Drive

It has been a long time since I've been a part of a worship service that has not only mad me cry, but has made me sob and pour my heart out to God and feel His presence not only in the room, but in the life of every single person in the room. Last night at the Drive conference here in GA was one of those worship nights.

It was the kind of worship session that made you realize that even if you work in a church and go to Bible study and attend every Sunday service that you possibly can you haven't been paying enough attention to God, your Creator... And then you realize that even though you haven't been paying attention to God and spending enough time with Him, He's been paying attention to you... And this thought makes you want to fall to your knees because you realize how not worthy you are to have the Almighty God care so much about you that He has blessed you with everything you could possibly want in life. That was Monday night for me this past week.

Today was a great day at Drive too. It was lots of fun and very educational and the whole night ended with a concert from the Bethany Dick Band and.......... a comedy show by Jeff Foxworthy!!! It was supposed to be a surprise, but I heard through the grape vine in advance what it was going to be and that made me even more excited!

Back to Monday, after the conference was over for the night, Joe and I, along with Tim Elrod, got together with a whole bunch of bloggers. We took a group picture and everything and found out the next day that Carlos Whittaker posted a link to all of the blogs that were represented at the get together that night. This means that I might be getting a few more readers than I'm used to. I've gotta say, I'm a little excited. I hadn't gone public with my blog yet, and I guess this is probably a great way to get more readers. Thanks to Carlos for posting an entry with my blog link!

Sunday

Just a short post to keep up:

-against all better judgment I finally caved to Twitter
-Sundays can be quite long
-Sundays can be quite rewarding
-Drive conference this week
-I love my husband!

That's about it. Sorry there's not more to be fun with. I will come up with a better post when I have more sleep in my system.

Fin

Captain Eo

When I was younger this attraction was a big favorite at Epcot Center in Disney World. My family and I used to love the 3-D special effects. It was replaced by what is now "Honey I Shrunk the Audience." Can you guess why they took it out?



Oh yeah that's right... it was staring Michael Jackson and it was filmed in the 80's!

PS Check out the Southside Church blog!

One Month

Ok, it has been exactly one month since my last blog post. I'm not going to apologize, because I'm not sorry about that. I am going to warn you, however, that this post may either be very long, or kind of sporadic.

New Job: I have been working at my new job now for about a month. It is the best job I've ever had! That may be because it's the only job I've had that hasn't been waitressing, or it could be because the people there are awesome a I love what I do. If you want to check out the church's website, go to www.southside.org.

Old Job: I love the family that I'm still working for. I babysit their one-year-old and I work in their office at their house. The baby is so cute and is almost to the point where she can communicate fully by talking.

Joe's Job: Joe has officially started contract work for Northpoint church as of last week. He helps out with the TenBefore. He is really excited to be there and loves working with the media team at NP.

Creativity: I have written a song. I won't expound too much, because I'm hoping to eventually record it and figure out how to put it on this blog so you can listen to it. (Little sidenote: It's hard for me to say that I wrote a song, because I don't want to sound like I'm bragging about my ability to write music and also I couldn't have written it if I didn't pray a lot about it and really try to honor God with what I wrote. Anyway, that is my one disclaimer for any music that I write and post about in the future.) I'm still working on a couple of other songs. I don't know if any of this is going to be good, but I'm excited about them and I can also feel good about having done something with everything I've learned about music from school.

Ummm... I totally thought this post might be a bit longer, but I now realize that my life isn't interesting enough to have a very long update blog post. Maybe I'll get back to posting about what's going on in my head and my thoughts on life and stuff, and even though it still may not be very interesting, I'll have some longer posts. That's it. Oh, and thanks for reading!

Date Night and a New Job

I want to start this post off with date night because the place Joe and I went was pretty cool. We went to go see the movie Semipro tonight on a much needed date. We hadn't been to the movies in a while so we were pretty excited about going. Afterwards we were going to top the night off with a bite to eat. It turned out when we got to the movie theatre that we could combine our whole night into one experience! The movie theatre was also a restaurant and waiters served food to patrons who sat at tables in their selected movie theatre. Granted the food was pretty standard quality for a movie theatre, but the prices were lower, there was a wider selection, and it was served to you at your own table! That meant no missing any previews to stand in line for just a bag of candy that cost double what it does in the store! Joe and I now have a new standard for movie theatres. =)

Alright, new job. Yes, I have one! Today I received a call from Martin Huggins, the service programing director at Southside church which is a Northpoint Strategic Partner church to let me know that I got the job. I had a phone interview with him yesterday and today received the call letting me know that I will be working at Southside! My new title is service programming assistant, or SPA. =) It's only a part time job, like 15 hours a week, but it has a lot of responsibility and I'm really excited about it! I will start this Tuesday and hopefully pick up on all of my responsibilities pretty quick. Another great part about working there is Joe has already done a few freelance jobs for them and so we already know most of the people in the offices there and so I'm excited about working with people that I already know I like! Tune in again Tuesday for a post about my first day as a SPA!

Auditions

Yesterday Buckhead church hosted auditions for Northpoint's KidStuf program. Just an FYI for people reading this who aren't familiar with Northpoint church in Georgia, Northpoint Church has three campuses, Northpoint, Brownsbridge, and Buckhead. Joe and I attend church at the Buckhead campus.We've only seen the amazing KidStuf program at the campus we attend, but we've heard that the other campuses are amazing also. Think Christian Disney program on stage.

My friend Malorie and I had the opportunity to attend these auditions. Needless to say we were pretty excited about them because both of us have studied acting, but have decided that we would rather use our talents for ministry work in the church. Fortunately with the contemporary Christian church of today we have more opportunities to do just that.

So we went to the audition together and spent a good two hours there. It was a great experience. First we went in separately and performed our monologues and songs, that we had prepared for the audition, for the people in the audition room. They were all very friendly and encouraging and even laughed at my monologue. Then they had Malorie and I read a scene together. Let's just say I was very thankful that I auditioned with Mal because the chemistry we had together made the entire room laugh the whole time we were performing. At one point Malorie started singing a song for the scene (Fat Boy by Jewel) and everyone started laughing so hard they couldn't stop. My friend Erinleigh, who's in charge of KidStuf at Buckhead, started laughing so hard she was crying! After we finished that they had both of us read another monologue each and then we were done.

Neither of us know if we got a part at any of the campuses, but it was such a fun audition and really encouraging that it will be ok if only one of us or neither of us gets any part. I been very insecure about my talent recently and this audition helped me feel more confident in my abilities as an actress and a singer. Thanks to all the auditioners at Buckhead for a fun audition!

One more thing that has nothing to do with the audition, my husband is a very hard worker and is working very hard right now on a project that is a little stressful because it's pretty complicated. Prayer request for the week is that I could be a good support to him while he's working on this and that he wouldn't get too stressed with it and that he would get it done quickly. Thanks!

Parents

I had a great talk on the phone with my mom yesterday. She is a very wise woman and very good an encouraging others. Since Joe and I moved downed to Georgia and further away from both our families, I've been thinking more about family and about my growing up. Because I'm now married, I'm also thinking about my future family, like when Joe and I have kids. That in turn has made me think about what I was like when I was a kid and what it will be like when I'm a parent. There are so many things I realize now about myself that I could have never thought of when I was a kid and I know I'll be able to observe from the other side (when Joe and I actually do have kids which we're aren't planning on right at the moment in case all of you reading this thought that this post sprouted from some unexpected news which it didn't). For instance, and I think all children do this, I took my parents for granted all the time right up until I graduated college. I'm sure I still do it, but I still have a lot of growing up to do. Like for instance, one thing that has stuck out in my mind a lot recently is a treehouse my dad built my brothers and I when we were younger. It was a freakin awesome treehouse and everything, but for some reason my brothers and I only played in it a little bit. I don't really know why. We really liked it. Another thing that I know I took for granted was every night during high school, if my brothers or I had homework that was taking us a long time to do, my mom would sleep on the couch in the other room, just so we wouldn't be working alone downstairs. I know we appreciated it, but I don't think we understood the sleep and time sacrifice that our mom gave us. I think the biggest sacrifice for them was me and my brothers going to college. Especially me because looking back at college I'm sure there was a lot more I could have gotten out of it. I had a great time in New York I just also know it was a big sacrifice for my parents.

Don't get me wrong, my brothers and I loved our parents and we really did appreciate the things they did for us. I just think that we didn't understand what they were doing for us everyday. It kind of makes me stop and think how all of us, old, young, man, woman, take our Heavenly Father for granted. Especially in America He has given us so much. God loves us unconditionally the way that my parents love my brothers and I and even our new spouses (well my brother's getting married on June 14th, but his fiance, Alyssa, has been in the family so long that it's like they're already married) unconditionally. When Joe and I get to be parents we will have the same privilege of unconditionally loving our children, even when they take us for granted.

As a closing note I just want to say thanks mom and dad for unconditionally loving me and raising me to know a Heavenly Father. I love you!