Blessings are coming!

Do you ever just know it - that you are about to step into a few days of sitting amongst God's handiwork? A time that you just know that you are going to bear witness to events that will leave you in thanksgiving for a lifetime?
Today we leave for Abilene. We will be staying with Josh and Kayci which is always a joy and very relaxing. We will worship with Jonathan and Jennifer tomorrow which is always a joy and refreshing. Jonathan will lead worship tomorrow at Southern Hills and will be traveling on to begin his full-time ministry with the Bammel Road Church of Christ in Houston. What a blessing Phil Ware and others at Southern Hills have been for Jon and Jen! Rick and I are very grateful they have had such an amazing launch pad for ministry!
Then, Monday, the lectures begin! I have all my classes chosen and am so excited over the possibities for spiritual bread! I have spend days pouring over the choices!
Wednesday and Thursday I am attending a Forgiveness workshop offered by ACU's Marriage and Family Dept.! Should be awesome! (It is being conducted by Dr. Everett Worthington.)
Wednesday night I am going to go with Jonathan back to Southern Hills for a night of praise. They will be doing at least a couple of songs he wrote! This mother can't wait!
An added bonus is that I get to do almost all this with Rick! He is definitely my favorite travelling companion! He will have to leave Tuesday - boohoo!
So I gotta go pack -- Blessings are coming!
Oh, Malaya -- when I get home Friday morning, I plan to pick you up from school -- let's go see Curious George, ok???? I miss you!

Young Mothers' Study Group

In 1998, 10 days after Jenny's wedding, I presented eight sessions at the Bible Teachers' Workshop at ACU. After one session a beautiful woman, Judy Beard, came up to meet me with her daughter, Kelly Jones. Judy was one of the shepherd's wives from Southside Church of Christ in Fort Worth. She was also one of the mentors for YMSG (Young Mothers' Study Group). They met once a month (mornings) in some of the older ladies' homes and had a speaker present a message centered on relationships, marriage, spiritual growth, and/or parenting. I presented my first lesson for them in the fall of '98 at Billie Goodrich's house. What a great group!
I continued going over once a year for 6 years until fall of '04 when they asked me to come once a month! My blessing - totally!!! And we switched it to night!
So many inter-weavings! Only God could have held the knitting needles on this intricate plan!

Scott and Tonia Beard (Judy's son and daughter-in-law) live in Trophy Club. Tonia joined a community Bible study at my house when we lived in Trophy Club. We became dear friends!
In Dec. '04, Kelly Jones (Judy's daughter) asked me to present a series of lessons at Decatur Church of Christ for a community project. I fell in love with the community. Jeff, Kelly, Corey, and Josh are now our special Wednesday-night-eat-out-friends! (Jeff was extremely instrumental in convincing Rick to give Decatur a 'look'.)
Donny and Marcy Edwards (Judy's youngest daughter and son-in-law) were on the search committee that invited Rick to submit his resume at Decatur. We love watching them parent their four boys!
And Wes and Judy Beard are some of the most special people in the world to me! I LOVE them both! Last weekend I did a retreat for Southside and drove an hour to and from the encampment Friday and an hour on Sat morning -- only to discover Sat afternoon that the encampment was only 35 minutes from my house! But all so I could spend the night and hang out with Judy Beard a little bit more! (We rarely have had a moment alone!) (Wes greeted us at the door at midnight and had a snack ready for us to munch so we could visit a bit more!)

And now... (drum roll, please), my son, Josh, with his precious wife, Kayci, will be in town this weekend to try out for the preaching job at Southside! Could it be????

YMSG is one of my most favorite nights of the whole month! I am blessed to be part of this little group of women who loves the Lord intimately and each other intensely!
Thank you Chris Sawyer for starting this group years ago! Thank you Judy, Pat, and Emily for continuing on! I love you more than I have the verbal skills to tell you!

More blogs coming on this wonderful group of sisters!

It's a boy!

Jonathan and Jennifer had a sonogram today and results were clear - we are having a BOY! YEA! Jennifer is due June 8 and we are counting down the days. When I was on the phone today with my dad, he was just cackling about his grandchild being a father. Dad said that it seems absolutely like yesterday that Jonathan was running around playing with his toy guns - now he is getting ready to be a 'papa'. (My dad's dad was known as Papa - that has always been our special family name for fathers.)
Jonathan and Jennifer will be excellent parents! I am so proud of both of them and their love for the Lord!
I can't wait to share life with this little one. I can't to hold him - to rock him - to laugh with him - to hear his sweet little giggle. I can't wait to hear him claim Jesus as Lord. I can't wait to...
This grandparenting thing is way too much fun!
Oh - Jedidiah is the chosen name - 'loved by the Lord' - I LOVE that name.
I need to go shopping!!!!!