After a Brief Sabbatical...

Wow. How do you start back up again after such a long absence?  For starters, how about changing everything about your blog :)

I sit here and type in the midst of snowpocolypse 2011 which has closed schools and businesses and left many people stranded inside their homes.  Personally, I have LOVED the extra time to rehash life in dialogue with my Creator (even though my snow-fearing pup has a bad case of cabin fever!).  I've found no better outlet for that than over a jigsaw puzzle.  While tangibly solving a problem of where pieces belong, I offer up pieces of my life to Him and allow Him to weave them into their proper place in the tapestry of my life.  Minor wounds I've been carrying, situations I don't understand, and the glorious future I am looking forward to all find a home. 

Renaissance is a word that has always struck my fancy, but has recently come to the forefront of my mind along with this question: what are the things that sickness, circumstances, or my personal mindsets have been preventing me from walking into the fullness of what I was created to do and be?  The first area that's come up is creativity.  God himself is a creative God!  He invites us to partner with Him to dream and create.  How can I co-create with God?  That's a big open-ended question, but inspired by some friends of mine I've started with knitting. (pictured here, a Christmas scarflet).  A Grandmotherly hobby, you say?  Perhaps.  But it wasn't that long ago that lupus was silently waging war with my joints making something like knitting a pipe dream. 

New Memorial Day Tradition

How do you celebrate Memorial Day? This year, to make it special, we came up with a new tradition. It's official name is "Take a memorial picture to help you remember what God is doing in your life". If that titled didn't give you enough explanation, allow me to elaborate: a group of us got together and everyone thought of a word that would categorize their life in God this year. Each person posed for a picture with their word written on a whiteboard. Here were a few words people chose: jubilee, groundbreaking, hope, peace, possibilities. Fun, right? Next Memorial Day, I hope we can look back, laugh, and see all that God has done and all He is continuing to do. Happy Memorial Day! (My word is 'fulfillment' just in case you can't read it :) )

Living the Dream!

sdf
Lately I have found myself day dreaming about about a day when I will live an adventurous life in a foreign country. I had a dream that I received a word from a highly respected prophet that I would be living overseas within 5 years... does that count as a word?

Either way, I am determined to live this moment here in Norman to the fullest and relish in all the wonderful blessings in church planting here in Norman. I think this little project may take a few blog entries... or 5 years worth :) When I have the opportunity to live overseas, I want to be able to look back and know that I lived my life in Norman to the fullest and never wasted any of the time I was given wishing I was somewhere else.

So, to start it off: I am so thankful for all the friends I have made here in Norman. I am so appreciative to have a community of people walking through the same stage of life as me. Here is a picture of some of my lifegroup friends having a memorial day picnic in the park.

Lifegroup - multiplication!

Last weekend, our lifegroup (affectionately dubbed Team Tape after a silly game we played one time) went on a camping retreat before we multiplied. We have had a consistent 22 people coming weekly to lifegroup and could not still comfortably fit in my living room. So before we multiplied into two groups, we went on a retreat for one last time all together. It was SO much fun as you can tell from the photo of our Sardines game (that's me in the top left corner being sat on :) )

This season of life being without a family of my own has been so hard - and raw! If I am having a hard day, I don't have a built in person to talk to about it. Some days it feels so lonely and vulnerable. Having a group of people around me in my daily life like this has been the saving grace keeping me anchored. We are all united by the common bonds of Christ and season in life. It has been such a picture to me of how Jesus intended for us to live - sharing all things in common like the Acts 2:42-47 community. They are more like family than just friends and I am so thankful for them!

Furious Love

Have you seen the documentary entitled Finger of God? The same director just came out with a new documentary/ sequel entitled Furious Love. Our lifegroup went to attend a premier showing and were so impacted! If you have a chance, you should definitely watch it! Here's a link to the trailer: http://furiouslovethemovie.com/index.html

Testimony!

We just wrapped up week 4 in our Spiritual Gifts unit with our elementary aged kids. While we were talking about words of wisdom, we gave time for our children to pray for two of our sick adult volunteers. We had prayed for Christina before service started and she felt a little bit better. When one of our third grade boys prayed for her, however, she felt almost all the way better! One of our volunteers had a word of knowledge for a right shoulder, and another volunteer said she had pain right there. The kids prayed three times for her and each time she got better and better. It was so sweet to watch because almost the whole class got out of their seats to pray for her. They were so full of faith and expectant for what God was going to do!

Another Testimony!

This Sunday in Kids Community (our elementary-aged class), we taught on the 1 Corinthians 12 gift of word of knowledge. We taught the kids that God can give us a pain on our bodies to let us know He wants to heal someone.

We had the children assess any pains they had in their bodies to begin with. Then, we instructed them to walk out of the room for a minute and walk back in. When they came back in the room, they were to see if they could feel a new pain in any part of their body.

Several children raised their hand and shared the pain they felt. At each one of the words of knowledge given, at least one child came forward to receiving healing for that pain!

One child named Joshua felt a pain in his right shoulder. Two of the teachers, Sharla and Terrance, in the class came forward with pain in their right shoulders! Joshua prayed a simple prayer of faith and we asked the teachers if they felt better. One of the teachers said she felt tingling in her shoulder and the other felt heat. We asked Joshua to pray again and invited the class to pray silently with him.

After he prayed we asked how the teachers felt. Terrance said his shoulder was about 70% better while all the pain in Sharla's shoulder was gone! Sharla was so blessed that God had touched and she remarked, "I REALLY needed that!" We had Joshua pray again for Terrance and he said it felt even better: maybe about 90% better overall!

Praise the Lord! What's even more remarkable is we only had enough time to let 4-5 children share the word of knowledge they received - but at least half the class of 24 children said they received a word of knowledge.