in varying degrees for over 35 years:) I am somewhat gifted in encouragement and exhortation so I can lead a group but I am not a teacher. The good thing about this is that to survive all the preparation and leading of the class, I have to depend on the Lord. I am convinced that is why He often puts me in this kind of situation. In this situation, there is no way that I can coast! To add to my "agony", the group I thought might get as big as 10 or 12 (my comfort zone) blossomed to 25 and although they haven't all been there in one week, 28 are using the books and studying! It has changed how I can even teach the class!
I'm getting over the hump in our Bible study now where it is starting to be fun...in the actual Bible study. Last night we were discussing different things about the theme of the book, key verses, etc. It was fun hearing the discussions about different verses and why different ones thought they were key verses:) It was also interesting to hear how different people summarize and divide a book. Some want to cover every detail, others want to get the broad picture. Did I mention that these discussions carried over in a group of about 20 women ranging in age from 16-80+? There was laughing and smiling as well as seriousness happening. Our prayer time ended last night with prayer in groups of 2's and 3's for our specific application and our asking for help from the others in our small group for accountability if needed.
So between the Bible study (good), a visit to family (good), a quick trip to OK for the funeral of Ron's favorite uncle (age 93) last week (sad but good to see family), and now second colds for us in a month (ugh!) and facing a couple of days in Chicago at Moody Founder's Week walking out in weather that will be 15 degrees tops(!), we dread the weather but look forward to seeing at least one of Ron's very good friends from his days at Moody and after (overall, good). It has been mostly a good month with the last few weeks being extremely frigid. This is not the warm winter that last winter was.
Meanwhile, I have been keeping up with my TBR reading by listening to tapes of books from my alternate list. (I haven't had time to read.) I'm trying to get off the TV and listening to audio tapes is a good way to do it. I'll have to blog later on some of the books I "read". Good-bye January 2007. I hope February doesn't fly by quite so fast so I can get something done.