Heart in my toes

It was about 2 minutes until 7 p.m. tonight and I was getting the lights queued up and ready to begin the program when all of a sudden, all the sound stopped. The prelude music that was playing just stopped. I immediately checked the sound board and power was still fine and the LED lights told me the board and the player were still functioning, so I knew it had something to do with the speakers.

I was in the sound room by myself and I really don't know enough about it. Jay was no where - I tried to change to another track thinking that there was something wrong with the CD. It was nerve racking since all the congregation got really quiet when the prelude music stopped as of course the people thought it was time to start. AGG! Finally I gave up and had to go find Jay and I explained what happened. He thought perhaps someone had hit the cord. He ran into the sanctuary and got on the floor near the front but the cord was fine. He ran back behind the platform and checked the circuit breakers. He flipped one and the sound came back on. Shoo!!!

I personally felt like it was the devil trying to sabotage us. It didn't work! It was back up and running with Jay's help and the drama went off without a hitch. All told I believe we were close to 100 people which is the most since we came to the church in August.

He is Risen!!!

Trying to fulfill our part of the Great Commission

When we arrived last August, the board let us know right up front, they had no children in their church and that was something they really wanted to change. So in the last couple months, we raised the funds for a church bus and this morning we did our first Sunday run. We have been picking up kids in our cars and it was taking 4 cars and sometimes more to get everyone. So the bus is an answer to prayer. Meet Twinkie!

As you can see, the first day we did some true Kentucky driving. They call it " muddin" down here :o)

Picking up one of our first passengers.

These two guys cracked me up - they just didn't seem too thrilled :o)

We pick a lot of kids up from one place. We were afraid the bus couldn't make it up, since it is all gravel and very bumpy. The regular school bus doesn't even go up the hill. The kids have to walk down it and meet the bus. But our Twinkie made it up just fine and with our experienced CDL driver who has driven in tons of big cities, he was able to turn Twinkie around in 3 points and was able to head back down.

Silly guys

Ready to roll!

Anyone have any good ideas on getting mud out of a bus and I mean a TON of mud. A power washer?

Today was our first day of Spiritual Awakening with Rev. Ken Cox. This was the sight that greeted us when we pulled up with the bus tonight. Apparently the front door (and only door that can be opened from the outside) was malfunctioning and no one could get in. Thankfully Jay had the special touch and was able to get the lock to open up.

Christmas Galore

This has not been that great of a weekend for me. After a mental meltdown on Friday night, I slept in until 1 on Saturday afternoon. So give me some slack on the blogging schedule (Aaron!) Huge thanks to Kris (my counselor :o) for listening to me.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas celebration with the Collingsworth side of the family. I have no idea what Jay is trying to say or do here.

Trying to act like they are 'normal.'

Christmas punch

Christmas munchies

Christmas soup buffet - yummy stuff!

Waxing 'elephance' as my hubby would say

Waiting for the Christmas blessing so we can eat

Christmas cookies

Uncle Phil getting the fire just right.

Doesn't it look just perfect?

Tonight is the big night. Everything that could go wrong, has. (Murphy's law) The sound system has a short in it somewhere, so Jay had to get his parent's sound board from Anderson, Indiana. One of the kids has hardly been to practice at all (not entirely his fault.) The professional lights that Jay went to Indy to get are fine electrically but they didn't work well where Jay had first wanted them, so now they are on both sides of the center aisle (exactly where we didn't want them). The powerpoint projector (also from Jay's parents) is working fine, except we need the video cable from the projector to the laptop to be longer than 6 feet. Walmart doesn't have any longer than that so we are still (yes, at this late hour) trying to figure out how to do this since the cord is now suspended in the air between the sound board and the stage (cute, huh?) We had to arrange the actors differently otherwise they would be running right into the cable and jerking the projector and the laptop from their respective places. One of the actors only had a sleeveless dress for one of the scenes so I tried to find a small white sweater last night but no luck. Thank goodness one of the ladies at church had the perfect thing.

Now for the dinner afterwards - we are small so there aren't a lot of us to make food for all the visitors. So as of this very moment, I am cooking 160 meatballs in the crockpot, 3 peanut butter pies are chilling in the fridge, I just took a large corn casserole out of the oven and I have 3 pounds of corn to put in the crockpot for later. Oh and a large package of dinner rolls.

Why do YOU go to church?

Sometimes I wonder how many of us really think about this question. In fact, I would say most people don't think about it.

Do you go because...

• It was the way my parents raised me
• I've always gone
• I don't want people to think bad of me
• It's the Christian thing to do
• The Bible tells us to
• I need to grow spiritually
• I need to worship the King

I was thinking about this today and I wonder if for the most part we go because that is what we do on Sundays. How many of us go because we are EXCITED about going to church? Do you get up on Sunday and you can't wait to get to church? Or do you get up and go because you know you "need" to go to church? Obviously, there are going to be days where you don't feel like going, but for the most part, are we really enthusiastic about our worship of the King? Unfortunately, I don't think so. Lord, help us to be excited and enthusiastic in our worship and praise to You.