PEOPLE!

Well, I just got back from the most wonderful weekend! This weekend we went to Charlotte, NC for a baby shower thrown by several of my AMAZING friends (Kristi, PJ, Maleigh, Casey, Rebecca, Ginny and Lauren)! I was so nervous on Friday because of the gas crisis and prices and just lack of available gas. We weren't sure we would make it there and back and if we did it would break us financially, but God provided all the gas we needed at fairly decent prices at different places on the way there and back! Shocker that Knoxville officially has the most expensive gas prices in the country, look it up, i'm not kidding, even more than Alaska which apparently is always the highest in the country!

But, it was so great to be surrounded by ALL of my friends who were able to come! I miss all of those people greatly and the love they showed us just by being there was amazing! Also, they blessed us with many MUCH needed gifts! I miss all of my people so much! God truly gave me GREAT relationships there! It was so nice they took the time to come to the shower and several some travel from college back to Charlotte to be there!

We played fun and Emily appropriate games, like putting stickers on me everytime I said the word "AMAZING"--we ran out of stickers and Rebecca used her insane cake making skills to make ONE of the CUTEST cakes I've ever seen in my life! It was a giant ladybug (my theme for the baby's room)! Everybody that helped was sooo amazing from the decorations and planning (Kristi, Casey, Ginny) to bringing food to making me a plate of food (thanks PJ, I would have never eaten any because I talk too much) to being the most amazing paper/tissue picker upper on the planet (Maleigh)! Pretty much everyone was AMAZING! I love being surrounded by people i love, seriously that is more than enough for me but these guys went above and beyond to give me such a great gift that was more than I ever would have expected!

We also got to hang out that evening with a lot of our college kiddos which was totally amazing as usual! Go to church the next day and catch up with more people and go eat lunch before we had to leave with another great friend! It was great!

We headed back to Knoxville totally excited, pumped about our gathering for Ridge Church that evening, totally encouraged by God through our friends! We had such a great response about the gathering and had a good group of people saying they were coming but when we showed up Sunday night we had a smaller group than expected! I'm pretty sure the gas thing killed it! That was a little discouraging but we continued on, ate pizza, laughed, talked and then shared our values of the church and the service project we are doing at the end of this month! It ended up well, everyone seemed on the same page and it was a good thing!

Today, I saw a post on my facebook where, Andrea, a friend from WV (sortof from WV, not really, it's a weird connection) who is in grad school at Carson-Newman who had come to the meeting said she was so excited about the meeting and our values and everything going on with the church! I have to say, that post made my day! It is sooo sad that we don't appreciate God's planning and his timing on things! Andrea called me later today to tell me AGAIN, how excited she is and how she feels this is what she has been looking for, a place that is back to the basics, focusing on loving others, serving others, somewhere that is not judgemental, etc. She made my today AND tomorrow after that phone call! It was very humbling to me, to think I was "disappointed" in what God did and then to find out it meant so much to someone! God used her to help me reevaluate my perspective of how He chooses to work!

So, in a nutshell, this was a weekend of God's total blessing of us in very different ways! I have to say it was pretty cool!