Rachel Allen's blog

I love Aldi’s. It’s a simple kind of grocery store, stocked with all the basics. When I need bread and eggs, this is where I go. Plus, I love having ‘Peanut Delight’ brand peanut butter in my pantry…

One of Aldi’s unique quirks is its grocery cart system. Their carts are locked up, one behind another, in front of the store. To use one of their carts, you must deposit a quarter into the lock attached to the cart handle. The lock opens, and when you finish your shopping, you reconnect the lock and get your quarter back. This system is in place to save everyone money, by preventing lost carts and damage to parked cars, keeping Aldi prices low. Read more »

It takes six hours to drive north through Hannibal to get to Des Moines, Iowa. I know, because a few weeks ago I took one of the most boring road trips of my life to get there. Why Iowa? That was my question. One of my oldest and greatest friends currently lives there, where she works as a FOCUS missionary at Drake University, doing her best to spread the Gospel on a college campus.

Saturday night of my stay, she and I cooked a ravioli feast (from scratch!) for her teammates and friends. She promised me that all the hard work and sweat would be worth it in the end – and I guess I should admit that she was right. We were blessed to sit around her kitchen table, talking for hours about faith, life, and love with other young people who are committed to not just spreading the Gospel, but living it. Somehow, the conversation came around to marriage, at which point my friend shared the following story about her grandparents, Walter (“Wally”) and Delores (“Little D”). Read more »

One night a few weeks ago, in the car on my way from one meeting to another, I was flipping through radio stations when I got to NPR (the talk radio station my mom loves; the one I hated as a kid because it was so boring). My finger froze on the radio dial when I heard someone say “atheism.” The show was about a group of authors called the New Atheists, people I studied in my college theology seminar.

Unfortunately, I tuned in too late for the interview, but was just in time for listener call-ins. Men and women from all over the country were picking up their phones, not to talk about the man being interviewed or his new book, but to take the opportunity to tell their own stories. Read more »

Lately, I’ve been catching up on my Greek mythology.

Weird, right? Well, I’ve never known very much about these stories, but most great literature has its roots in ancient mythology. And, as the aspiring author of the Great American Novel, it just seems like something about which I should know.  Read more »