I have been meaning to sit down and blog for days, but since dealing with Ivan last week for many reasons I have not been able to.

Tomorrow is an exciting day at Port City, we begin a brand new building campaign and I am very excited. I am excited about our theme it is, "Give to Save," the idea is less about buildings and more about truly reaching our community. My prayer is that it will help to bring our congregation into a better understanding of what we have to be in our area to reach our community and give everyone a chance to be involved on many levels! How exciting! Ray Fulenwider is here with us, actually staying with Susan and I, we have had a great time today. He is an awesome guy and I really appreciate his openness and focus on the church's need to be relevant in it's community!

Tomorrow will be wild and action packed, a full day affair - as most of my Sundays are. I am not sure what it is, but Sundays give me a rush, I love them. I am so thankful God has allowed me to serve him this way! He is good all the time!

On another note, some of you have asked me how you can help in regard to Ivan. The city of Mobile actually did pretty well, we had little damage and no major issues. The city of Pensacola on the other hand did not fare so well. There are two churches in the Pensacola area that I am familiar with, that could use assistance, there websites are below. I encourage you to contact them and see how you can help!

Gateway Church of Christ

First City Church

God bless all of you who contacted me, my parents also live in Florida and it looks like they could recieve the brunt of Jeanne, please pray for them as well! Thanks for all of the encouragement!

Father, please be with all of those dealing with Hurricanes past and present. You are the great protector and provider. My prayer is that you will spare the lives of as many as possible. I am so thankful you have spared so many from this time of frustration, please continue to bless us with your presence, understanding and love! Amen.

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Today was a great day, our worship service today was shortened it was more like a devotional, I found it very appropriate. We didn't have a praise team or anything today because there was so much other stuff to deal with, but I felt God in our midst today, I could really feel his Spirit moving. I think it was most apparent when one of our leaders took out a writing board to find out what people needs were, right during our service, it was awesome! I am so glad to be a part of such an awesome and open church family. To see people truly being a community and helping, encouraging and loving each other. People giving up their time and talents to serve others in the aftermath of this storm. This is what I think Christ intended His bride to look like. Thank you God!

One other cool note - Susan was downstairs with Hayden this morning and Hayden was playing on the floor, I heard her say "Uh ooooh" Here we go........By the way her laugh is a little taste of heaven! Thank you God for you are good, and kind are all of your ways I love you and thank you for my church family and my physical family! You've been good to me!!

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Susan and Hayden and I returned home from Louisiana on Friday. We waited as long as we could take it. On Thursday I had spoken with one of my neighors and she said we had "lot's of yard work to do, but everything else looks good." So we were feeling quite good about ourselves, definiely blessed, but still hurting for those who weren't so fortunate. When we got home it was like we hadn't missed a beat - except the yard. Whooohooo! It was a wreck! The good news we did not have to go without power or water at all. We were so thankful, I guess it pays to live near the hospital.

We both decided we would jump outside today and work on the yard. It took us almost the whole day just to make the front yard semi-organized. We did a lot even though we had to juggle Hayden. It is really hard to get in to a rhythm while working on something like that when you have to deal with an infant, but Hayden is a trooper. Here is the debris pile after just one day of front yard clean up. The important thing is, we were spared and are safe. We thank God for that! Thanks to all of you guys who prayed for us during this scary time in our lives.



This was just the front yard debris.

Two additional things to note:

1- Susan and I both managed to get stung by yellowjackets today. Fortunately Hayden did not. I am sure our neighbors thought we were on heavy perscriptions, yeah that's it.

2- I am so dissapointed in myself. I am not sure how to explain it but, with all of my prayers the last few days I felt like I was using God like a vending machine. I know it sounds funny, but God has been so good to Susan and I, and somehow I am sure he knows I thought he was going to let us down. Even if our house would have demolished, He has never let me down, yes I would have been sad, but I have to remind myself of this -

Luke 9:57-58
As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Romans 8:26-28
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,who have been called according to his purpose.

Great and Awesome God and Father - I thank you for your hand of protection and love. I do not yield to you enough, I do not know you well enough, yet I yearn to be more like you and more intune with you and your spirit. I love you, I am weak, you are strong. It isn't enough for me to search out your heart, may I find it. Thank you for safety, and for the blessing of life and life which was spared. Please be with those hurting so badly at this time. Only your hand can heal them and give them what they need!!! I am yours Father to use, to mold and to care for. Please understand when I am weak, and every day when I fail you! I love you! Amen

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Monday night Susan and I realized that we were going to be dealing with a nasty Wednesday and Thursday in regard to the hurricane. We decided to go ahead and put gas in both of our cars and pick up many items to eat assuming things were bad and we lost power and water. As we prepared we saw people running scared, people were crazy. I have never seen people in the store acting like they were. Target was an interesting place, to say the least. We decided not to try and board up our house because our house is so high and there are so many windows we just felt like the cost and the time and effort might not be worth it ( I know that sounds crazy, but in the light of finding enough supplies, the time it would take to find them and put it on the house, we would probably be doing it still today, especially since it wouldn't matter if one of the many trees happened to fall on our house) So, we decided to get ready and hope for the best.

Tuesday was a very difficult day for Susan and I. I got up a lot earlier that morning than I typically would have. Susan and I were extremely focused on being prepared for the hurricane. She had to go ahead and go to school and spend time preparing until noon that day, so I kept Hayden with me and we did a few more errands. I decided about ten o'clock Tuesday morning after talking with a few people around us that Susan and I needed to forget about staying in town, when she got home around 12:30 she agreed, we began to pack and put away as much of our stuff as possible. We wrapped things and put them into dresser drawers, moved our valuables - mainly pictures and other items - in to a downstairs closet underneath the stairwell. As soon as we were finished we packed up some clothes and important things and hit the road. We were headed to West Monroe, LA. I guess we left home at about 4:20 it was rough, I have never seen traffic like this in my life, thankfully we thought to bring a few DVD's and we just watched movie after movie as we crawled through Alabama and Mississippi. We finally got into West Monroe at 2:00AM I couldn't believe it had taken us 10 hours.

We were exhausted when we got to town, we came in and stayed with some family and we were glad to see them, just not on the circumstances. Susan and I spent Wednesday just hanging around at the mall and WalMart stocking up on extra supplies for when we got home, faced with the fact that we might have nothing left when we got back. I would say that both of us spent the day and night quite prayerful, not that we aren't already prayerful people, but I guess we both felt like we were in continual prayer that day, A day long conversation with God. The whole thing was difficult to think about.

We tried to get ready for the night. Susan and Hayden went to bed, but I couldn't. I stayed up trying to keep and eye on the storm and just continually letting it all go. I finally went to bed. When I got up we had heard that basically our area was spared. I talked to one of our neighbors who rode it out. She said that from what she could tell we had no damage. GOD IS GOOD!!! We are leaving this morning to go home and find out what issues we do have, I will update then.

Thank you so much to all of you who prayed for us and our families, church, and community. It appears that overall Mobile was spared, PLEASE BE IN PRAYER FOR THE SURROUNDING AREAS. Others did not fare as well as we did. We are just thankful that we are all safe. God bless!

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We had a great worship service yesterday, some little issues, but I think things are going well. We have much to figure out over the next few weeks, yet I am excited. One thing came to mind today when I was reading Mike Cope's blog.
We have a little boy at church named Eric who might be one of the sweetest and most inspiring little people I have ever met. Eric, doesn't have it all together (as none of us do, although we may think so) he is nine. Eric is such an awesome kid - he has Autism. I love Eric, because of his sincerity, when we are in worship together, he leads all those who clap during worship and is the best at it, that is expressing his love for the Lord. He is so sweet and ultimately awe-inspiring. Honestly, I think it is because what you see is what you get with Eric in an extra dose due to his autism and age. He's a great kid, someday I want to grow up and be just like Eric.

Lord, May I have Eric's heart and his willingness to lead from his seat and to love without care or thought of what people might "think."

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Some days I feel quite overwhelmed, some days I feel discouraged, some days I am totally on fire and pumped about what God is trying to do in my life and Mobile. I have tried so hard to combat this up and downess. I began to pray that God would help me to overcome this issue and the last few days I have gotten up and asked myslef, "Which is it today?" It is like I heard someone say once, you can get up everyday and say, "Good Lord, it's morning". Or you can get up and say, "Good Morning Lord!" I am trying depserately to do the latter each day, because I have so much to do, I can't afford to be discouraged at all.

Well, this morning Satan was on his toes, and I jumped out of bed and said a "Good Morning Lord" and nice prayer to help me be focused and ready to take on any new challenge. I spent my little bit of time with Hayden before Day Care this morning and we had a blast - more on that later. I put her down for her short nap and she got up and I went to get my keys to get in the car to take her.

Well, last night Susan and I had gone up to the building, she and some of the other ladies have been sweatin' to the oldies or doing Taebo (Billy Blanks doesn't like me) or Pilatis (is that even close?) or something, either way excercising. I went up there to work with Woody Turnbow on worship projection and show him some things that he can do to help us be more effecient in our worship program. Susan decides that she isn't going to bring any of her stuff, no purse, no keys, no nuthin - as we say in LA. And so she was finished with the ladies and wanted to take herself and Hayden on home. So I gladly handed over my keys and asked Woody just to bring me home. He gladly said, "sure."

Back to this morning, that was the last time I had seen my keys, I couldn't find them this morning, nowhere, not in the house as far as I was concerned, so I called Susan and said, "You've done it again," this isn't the first time this has happened. So I called Margaret at the church building and she went to Susan's school and picked up keys, shortly after Susan calls me and says, " I don't have your keys in my purse, I gave Margaret my keys, you'll have to come get me after school." So I commense a new search, I called the Police, SBI, and FBI. To make an even longer story shorter, my keys were in the bottom of the only bag Susan took last night, the one that I had never noticed on her person. The bag that I had already (in my mind) thouroughly searched on a just in case check - the diaper bag. Nice try Satan, fortunately I didn't let it mess up my day.

Hayden and I had so much fun today, I love my daughter and am so thankful God gave me the best child in the world and the most beautiful. OK I am going to gloat a bit, I once had someone say, who has a very pretty child, "you're daughter is much more beautiful than my daughter is" Seriously it happened. OK, so now you know how fond I am of Hayden. I love her, she is the real deal, God's gift to Susan and I. Today she and I were downstairs playing when pulled a flower of some fake flowers we have downstairs and brought it to me. How sweet! She is only 9 months old! Things like that help me to decide, "Which is it today?"

Well I have much studying to do.............

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I know it is already Wednesday, but I had a great weekend. Susan and I went to Nashville on Friday and had a great time. We really enjoyed seeing our family, while we were there. It is so encouraging to me to take a trip like that one, because it truly allows me to be free of everything. Something that doesn't happen when I am in town, off or not.

We spent some time just hanging out and having fun together, although I did study a little while on the road, which was actually quite productive. We had the chance to attend Otter Creek on Sunday and that was great, we really enjoyed the worship and felt refreshed afterwards. It is so nice to be able to sit in a worship service without demands. It helps me see why some don't ever use their talents. I enjoy serving the Lord in worship though, and can't imagine life apart from it.

I came home with a renewed sense of mission and readiness to do for God whatever he would have me do. I thank Him for the time I was able to have away. The only tough part about being away was the fact that my family is in Florida and they have had to deal with Charley, Frances, and Ivan it looks like. Ugh!!

Oh yeah, one other thing about being away, Susan and I came home to one of our moody cats having urinated and pooped on our tile floor in the kitchen, he is making this a habit. I am not happy, but I have an idea...

CAT FOR SALE - Beautiful White Persian with blue eyes, goes by the name Sebastian. Real sweet disposition. A bit moody. Enjoys peeing on tile floors, sleeping on desks (especially when you want to work) and most notably clawing on carpet. Will take - oh forget it just let me know and you can have him...

That should do it.

On another note, I had lunch with John Mark Smith yesterday. I really enjoyed our time together. I really appreciate his encouragement and his heart for the Lord.

Father, thank you for sustaining us when we need you the most. Thank you for giving us hope when there is none and life when we don't deserve it. Thank you for being the one who openly shares your kingdom and blessings with us. Please be with all of those dealing with hurricane damage and loss, only you can heal those hurts. We love you!! Amen.

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Yep. that is how I am feeling right now. Over the weekend Susan and I went up to Nashville to spend time with family and friends. Lo and behold, I am exhausted, but I feel good. Sometimes I think though I need a vacation from my vacation, you know?
I gotta run now, but much to say when I return....

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Althought this week I have felt like Johnny on the spot. The week started so crazily from Monday on. We started out by having Ray Fulenwider come in to talk to us about starting our new fundraising campaign. We have just finished the process of having some new drawings done to build a new education facility, new teen area (uh thank you) and a new lobby on to the auditorium, lot's of work to say the least...not to mention parking and gym renovation.

Since then I have felt like we have run crazy from one meeting to the next. One of the best things though is that through out this craziness we have had an amazing week. God has been with us and blessed us. I know that he is getting ready to do (and has already done) some awesome stuff here in Mobile.

On Wednesday night at "The Calling" we had such an awesome time. We had fifteen of our teens respond for prayers and one baptism. WOW!!! God is good!

Susan and I are thinking of heading to Nashvegas this weekend to see family and just hang out. Since SonQuest was cancelled due to Frances. More to come later....

Father, Thank you for everything that is a blessing. Even those things which don't look so good are blessings from you many times. Thanks for supporting, encouraging, and loving us. Never leaving us to fend for ourselves. Thank you for Ryan Schumann and his decision to accept your love and your Son as his Savior!! We love you. Amen!!!

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Ok Not really, but I say that because at least if I was a real slacker, I wouldn't feel so badly about neglecting my blog which I desperately need to do (for my sake of course, sorry John) I have so much to say but right now, baby is crying, I will be back!!!

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