Today is the 32nd birthday of my (Melissa) cousin Jason. Jason and I have had a special relationship since we were very little. He has been one of my very best friends throughout my life & I am proud to call him family! I really wish I had a scanner so I could share some of our childhood photos, there are many & I’m sure embarrassing!! Jason had the most beautiful golden curls and a deep love for Popeye’s friend chicken. Jason is married to the lovely Lauren and proud father to baby Kaden.
Today is Feed the Bay day. Bell Shoals along with many other area churches participate in this event to help fill the food pantries in our area. Our Pastor gave us 3 numbers 20,000, 300,000 and 40,000. 20,000 is the number of people Feed the Bay hopes will participate, 300,000 pounds is the goal of Feed the Bay to have donated in food items and 40,000 is the number of people in the Bay area who go to bed hungry. We have participated in Feed the Bay for 3 years and it was awesome this year to take the girls and they really understand what we’re doing. Avery said, “we’re buying all of this for people who don’t have enough food”. What a wonderful moment to share with our 5 year old that we do this in Jesus name to bless those around us. For more information please go to www.feedthebay.org
**UPDATE, Feed the Bay collected 307,000 pounds of food and over $10,000 in gift cards!!
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a little one in the house, so it was a treat to get to babysit Kaden while Jason & Lauren went on a date tonight. It ended up that we also had family pictures taken this evening for one of our adoption fundraisers, so we just took him along! It was so much fun and the girls are at such a great age to be wonderful little helpers, even Avery. We went to Medard Park off of Turkey Creek Road, I’m not sure if it’s considered Valrico or Plant City, but it was beautiful, I can’t wait to post pictures!! Theresa (the photographer) wanted to take some shots of our family to promote the event she is doing to benefit our adoption. On November 6-8, she will be taking family portraits out at Medard Park for $100 per family and she will then give each family their photos on a disk. All of the monies raised will come directly to us for our Adoption Fund. She is truly blessing us big time by doing this for us!!! While we were there & had Kaden with us, she snapped a few shots of him for his 1st birthday card!! Did we luck out or what?
I took a few pictures of Kaden tonight to document how we did with a little one! He’s 10 months. We are so excited about our little boy, maybe he will be close in age with Kaden? Our little African Prince certainly will not look much like Kaden, who Rich lovingly calls “Casper”.
10.06.09 We got the pictures from his “shoot” today… Here they are!!
Well tonight we had our Uganda Team Reunion party! It was so wonderful to see many faces that shared in this exciting journey with us. We had a great time of fellowship, awesome food, were able to see video from our trip and heard about plans for next year’s trip!!!! Next year KGEA will be taking out teams from all over the US to Jinja, Uganda. The plan is to have 2 teams come out and serve for 1 week each. The first team will go out July 1-11 and the second team will go out, I believe July 9-17. All dates & videos are up at http://www.kgea.org/
Here are the only 2 pictures I took this evening, I’ve been a really bad photographer the last few outings… Yes, I washed my shirt…
Please pray about joining the team for next year, there is so much work set out for us to do, all for God’s glory!!!
That’s how many orphans there are in the world. I met a friend online, Gwen Oatsvall, who first told me about Amani Baby Cottage. She has 2 children there, Matty Joseph & Daisy. She is an amazing advocate for orphans and is really shedding light on the orphan crisis in her community. She along with 4 other families in Nashville are adopting children from Amani!! She and her friend Suzanne have designed some really cool orphan t-shirts & I finally got one!! Here’s a picture of me sporting my new 147MillionOrphans t-shirt. With each purchase, money is donated to Amazima Ministries (link below on this page) and you will feed 1 orphan 1 hot meal for 1 week. The back of the t-shirt says FEED 1. The 147million website along with her family blog, Oatsvall Family are located at the bottom of this page. I emailed her today to say that I want to be the Gwen in my community! I may have found my new calling…
This video is from January 2008…
Rich took Haley & Lorin to BSF for the first time last night, which they LOVED… So Avery & I were home alone (together). Well, I got busy doing “stuff” and looked at the clock and realized it was 8:45!! I said, “Avery it’s time to go to bed, it’s passed your bed time”. She looked at me and said, “But I’m not sleepy… See, this is a sleepy face and this is a not sleepy face”. It was so cute, I had her do it again & I took pix & video… Of course it wasn’t as funny when I asked her to do it again, but Avery is such a funny little character either way! And, yes, this is her bedtime pj’s.
Sleepy Face 
Not sleepy face 
Okay, tonight we were having dinner… Ribs (Corky’s from Publix are so good!), macaroni & cheese and baked beans. Well, all of our girls LOVE ribs. They have since they were very little. I remember Mrs. Crudele (the girls’ 3 year old preschool teacher) telling me that it was so funny when Lorin was 3, she told her that she couldn’t wait for “Rib Fest”. For those of you who don’t know “Rib Fest” is a huge outdoor rib cook-off contest in St Petersburg. Rich has taken the girls since they were old enough to eat “real food”, so probably since they were 2, if Lorin was telling her preschool teacher that she was excited for the “Rib Fest” weekend. They have lots of outdoor games & music, and RIBS! So tonight Avery was eating ribs like she usually does, sucking on the bones afterward and I had the greatest idea!!! Whenever the girls go out on their first date, I will recommend to the nice young man that he take her out (any of them) for ribs. Dating problem SOLVED!
This weekend I had the wonderful privlage to attend the “Deeper Still” event in Orlando. Kay Arthur, Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer were the speakers, all I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW!!! Travis Cottrell and his team of singers were our entertainment, the worship in this place was just as powerful as the teachings. Our church, Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon took 425 of our women and it was such a sweet time of fellowship with all of our “girlfriends”. Our hotel was beautiful (although we didn’t see it much), we stayed at the Floriday’s Resort on International Drive. We arrived on Friday around 3, and the bus left for the Amway Arena at 5 for the evening event. Kay Arthur spoke on Friday night, and taught the entire book of Hebrews in 90 minutes. She is amazing, so transparent and KNOWS the Word of God! backward and forward (Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes)… Travis Cottrell and his praise team were amazing!!!!! My new favorite song is “Mercy Seat”.
Saturday we left the hotel at 7:30 AM!! Again, we had an amazing praise & worship service and then Priscilla Shirer taught. She is incredible. I was very excited to see her in person, since I had completed her study “Conversations with God” this summer. Her key passage was Ephesians 3:20-21
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
She said that God is ABLE! to go beyond, BEYOND our expectations! Some of the key principles I noted are…
~NOW is the time to start considering the ability of God! Right in the middle of your IMPOSSIBLE… Praise God in the middle of your impossible situation.
~TURN to Him- a deliberate action… Don’t be a slave to the urgency of life. Our situations are not urgent and we are not God.
~ TRUTH- His truth is absolute. He IS able FOR YOU. Whether or not He choses to do it, has to do with His sovereignty NOT His ability.
~TRANSCENDENCE- God goes way past, your way past. One of her illustrations I really loved to show us how far beyond our God goes to bless us, goes a little something like this (this is not exactly what she said ,but this about it…) Say it’s your birthday and your husband isn’t very romantic… All you are expecting from him is a card. A nice birthday card. So on your birthday, he takes you to a lovely dinner to your favorite restaurant, has you favorite dessert brought out, presents you with a card AND a gift. WOW already right? So you open the gift and it’s an umbrella. A very pretty umbrella, but it’s an umbrella… Okay, so you open the card and it reads “I heard it rains a lot in Paris”, WOW!!!! He went WAY beyond your way beyond. This is what God can do, if we just trust Him and if it’s in His plan. We will never know why things we prayed for didn’t happen until we are in heaven… at the end of it all, we will understand and He is Faithful!
~TOTALITY of your needs. Whatever concerns you, concerns God. We have to remember that when we accepted Christ as our Savior that He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. So, if we’re saved, the Holy Spirit is within us & we need to put it to work!
God’s character is predictable, His ability is unpredictable. He is able, but He choses what He is going to do in our lives. We must seek Him and trust Him. He can do much more than I can even imagine. I must turn to Him and trust Him NOW.
GOOD STUFF!!
Beth Moore was unbelievable! but what did I expect, her studies are awesome, how could she not be? She was absolutely hilarious! She told of a story that she believed to be true,but in the end she had been PUNK’D. Her title of her message was basically, “Don’t get Punk’d”. Watching out for Dangerous relationships.
When He comes, He comes in power. I need to discern what God is telling me and go with my spiritual gut.
There are 2 dimensions of spiritual revelation we desperately need.
1) Divine Revelation in our HUMAN encounters– ask yourself
a) can I trust what I’m sensing? can I trust something inside of me? we are critical and suspicious by nature. trust your gut.
b) am I jealous or do I feel threatened?
c) do I have anything selfish to gain from this encounter?
d) are my emotions clouding my discernment?
God hasn’t called us to believe a lie or a liar.
4 outcomes in dangerous relationships.
1) RUN when it takes on un-pure dimensions 2)STEP BACK if you can’t shake “that” feeling 3) ASK QUESTIONS, in person 4) LOVE with eyes wide open. Phil 1:9-10 *LOOK for release Obediah 1:3 says, “The pride of your heart has deceived you”
2) Divine Revelation in our CHRIST encounters– apparently I didn’t take any written notes on this section… my ADD was kicking in, but I did jot down scriptures…
John 14:21 (New International Version)
21Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Hebrews 12:1-2 (New International Version)
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
It was an amazing weekend filled with great teachings, truths from God’s word, amazing praise and worship and a wonderful time of fellowship with my girlfriends in Christ. We are all growing Deeper Still!
We couldn’t believe it was already “Picture Day” at school! Do they really take pictures this early? 3rd week, seriously? Guess so! Of course I snapped my own photos the morning of picture day… Here are our beautiful little ladies, Haley & Lorin 4th grade & Avery Kindergarten.
http://joiningthejourney.blogspot.com/
**Praise, Josie is doing great on her meds & her family will be able to go back to Uganda soon and take her home for good!! Thanks for your prayers!
