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What To Do First to Make a Profit

The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat  ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're  not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director.  Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year.  God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started inve

Post Christmas Cleaning & Cafe Con Leche


Yesterday Larry came home and did one of his famous, "I have a surprise for you's". He loves to do that and I love it when he does! He opened up a bag and pulled out a DVD of the movie, "The Queen." He knows I have wanted it and I guess when he was looking around the store yesterday, he found it. So I stayed up til' 2 am, watching it, just riveted to it. I love just zoning out with a movie sometimes, not having to think about all that's on my work agenda. At any given time they are 30-40 pressing items I have to give attention to, and there are only so many hours in the day I can go hard after that before needing a respite.

We slept in this morning - oh how glorious - and then got up and started working hard on a few projects. We helped Savanna totally clean out her room and she traded beds with Emilie. They have both been wanting to do this and each other's bed suits them better so Bernie came and picked up Savanna's bed and thenr brought Emmy's back over. Larry steam cleaned her carpets, and we threw away a HUGE amount of junk she's been needing to get rid of. To say my daughter is a pack rat is the major understatement of the year. While Larry was working on all that with her, I started taking down Christmas decorations...

This is no small job now that I have two trees (soon to be three next year with the addition of my blue/silver tree!) plus little lit up villages, a zillion Christmas candleholders, silk poinsettias, small lit trees and a plethora of other things. I started taking everything down, wrapping, organizing and boxing. I got it almost done before we had to leave to meet friends for dinner...

Keith and Joy called yesterday and wanted to meet us last night but we were already out with the kids. So we took a raincheck for tonight. They wanted to come over to Tampa and meet us at LaTerasita. So we met them at 5, and enjoyed some of the best Cuban food Tampa has to offer - cuban pork, rice and beans, and I topped it off with one of the best cafe con leche's I've ever had. :-) We haven't met with them since I got back from Africa. (In case you haven't been a blog reader for long, these are our friends, Pastors Keith & Joy Conley - lead pastors of Harvest A/G in Lakeland.) We had a great time catching up on everything. It's always way too short when we get together - there's so much to talk about.

We were out a few hours and then came home to finish putting the Christmas decorations away, cleaning and getting ready for tomorrow. I have a mass of clothes to iron and a suitcase to prepare. We won't be coming home tomorrow until late night as we have a funeral directly after church (I know, bummer...not just that a person died, but what's up with that? Funerals on a Sunday? Talk about hectic for pastors...) then we go straight from the funeral and grabbing a bite to eat to our prayer meeting at the church tomorrow night. I'll have my little suitcase with a change of clothes, make up to freshen up, etc. I have a full bathroom/shower at my office and it makes it easy to do that when I have to.

I'm just glad - so glad - that all the Christmas stuff is put away and I don't have to do that on the weekdays this week. It's going to be a busy time with work everyday and then our prayer meetings at night.

I am so ready for 'o8...did I mention that?

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