May meeting - Seeds of Kindness

What a blessing our Phebe Fellowship was for the month of May. Our theme was "Seeds of Kindness." We began the evening by planting flowers outside the church in the big flower box.

It's easy to see who the "real" workers are here! Darlene! haha

The flower box filled in quite nicely and I know it will only get prettier as the Summer comes along.


After we planted flowers and got cleaned up, we moved inside for the fellowship time. Everything revolved around flowers and it was so cute. Our hostesses for the month were Carmen Iseminger and Amanda Dykstra. They decorated the tables with pretty yellow, Spring flowers, and different gardening items like gloves, trowels, rakes, and cute little hand painted watering cans. Then they accented that w/ packets of flower seeds.

Several ladies helped provide the refreshments of sandwiches and fresh fruit . Then Amanda made up a "dirt cake" in a clay flower pot. It was kind of comical, all the ladies passed right on by it, because they thought it was part of the decorations!


They kind of "tag teamed" the devotions. Using the letters in the word FLOWER, they gave a word and Scripture verse for each letter.

F - Friendship - Proverbs 17:17
L - Love - Galatians 5:14-15
O - Others - I Corinthians 13:2
W - Wisdom - Proverbs 4:7
E - Everlasting - Jeremiah 31:3
R - Rejoice - Proverbs 5:18

They did an excellent job on the devotion and I know it really spoke to my heart.

When they started the game time I was all gung ho, trying to be upbeat so everybody would join in. But we all ended up with our mouths STUFFED w/ large marshmallows, and attempting to say the word: Crysanthemum! I had to stop at 5! But one of the young ladies was able to accomplish it with 7 of them in her mouth!

Then we played a quick game of the Price is Right and I almost ended up at the end as one of the original players on contestant row! But thankfully, I pulled off a decent guess the last time around! I won a pretty new pair of gardening gloves for my effort too! I'll be putting those to good use here in the next several weeks as I work on my own flower pots and plantings in the yard.

I followed up the games with a few announcements and reminders. The next thing on the agenda is our Mother Daughter banquet on May 24. We will be joining the ladies at Calvary Baptist church in Gobles, MI for that event. I have been asked to speak and bring any ladies that would like to come along. The theme is Friendship dipped in love.

Then as soon as June rolls in we will finish up plans for our Family camp out and SS picnic on June 13-14. That is always a lot of fun! Everybody brings their camper or their tent or they stay in one of the bunk houses available at the little Bible camp we use. We get together around the campfire and roast weenies and munch on S'mores and just enjoy sweet fellowship together. The next morning everyone hovers around the coffee pot and the men gather around the huge roaster and watch Pastor baste the hog. Truthfully, I think most of them are just waiting for a snitch of that slow roasted pork! That is always such a fun weekend for everyone.

The following day - June 15 is Father's day and we'll host the Father's day brunch for the men again this year. What a yummy treat that is for them! I know some of our ladies that are already trying to get ALL their children to attend church that day and stay for the dinner w/ their fathers.

We ended our evening with a sweet time of prayer for our missionaries. Everyone said their Good nights and headed home.

The June Phebe Fellowship will be "When Life Gives you Lemons." This theme will revolve around making the most of our circumstances and I'm sure it will be a tremendous encouragement to those that attend.

Phebe Fellowship - Spring meeting

I'm so excited to have our Phebe Fellowship underway again for the year! We take the Winter off here in cold and snowy Michigan! Yes, we're big chickens! Our poor ladies don't like to drive on the snowy, icy roads in the dark and I don't blame them. Our first meeting of the year was in April and we hosted a baby shower for the Levine family - they are from our home church and are missionaries on deputation to Tibet. They just had a sweet baby girl - Abigail Noel. The Levines weren't able to be here for the shower since they are finishing up missionary training school in TX. But the ladies brought in some really cute things for the baby and we had fun oohing and aaahing over them and then wrapping them. We had close to 30 ladies present for the first meeting and we played some funny games! I felt sorry for the poor ladies that volunteered in good sport and then had to end up eating a COLD Jr size jar of chicken & rice! Poor Jane's taste buds will never be the same!


Then we played a hilarious balloon game where you had to pair up with another lady and try to pop a balloon using only your behinds! I think there are pictures of that game too, but they are too scary to post! It was sure awful funny though!
After that game, surprisingly enough we actually had more volunteers for the next game of one handed baby diapering and dressing! They did it quite swiftly too!
















The ladies had a great time and really got involved in lending a hand with the food. I had several helpers that brought in yummy sandwiches, tasty salads and tempting desserts. Carmen brought cream cheese filled strawberries! My soul were they ever good! Amy brought a beautiful looking chocolate trifle! I gained 5 lbs just looking at the dessert table!

We were able to take a few minutes to look at our Spring / summer calendar and talk about some of the areas where help will be needed. We're joining with a sister church on May 24th for our Mother - Daughter banquet this year. That should be fun. The theme is "Friendship dipped in Love" and I have been asked to be the speaker for that. The theme is going to revolve around chocolate! YUMMO!

After that we have our Family camp out and SS picnic on June 13 & 14 (my Birthday!) at a nice Bible camp not too far from here. Then the very next day - Father's day - June 15 we will be hosting our annual Father's day Brunch! The men LOVE this event! We lavish them with pancakes - cooked by me, their loving pastor's wife! :) sausage, breakfast casserole, hashbrown casserole, ham, bacon, chicken wings, biscuits, sausage gravy, bacon gravy, cinnamon rolls, muffins, coffee cake, etc.... the list goes on and on. Our ladies really spoil the men that day.

Since this was our Spring meeting, I gave devotions on having a "Spring in our step" and shared some ways that we could do that. We ended the night with a sweet time of prayer for our missionaries.

I love hearing our ladies laugh and fellowship together. I think it's healthy for a church family to do that. They were excited about the meetings starting back up and were already talking about the May fellowship meeting - "Seeds of Kindness." That one will be a flower theme, since we'll be planting flowers all around the church that night.