AWOL
I think I have been AWOL far more often than online the past month. This is mostly because I began a new project at church.

Our women's ministry is holding a banquet for women ministry leaders in February. When I'd agreed to chair the banquet committee back in September, I had no idea how much had to be hammered out behind the scenes for me to even get started. It has been a real learning experience for everyone involved.

Making a guest list for such an event was frankly a scary process. I was initially given a list of 300 guests, which would be approximately half of all women who attend or are members of the church. We have neither the seating capacity or budget to feed such a large group, so we had to start removing names. I just pray our decisions were wise and won't end up fostering a lot of bad feelings in the church.

It was a lot of fun to do graphic design work again. I think the invitations I created turned out quite nice and happily came in under budget. While I normally would have preferred starting the project months ago, I am now thankful that I didn't have this on my plate right after my father's death. The time pressure helped us avoid dawdling on decisons like paper color and the like.

Next I have to nail down details with the caterer. I'd appreciate prayers about this aspect because this person has a reputation of being tricky to work with. I have some absolutely delightful women on my committee who are happy to go to bat for me if I feel at all frustrated with the caterer, so that gives me hope for an overall good experience.