Catch-Up Time

I’m sorry I’ve been so silent the last week or so. I’ve been obsessed with a new project. My section, in the Assemblies of God, Michigan District, wanted a place online where we can keep in touch and my wonderful hubby volunteered me to create a social network on ning.com. I was embarrassed he just volunteered me while I was sitting there, but in the end I’m glad he did. Sometimes, he is like God in that he sees my potential better than I ever can.

I ended up creating the network for the entire Michigan district. For all the ministers and wives and lay who minister. It’s like Facebook, but it’s private. It’s pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I wish you all were in Michigan. I invited everyone I had e-mail addresses for in Michigan. If you who are reading this, are in the leadership in an Assembly of God church in the Michigan district and you want an invite, let me know in the comments. If you fill out the e-mail address spot in the form, then you don’t need to leave it in your comment. Here is a link if you just want to request a invite through michiganag.ning.com.

We now have 66 members with 156 invites out! I’m so excited. I advertised it at the Women in Ministry Breakaway I went to this past weekend. Even the assistant superintendent and the director or camp ministries and district supervised churches have joined. It’s so exciting to see something I created be so successful. It was all Chris’ idea, but I did the work. We make a great team. I’m terrible with ideas for some reason.

This weekend was the best breakaway ever for me because through the internet (Facebook and MySpace) I’ve kept up with other women and I knew so many this year. I’m really starting to feel at home in our district and I love it. This should help even more. I’m terrible with names, but with the people’s face in front of me every day, I will remember them next time I see them.

Our speaker was Kristi Hollis from The Power Place. She is a very colorful person. She admits that herself. She has 25 differnt paint colors in her house. Is that even possible??? Anyway, I didn’t know what to expect at first, but she really had a lot of good stuff to say about living in the fishbowl as one in ministry. She talked about realizing that there is a purpose for every moment in our lives and we need to be okay with the moment if we want to succeed at our call. The most important part of our call is love; loving our husband, then our children and then those God has given us in our ministry. She challenged us to come up with a plan to make the changes necessary to fulfill our call.

I have many things I need to change about myself. The ones I thought of were my selfishness, poor housekeeping, lack of quality time with my husband and lack of time spent with God each day. I don’t give God enough of my time.

 

My Wonderful Hubby! :D

I just need to tell the world that I have the best hubby in the world. Friday night I turned off my computer and went to bed. Everything seemed normal, but there may have been some light storms in the night. I woke up Saturday and instead of turning on my computer, I used my hubby’s laptop. Then I left to exercise (yes, I actually exercised). I came back and I felt really sick (because I pushed myself too hard after months of no exercise), so I was in bed for a few hours. When I woke up, Chris told me that my computer was on when he had gotten up that morning (after I left). He said it was continually rebooting because my iPod was plugged in. For some reason, if my iPod is plugged in, the computer thinks it should boot from it. We knew about the problem, but neither of us took the time to fix it. So it was rebooting for some time. Apparently, Little Man had turned on the computer between when he woke up and Chris got out of bed. When I went to turn it on Saturday afternoon, I unplugged the iPod, and still, all it would do is reboot over and over again. We both thought we would have to reinstall windows and everything would be gone. But, Chris saved my stuff!!! He did a lot of Googling and figured out how to make it work! He’s so absolutely wonderful. Here I sit at my computer typing away. All I lost were some program registry keys (no big deal; I can reinstall) and some settings. I am oh so very happy!!!

Honey – I love you!

Now off to do a backup, eh?

 

The Pentecostal Experience

Today I am sick! My eyes are runny, my nose is runny and my throat hurts so bad! I really don’t want to be sick, but I only have myself to thank for it! I haven’t been eating correctly and my body always gets run down when I don’t eat right. I usually end up sick. I wish I didn’t like anything sugar so much!

Sunday night, we went to an evening service at Brighton Assembly of God. Chris, my hubby, wrote about our experience in his blog, but I have some thoughts of my own. I am not a big fan of church services. I know that sounds wrong coming from a minister, but sometimes I really wonder if we are meeting people’s needs through them. I try to get my kids to sit and listen, but at age 3 and 4, they only do so well and it is distracting to both me and the people around us. It is difficult to attend services with them. However, I really enjoyed Sunday evening’s service (even with the kids). We drove 2 hours to get there, but even that didn’t damper the evening’s greatness.

 

Where is the line?

My husband and I are friends with another couple. Recently, we noticed that they were dressing much more conservatively than before. The women (wife and 2 girls; one teenager and one pre-teen, I think) are now wearing head coverings and long dresses and the men (husband and teenage boy) are wearing pants, rather than shorts, and beards (if possible) J. My husband and I, being curious like most people and also being pastors, wondered what their thinking was behind the recent change.

Yesterday, we got to talk to the wife of the family. (I’m not naming them for their privacy. I don’t know if they would mind or not, so it’s better to stay safe.) She enlightened us. She told us that she had actually wanted to wear a head covering since they had returned from living overseas. But because of the situation they were in they decided that it would be wiser not to. I won’t go into the reasoning behind that, but in their case I agree with their decision. However, she told us that she had been wearing a large hair clip to signify a head covering and still be discreet. They said that when they came back from overseas, they were shocked at what people were wearing (or not wearing). They wanted to keep themselves holy. They have also stopped eating pork. They said that this was because while they don’t see anything wrong with eating pork, not eating pork was a good reminder to them to stay holy and clean. This is the case with the change in appearance, too. They are more careful of what they do and read and say because more people are watching them.