Well, December has come and gone, and it occurred to me the other day that we’d not had the traditional Murfreesboro District United Methodist layspeakers’ and lay leaders’ banquet. For some reason, I had it in my head that the banquet was held during the holidays, although I see from my blog post last year that it was in February.

Today, I got an e-mail from our district layleader, Jim Austin. The banquet will be held Feb . 1. The reason he was e-mailing me about it is that instead of a clergy speaker this year, they’re going to have a series of layspeakers give brief (7-minute) presentations about some project or activity in which they’ve been involved this year. The lovely Emily “Auntie Em” Austin had recommended me. I agreed to speak; I’m not certain whether it will be about my foreign mission trips or about Mountain T.O.P. (which might have more of a United Methodist tie-in). I told Jim to put me on the program and I would let him know in a day or two what my little corner of the program would be.