My Return To Blogging

It's been quite a while since I posted here on our blog. Life has been and continues to be very busy here in Independence. I started working in our church office a couple of days per week doing the church bulletin, mailer, and working on developing our church website. In addition to that, I assumed the responsibility of leading our Women's Ministry. I am also working on a few projects that Dwight wants me to do for church as well. This is all in addition to Rachel's wedding and my Stampin' Up! business.

Our church is doing awesome. We hired Brad Brimmer as Youth Pastor. Brad, his wife Annie, and adorable daughter Lauren joined us in February. We are so excited to have them on staff at 1st A/G. They have seen a great increase in attendance in just a few short weeks. Brad is assuming a great deal of responsibility with our website. We are very grateful for he and Annie.

I had our first Women's Ministry meeting in February. We had an amazing group of women attend and we are off and running. We are currently working on our church cookbook. We have lots of fun activities planned through September. I'll keep you posted.

In March we started a 2nd morning worship service. We now have our Heritage Service @ 8:30am, Sunday School @ 9:30 am and our Celebration Service @ 10:30 am. These services are very different from each other and each is designed to reach people looking for what that particular service offers. I enjoy attending both services so that I can continue to meet and get to know our entire church body.

The wedding plans are coming along nicely. I am making the invitations, thank you's, rsvp's, programs and favors. I am very fortunate to have good friends here who have offered to help. We'll be busy the next couple of weeks. I did the Save the Date cards awhile back and sent those to people who we don't have constant contact with. I didn't send those to either side of the family or to people that Rachel and Mike had seen recently or talked to. Obviously, I will need to make many more invitations. I made 125 Save the Date's and I am anticipating making over 300 invitations. We have the cake, the flowers, the photographer, the preacher :o). I will look at candelabras this week and decide on those.

I continue to travel to Des Moines once a month to hold my Stampin' Up! clubs. I have two scrapbook clubs and one card club. I recently changed the day of week that these clubs meet, so now I only go once a month. I really want to get my business started here in Independence after the wedding. I'm looking forward to that.

Our music pastor is getting married in June. His fiancee, Sarah, Annie (youth pastor's wife) and I attended the Pastor's Wife Conference in Springfield in March. Since we were in Springfield, I invited Rachel to join us. We had a blast and some of it had nothing to do with the conference! I'm thankful for those girls - they will keep me young! I pooped out on them pretty early Friday night. Annie and Rachel crashed the Youth Pastor's Conference across town at James River. Pastor Brad was attending that conference. We had a fun weekend.

We continue to search for a Children's Pastor. Please pray for that God will send the right one our way. We know he has just the right person for that position.

We have an incredible Easter planned. Can't wait for that to get here.

We just got back from a 9 day trip to Hawaii. This was the Stampin' Up! incentive trip and 6 days of it was free. We extended it by three days and just had to pay for the hotel and food for those three days. We LOVED Hawaii, but it is a LONG plane trip. For those of you who know my husband really well, you know he walks and prays, walks and studies, walks and talks, etc. Well, there is not much walking room on a plane and he gets pretty ancy. I offered him some of "my help" but he refused. So I don't think we'll be going again anytime soon, unless of course it's free again. It sure was fun and we thoroughly enjoyed our time together. We came home yesterday to 6 inches of snow, but it was still really good to be home. We missed our kids and our church family.

Aaron is doing well. It has been quite an adjustment for him and we are so proud of his positive attitude. He missed his old youth group, but in a conversation with him just the other day, he said he was thankful that God has given him the opportunity to meet and know new people. He is so excited to have Pastor Brad and Annie here. He is working under Pastor Brad in a leadership training role and we couldn't be happier about it. Aaron continues his studies @ Global University and sometimes wonders what it would be like on a college campus. He turned 20 this week. My little boy is all grown up. (kind of) :o)

Rachel passed her exam to be Licensed with the A/G this month. She has an interview tomorrow and will then receive her credential at District Council in a few weeks. The week after that she graduates from CBC and the week after that she gets married. She is trying to drive her mother crazy. On May 11, I will put my feet up and eat bon bons (or wedding cake) all day.

All joking aside, we are very proud of the kids. When we entered this transition last summer, the number one concern we had was for our kids. The "ministry" was what they always wanted to do and both of them were working toward those goals even at that time. Even though they were grown, Des Moines was the only home they ever knew. Leaving home was very hard on both of them. But . . . God is amazing! They love Independence First Assembly and they are more anxious than ever to assume their role in ministry. We are thankful for what God has done and is doing in their lives. They continue to make us very proud parents.

Well, that should catch you up on our family happenings. As you can see I am still on Hawaiian time. It is only 10pm in Hawaii. It is 2am here and I am working tomorrow. I better get to bed.

Blessings to you and yours,

Shari