This week’s post comes from Jennie Wintermote. Jennie is a native Kansan, an interim pastor, grad student, and director of the Western District Conference Resource Library. She loves reading, scrapbooking, and trying to figure out what it means to live out her faith every day. She also tries to remember to blog at prairieroseramblings.weebly.com.

I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions the last few weeks. The congregation where I’ve been serving as interim pastor is transitioning to a new settled pastor and a new leadership structure, students and teachers (and parents) are getting ready for a new school year, and I’m wrapping up my Master of Library Science and starting new jobs.

Here are five transition-themed resources:

1. A letter to teachers: For all those teachers (and parents) out there gearing up for the new school year: your care and love IS recognized! Read the full letter. 
2. Quiet places: A woman’s guide to personal retreat by Jane Rubietta: This books asks us to explore how we care for ourselves in the midst of transition. I know I need to take time to retreat and to rest in God’s presence.

And a few books on my “to-read” pile:

3. Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes by William Bridges.

4. Faith Travels by Marlene Kropf: The latest Bible study guide from Mennonite Women USA focuses on how we experience God through the transitions in our lives.

5. Building Relationships and friendships: At the Western District Conference annual assembly last week there was a real focus on sharing what is happening in congregations, building church-to-church relationships, and building personal relationships. What does it mean to not only work together, but play together? Churches joining together to build a house for a family in need through Mennonite Disaster Service, individuals coming together to play Bible Pictionary late at night: these are the kinds of relationships that will carry our congregations, conferences, and denomination through the transitions ahead.