Welcome back to Girlfriends Breaking Bread! Maybe you’ve come across our blog accidentally and don’t know much about our little village so I decided to share a bit about the area.
Richland is in the southwest corner of Michigan about nine miles northeast of Kalamazoo and sixty miles east of Lake Michigan. Richland Township has about 7,000 residents, while the village of Richland has less than 700 people.
On the surface it looks like a typical, small, middle-class, Midwestern town and it is; but to those of us who call it home it is very special! This isn’t where I grew up. In fact, I’ve only been here about 12 years, but in that time I have fallen in love with this little, peaceful community. It seems quite appropriate that we have chosen to eat exclusively in local restaurants.
This month we met at Liz’s Parkview Café. Liz’s is located in the heart of downtown Richland, just a few steps from where we enjoyed our Subway sandwiches last month. Liz’s is one of eight restaurants owned by EMA Enterprises (owned and operated by Mike Leeuw), based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Interestingly, EMA stands for Elizabeth, Michelle and Andrea. Those are Mike’s daughters and the names of several of his restaurants, including Liz’s Parkview Café.
I’ve been to Liz’s before for breakfast. I was anxious to try them for dinner! Elisabeth and I had burgers, Miriam had a wonderfully fresh-looking salad, Ruth had a thick bowl of soup and a loaf (!) of fresh bread. Anna had a chicken breast sandwich. The food came promptly and was nicely presented. We all enjoyed our meals enough to consider returning for dinner in the future.
Our server was young and adorable. We fell in love with her instantly so it was easy to overlook her slight imperfections as a waitress. She seemed amused by us taking pictures of our food and giggling like school girls and probably thought of us as quite strange ‘old ladies’.
It was a fun evening. Conversation was probably much like that of any other group of 50-plus-year-old women. As we always do, we talked of family, jobs, retirement, as well as day to day frustrations and struggles. I think what sets us apart from many other groups of women is our faith in God. We pray together, we talk about our faith and we celebrate answered prayers!
I am so blessed to have such wonderful Christian women friends. Often, I am reminded of a Christian women’s book club that we all used to belong to. It was called koinonia. Koinonia is a Greek word which is used in a variety of ways in that language. Wikipedia does a nice job explaining the many uses of the word, please click here if you are interested to learn more than the following.
Koinonia “identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ.” The first use of koinonia in the Greek New Testament is found in Acts 2:42-47, where a description of life shared by the early Christian believers is given.
The NIV translation says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. <snip> All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. <snip> They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
This week we also said good-bye to Anna, the snowbird in our group! Travel safe and be well. We will miss you. See you in the spring! Remember, it's less than 6 months away!
Until next month,
Sarah
