Leading by Serving

In my bathroom is a nice basket where I toss all of my magazines, including the Costco Connection. When I have time to myself (tee hee) I pick up one of those magazines and scan through them. TheAugust 2009 Costco Connection sat in that basket for quite a few weeks - getting superceeded by my Ladies Home Journal (nice reading material!).

Recently I was cleaning out the basket and the front of that Costco Connection caught my eye. Ralph Broetje was pictured front and center. Broetje "First Fruits" Orchards is solid to its core was the title. Ahhh - that was the orchard where my daughter, Ashley, did a mission trip with our church, Washington Cathedral, one fall to pick apples and donate them to needy families. Little did I know that what I was about to read would start me on a path - a wonderful path - an exciting path - a path of Servant Leadership inspired by 2 of the most sincere and humble people I've had the pleasure of speaking with.

I wondered if Ralph Broetje would even be willing to talk with me on the phone. I was a bit nervous to call after reading about his $80 million apple and cherry orchard business. Tentatively, I dialed Broetje Orchards but my nervousness was quickly disarmed with Ralph's quiet and gentle demeanor. In the background I could hear employees calling across the room to each other about the business at hand ... farming apples! I pictured a large barnlike structure with an old fashioned dialing phone in the corner that when ringing, got picked up by who ever happened to walk by. Someday I'd like to visit that office and see what it looks like in person!

Ralph deferred me to his wife, Cheryl, not because he didn't have time to talk with me, but because in his mind she was the one with the passion for the leadership model their business followed - servant leadership. He even gave me her cell phone number! I'm still on my inspirational high from my conversation with Cheryl. No wonder the Lord is blessing their business - their business model is one that my husband, Chester, and I are excited to learn more about and to build our business on the same foundation.

Hopefully you will click on the link above and read the Costco article for yourself if you haven't already. I pray you are as inspired as I am about what you will read. Maybe we can change the world - the way Jesus instructed us to - one person at a time - and with great passion and conviction.

Follow Up on Cheap Textbooks

Ok so when I wrote my previous entry, I hadn't actually finalized my purchase. That was a mistake! By the time I tried to pay for my cheap textbooks - the ones I needed were SOLD OUT! Words of wisdom for all of us in the future ... don't wait until the last minute to get your college textbooks! (or anything else for that matter!) Next semester as soon as Ashley is registered for classes and knows the books she'll need, you can bet we'll be on www.textbooks.com or www.chegg.com pricing things out and getting the best deal we can find. AND then we'll get FREE SHIPPING!! Gotta like that. Oh well - we can always learn from our mistakes - right!

Cheap College Books

Chester and I are so proud of our daughter, Ashley, who is just starting her Sophomore year at Vanguard University - which is our alma mater! Classes started yesterday and today she has a list of all the (expensive!) textbooks she will need. Yikes! It looks like it will be a whopper with around $600 this semester. Ashley had mentioned to me something about ordering textbooks for cheaper online and also that there is somewhere that actually RENTS textbooks! Cool idea! I gfawed it at first - we always bought our books at the bookstore! It's easy and fast. But after hearing the gauging my pocketbook was going to take I decided to do some research. I was astonished to find that she could get her textbooks for about 1/2 the price online and with free shipping if we could wait for UPS ground. If we needed them next day .... only a $19.99 charge and 2nd day less than that. And this is for up to about 5 books - no matter what they weigh. Now that sounds like a great deal to me! We're in a rush and needing them asap - but with the $19.99 shipping charge, we're still saving $100's of dollars. Renting looks even cheaper - I might have her do that next semester if we plan ahead better. Here are the links to websites I found that do cheaper books and book rentals. Enjoy saving money!

http://www.textbooks.com/?CSID=Q2U0QTT0MO20CDMCMACDMQOOC

http://www.chegg.com/

http://www.bookrenter.com/

PS: This is a picture of my pretty college girl!

Nothing like Family!

I was so excited to get to stop in Oregon to spend time with my mom's side of the family. Our family spent June and July in Washington (our home away from home!) and we were on our trek back to Phoenix area. My aunt Dee had been hospitalized for a stroke and Aunt JoAnn had just had knee replacement surgery. It was so fun to get to see them - I love my aunts, uncle's - I happen to think I have the best ones in the world! Anyway that evening we stayed at Aunt Bev and Uncle Elroy's place in Canby OR. What hospitality! Here is a picture of most of us (my cousin Lori is taking the picture).

Facebook: Personal vs Business Account

Some of you are friends of mine on facebook (what great friends I have - you are all awesome!) and are also fans of the page for my business, proAktivR. (thank you again!) It's been frustrating to edit the business page because somehow it always tied back to my personal page. Some friends I made through business contacts on facebook sent me a link to an article about that problem. http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/06/facebook-business-account/#comment-29043

I was hoping there was a setting I had wrong or something. Unfortunatly as the article states "However if you already have a personal account, keep in mind that you cannot create a separate business account.". Bummer! Thank you Cynthia Richards for the information. Now I don't have to keep wondering what's wrong with my facebook settings.

Welcome to my blog!

I decided a couple of days ago to begin the adventure of creating my own blog. Thank goodness the wonderful guy who rocks my world (aka my husband, Chester!) is an IT guru and was willing to help me with the frustrating issues of figuring out how to edit code! I love using blogger but the templates they provide lets just say don't do anything for me. I knew there was a way to create a cool appealing looking blog but not being a programmer I was hoping that there were some free templates out there that would work in blogger. It took some searching, let me tell you! I think I finally found somthing I like (at least this is what I'm going to try) and it was from this website: http://www.deluxetemplates.net/. Maybe you are considering blogging and want your site to look a little more snazzy (old word!) than the boring ones blogger offers. Unfortunately by switching to using html instead of bloggers standard templates, not everything works as it should. Let's just say you are going to need to excercise some patience while getting your blog just the way you want it. So bear with me as I edit mine and figure out the world of blogging. I'll post information as I come across it on how to fix any problems I come across. I look forward to getting to know you and hope you will find my blog fun and interesting!