by Barb Roose | Mar 27, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
How often do you find yourself scrambling to put together dinner? Are you tired of relying on pizza or grocery store rotisserie chickens to bail you out when there’s nothing thawed in the fridge?
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to latch onto a group of women interested in transforming their families’ dinner time experience. Once a month, we’d spend 3-4 hours preparing 10-12 delicious freezer meals in our individual homes. Then, we’d meet at a designated location and exchange our meals with each other in a 15-20 minute “meal swap.”
I’d drive home a cooler filled with entrees and side dishes, all prepped and ready to hang out in my freezer until I thawed it for dinner. We enjoyed meals like dijon pork loin with Israeli couscous, Monster Meatballs, Chicken Enchiladas with salsa rojo, chicken fajitas with all of fixings, Million Dollar Spaghetti and so much more!
Not only did our family enjoy great dinners without the epic mom-meltdown, but our meal swap group also discovered how our meals would make a difference.
In this Part 2 episode with Laura Bell and Alison Frye, we’ll share more stories about our meal swap experience and how we used meal swap to bless our neighbors, friends, people at church and even families overseas.
FREE BONUS!
Would you like to host a meal swap group in your neighborhood or at your church?
Download the first 12 pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. We provide step-by-step instructions so that you can successfully set up and launch your own meal swap group. Give it a try! Click here to download the free sample. We’ve included a sample recipe for you to try!
WANT TO BUY THE ENTIRE COOKBOOK? Here’s a link to the entire cookbook. You can purchase it for $5.00. All of the proceeds will benefit mothers and children served by our Moms on Mission team traveling to Honduras this summer.
SHARE YOUR FAVORITE DINNER WITH US! What’s your favorite dinner time meal? Tell us about it in the comments.
by Barb Roose | Mar 20, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Mom, what’s for dinner?
Ahhh, the daily question that haunts mothers all across America. It’s well-known that 4pm-7pm is a mother’s least favorite time of day. Between after-school or daycare pick-up, sports practices or music lessons and figuring out homework, tired mamas often dread tackling dinner time preparation. As much as we’d love a hearty, healthy homecooked meal, what we want more is someone to make it for us!
But, what if you could enjoy a great home cooked meal with your family without all of the dinnertime craziness?
On today’s Better Together podcast, we’re going to talk about something that revolutionized dinner at my house. In fact, if I’d found out about this 20 years ago, our family would have eaten at home much more often and I would have cried a lot less!
Join me and my friends, Laura Bell and Alison Frye as we talk about meal swapping. This concept began as an experiment, but soon, it changed our lifestyles and transformed our families’ dinner time experience.
This two-part episode also includes a great bonus! You can download the first 12-pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. You’ll get all of the details on how to begin a meal swap group in your community, plus we include one of Laura’s recipes from the cookbook.
SPECIAL OFFER! If you’d like to purchase the entire Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00, 100% of the proceeds will go toward helping moms and babies in Latin America when our Moms on Mission group heads to Honduras this summer.
BONUS RESOURCES
Click here to download the first 12 pages of the meal swap cookbook (free)
Click here to purchase the Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00. (You’ll receive it via email. This is a digital download. There are no hard copies available.)
Check out this episode!
by Barb Roose | Mar 6, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Have you been praying for something for a long time? Maybe you’ve been praying for:
…healing in your marriage or for a marriage proposal;
…healing from cancer or another disease;
…the restoration of a broken relationship;
…a pregnancy or solution to infertility; or
…a loved one’s salvation or freedom from an addiction.
Whenever we pray, we do so with the expectation that God will answer our prayer at some point in some way. But, what do we do when it seems like God isn’t doing anything at all?
Speaker and author, Marlo Schalesky grappled with this question during her 20-year battle with infertility. Her story is more than just trying to get pregnant. Marlo’s story is about her fight for faith while learning to wait on God.
During this new episode of the Better Together Podcast, Marlo and I discuss what she’s learned about waiting on God when the waiting gets hard. We talk about her new book, Waiting for Wonder and what we can learn from Abraham’s wife, Sarah’s long wait for baby. gritty conversation is a no-hold bars honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives.
Our candid conversation is a no-holds-barred, honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. After you listen, please take a moment and share a comment about the broadcast. I’d love to hear from you.
One more thing…if you know of a woman who’s been struggling with waiting on God, especially a woman struggling with infertility, share this podcast privately with her.
TODAY’S SHOW RESOURCES:
Marlo’s Website
Marlo’s Book – Waiting for Wonder
Marlo Schalesky is an award-winning author of 10 books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Her novels have garnered the high honors of the Christy Award and ACFW Book of the Year. Schalesky’s non-fiction releases include Wrestling with Wonder: A Transformational Journey through the Life of Mary (Zondervan) and the latest, Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timetable (Abingdon Press).
More than 1,000 of Schalesky’s articles have been published in various Christian magazines, including Focus on the Family, Today’s Christian Woman and In Touch. She has contributed devotional books for couples and children. She is a speaker and regular columnist for David C Cook’s Power for Living.
Schalesky is a graduate of Stanford University and has earned her Master’s in Theology, with an emphasis in Biblical Studies, from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the founder and president of Wonder Wood Ranch, a California charitable organization bringing hope to a hurting community through horses.
Schalesky lives with her husband, six children and a crazy number of animals at her log-home ranch on California’s central coast.
by Barb Roose | Feb 20, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Yesterday, I took my two younger daughters to a Black History Month community event at our local art museum. Artists from our community shared their talents inspired by African-American composers and musicians. A multiracial audience experienced a variety of unique expressions from performers of every race and culture.
As the mother of three bi-racial daughters, I wanted to seize this opportunity to let my girls see and hear people who could elevate the unique gifts, talents, and passions of their ancestors.
In this week’s Better Together podcast, I want to seize an opportunity to share with you, too. I’m interviewing a Caucasian woman who’s life radically transformed as a result of deciding to use her life and voice to elevate racial reconciliation and social justice. Her name is Cara Meredith, the daughter-in-law of civil rights leader, James Howard Meredith.
This is a candid, authentic conversation about race, family, motherhood. It’s the conversation where you might feel God poking at certain patterns of thinking or challenging different stereotypes. Just know that God’s just waiting for you to give Him permission to dig out that stuff and replace with His love for people.
In this week’s episode, you’ll hear about…
- Cara’s reaction to finding out that her new boyfriend’s dad was a civil rights icon;
- Some of the struggles that Cara and I have encountered while raising bi-racial children;
- How Cara and her husband are intentional about instilling pride in both sides of their children’s heritage;
- Important, but tough internal conversations that we all need to have if we’re ever going to turn the tide on the volatile issue of race.
About Cara Meredith…
Cara Meredith is a writer and speaker from Seattle, Washington. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she is co-host of the Shalom Book Club podcast and an adjunct professor at Northwest University. She lives with her husband and two young sons, and consumes guacamole whenever she gets the chance.
Connect with Cara…
Cara’s blog
Connect with Cara on Twitter
Connect with Cara on Facebook
Cara with her husband, James Henry Meredith and their two sons.
Cara’s father-in-law, James Howard Meredith talking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr during the March Against Fear in June 1966. Meredith organized the small march and planned to walk from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MI. However, Meredith was shot on the second day of the march, but recovered in a local hospital. In the wake of the shooting, civil rights organizations rallied and over 15,000 people marched, including Dr. King.
by Barb Roose | Feb 8, 2017 | Better Together Podcast, Women's Topics
Does it seem like the same women volunteer all of the time and you’d like to see some new faces get involved?
If you answered ‘yes’, then I hope that you keep reading!
My name is Barb Roose and I’m a Christian speaker and author. However, I served on staff at a local church for 14 years, most recently as the Executive Director of Ministry. As a former volunteer, ministry leader and church staff, I know all of the hard work, late nights, sweat, tears and prayers that go into planning women’s events. I know what it’s like to dream and plan – only to feel frustration when volunteers don’t show up. But, I’ve learned some key principles to recruiting and retaining high caliber volunteers along the way.
One of the people that I’ve learned from is Cindy Casey, a fellow ministry leader and long-time local church staffer. Over the past 15 years, Cindy has recruited hundreds of volunteers. She is truly one of the best volunteer recruiters I know!
Take 10 minutes and listen to my short Better Together podcast interview with Cindy. She’ll talk about how she recruits leaders, especially young leaders. Cindy will also talk about how she activates and appreciates her volunteers.
If you enjoyed this podcast, leave a comment below and share it with your women’s ministry team. My hope is to bring hope and help to you. What you do in your church and community matters so much and my prayer is that God can use me to support you along the way.
Feel free to email me at barb@barbroose.com with your volunteer recruiting questions or issues. If there’s an interest, I’ll do another podcast with the answers to your questions.
Blessings,
by Barb Roose | Feb 5, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
How often do you criticize yourself? Too many of us have a running negative dialogue in our mind about our faults, failures, shortcomings and mistakes.
We’re too something or not enough of something else. Most of us don’t realize that we’re heaping thousand pound words of criticism on ourselves without too much thought as to what impact those critical words are having on our hearts, minds, and lives.
Do you realize that you have a relationship with yourself?
This isn’t a question that we usually consider. We’re used to thinking about cultivating a great relationship with God and others. But, what kind of relationship do you want to have with yourself?
In today’s Better Together podcast, we’re discussing how self-compassion is the key to treating ourselves with the kindness that motivates us toward self-care and resiliency.
Here’s what self-care is not:
Self-compassion isn’t self-pity.
Self-compassion isn’t self-focused.
Self-compassion isn’t selfish.
Self-compassion is a balance of grace and truth. Self-compassion means that we are honest with ourselves in our reality and still treat ourselves as if we have love and value.
Today’s podcast guest is Kim Fredrickson, the author of Give Yourself a Break: Turn Your Inner Critic into a Compassionate Friend. As a marriage and family therapist, Kim taught her clients the principles of self-compassion. As a breast cancer survivor and now, dealing with a terminal diagnosis, Kim still practices these techniques on herself.
In today’s broadcast, you’ll learn and learn:
- The reasons why women obsess about caring for others, but quickly neglect themselves;
- The impact of not learning about or receiving self-compassion as children;
- How to revisit our old baggage and mistakes and reframe our self-critical thinking;
- How to talk and treat ourselves with self-compassion on a daily basis.
If you listen to today’s broadcast and you think that your friends may need to hear Kim’s wisdom, please share this post with them.
LINKS FROM TODAY’S SHOW:
Kim’s Website
Kim’s Facebook page
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Cara with her husband, James Henry Meredith and their two sons.
Cara’s father-in-law, James Howard Meredith talking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr during the March Against Fear in June 1966. Meredith organized the small march and planned to walk from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MI. However, Meredith was shot on the second day of the march, but recovered in a local hospital. In the wake of the shooting, civil rights organizations rallied and over 15,000 people marched, including Dr. King.
