YES! It is COLD!

So the Christmas season is here. How many of you tempted the waters and went shopping the day after Thanksgiving? I did, but I was in College Station with John’s sister, Kayla, so it was pretty empty because everyone in College Station was either in Austin or at home watching the game. It worked out great for me. J And I am proud to say that John and I took an afternoon off this week and from having no Christmas shopping done to having everything done except for each other! Are we efficient or what?

And how about that cold front!!! I was so super excited to have the cold front move through last night, it went from 80 degrees to 35 degrees in a matter of hours…I LOVE COLD weather! We have even been out driving all over the place today in this horrible wonderful weather. My sister asked me today if I had trouble getting to work because of the sleet and snow (I live next door to the church, literally across the parking lot) and so I told her “the traffic was awful, people were moving so slow and causing back ups…but then John feel and I was able to go around him.” Hahaha, I know you’re rolling aren’t you?

Well, I am off this evening to put up my Christmas décor, last word we got about moving is that it won’t happen until January now, so I get to put up Christmas decorations. Maybe even watch a Christmas movie like “White Christmas” while I do it. Hope you have a wonderful beginning to your Christmas season. Rejoice always!

Girls Retreat

The Girls Retreat was this last weekend, and it went great! I took all middle school girls, which I was sad that no high school girls went but it was still a great group of girls. My sister was one of the sponsors on the retreat too, which was really awesome. The girls all love her, and thought she was two years younger then me (even though she is three years older J) and it was really amazing to have her there when I taught and have her help. I taught on Deborah and realizing the gifts God has given you to use. At the end of class I had the girls make duck tape bracelets and write on them one character of theirs and is from God. They loved that part because we had like 10 different colors of duck tape. So the weekend was great, I am doing pretty great, and we are still waiting to move. Enjoy the pictures.

YS Convention 2006

What an amazing week! We are now back from the Youth Specialties Convention in Anaheim and we have so much fun! Not only did we finally get our instrumental fix for the month (and not just instruments but David Crowder Band worship) we were able to spend gobs of time with some of our favorite people that live no where near us, or even in Texas. The convention was great, David Crowder worship and our friends being my favorite part, the only let down was the Women in Youth Ministry luncheon. The main disappointment was that is was more like a bad excuse of a pep rally then an encouraging time where I met other women in ministry. I didn’t even meet one other woman from Texas, of course the table that was suppose to be for Texas woman had no one actually from Texas at it, so I just sat with Neena (and some other new friends in Phoenix) at the Arizona table. But that is my only complaint. Praise God for this break and community with friends, now I come back to hit the ground running with a Girls Retreat this Friday- Sunday and a staff retreat Monday & Tuesday. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

A Quick Update...

Ok, a quick update before I have to leave for the airport in 15 minutes! And now you probably need to know where I am going, so first John and I leave today for the Youth Specialties Convention in Anaheim, CA! I know it’s a rough life we lead. We are so SUPER excited to get out of town, to be in California, and most of all to see some of our favorite people.

Second, as for the boys that got into some trouble a couple of weeks ago in class, only one of them ended up teaching because he was the only one that showed up to work on the lesson with me. I do have to say though he did a great job, really knew what he was talking about and how to summarize the idea of the scripture. Although my favorite point during his class was when the other students were getting a bit out of control (but Summer and I bit our tongues to let the “teacher” handle it) and the “teacher” Franklin let out a huge sigh and said, “look you have to listen to me, I’m the teacher so do what I say.” I think for just a split minute he felt some of the frustration of getting people to listen. But he did great and I loved seeing him shine!

And third and last, I have a bit of a stressful and disappointing week. On top of being busy getting everything together for others to fill in for me we also got new news about our living arrangements. John sent an email to our elder, who is over the youth ministry as well as over the staff, concerning any news that he had. We had already been told that we will be moving next door to the apartment we now live in, the second floor of this duplex (which is currently two one bedroom apartments) will be remodeled into one two bedroom apartment for us. Which is wonderful, we are very thankful that they are doing remodeling and taking care of that. But then this week we found out that the apartment will not be ready when they will be tearing down our apartment that we live in now, so they will be moving us to a temporary (2-3 months which really mean 5-6 months) house somewhere around here…maybe. This is frustrating because no one took the time to prepare a place for us, and yes you could say well it’s just business…but no this is personal because it is our home. So now not only is our office space unavailable (it is still under construction from the flood in March) but now we are still in limbo with our house. And if you know me at all you know what an OCD person I am and to have both the spaces where I spend the majority of my days in chaos and unstable is almost more then I can bear. I am praying about this and trying to have a good attitude, but at this moment I just want to be angry that someone let us and our office and our home slip through the cracks.
Sorry it is so long, but next time I will have pretty pictures from CA instead of so much writing. :)