My Mentor Turns 50

Tonight was the Surprise Birthday party for the woman I have admired the most in my adult years. God called her into Fulltime ministry when she was in college. I met her while she was the Children's Pastor in my church in Arkansas. She was a wonderful leader in that church. There are so many times that I was in awe of her devotion to God as she carried on her tasks for God. She also gave me many opportunities of service when I was in high school. After I battled God and accepted my call to ministry, she invited me for a luncheon where she shared about being a female in ministry and about children's ministry. She also gave me this sheet about priorities that I had lamenated and even now is attached on the wall next to my desk. While I was in college, she left her position at that church to begin her role as a children's counselor. She still does this in the Arkansas area. My sister also became close friends with her as they went to church together. I think it is good this happened as it enabled me to be able to keep in contact with her more easily. She is also a Breast Cancer Survivor. She has had it 3 different times. It has been very tough on her, but she has been able to continually find strength in God even in the crappy times. I truly admire the woman that she is. God just make change her into an angel in Heaven for she is already some that glows well for Him.
Martha, you are loved!

New Church Baptism

Today, I was encouraged again with the decision to join University Baptist Church. Not only was it great to have a baptism during the service, the way it is done is encouraging. The Children's minster, who is a female, was the one in the baptismal! VERY WONDERFUL TO SEE! This church has a variety of people doing the baptism services. I actually haven't seen the senior pastor do it yet. For me it is very positive to recognize the role of many in the church who help leave and develop seeds of faith. Besides the variety of those performing the service, in the congregation the family and those having a role in spiritual development stand. I love this! It is great for a church to recognize the importance of all its members.

ASTROS WIN

All over houston you could hear people in shock and excitement. Our Bs have done it...they are in the World Series! I'm sooo excited for them and for all those that have diligently supported them. What a wonderful accomplishment to finally happen for this team. WHOOHOOO!
I had a wonderful time tonight watching the game with some friends. It was great to catch up with them on life and to meet some new people while every so often having my eyes glance at the television. I am glad that I was invited for this fun time of fellowship and to see a little bit of history being made.
Way to go 'stros!!!

A New little Survey

My online friend Julie composed a new survey thing for this group of online friends I've have for the last four years. We called ourselves the Quad after meeting in a Christian chat room. It is kinda funny that we all hooked up. I still don't get why we are all connected, but we flirt with still being connected as friends. We've been through a marriage, two births, horrible breakups, and a divorce since meeting online. I do believe there can be real relationships found in chatting conversations. Sadly they are just hard to find. BUT this is the little questionaire that she created after I answered yet another survey that is so common with some not so nice answers. Because this has real questions of value, I thought it would be good of me to put it on here. Yes, it does scare me a little. When it ask for extreme answers of best and worst, I may not be giving exactly truth on this as I may be protecting others or myself. But it would fit in the spectrum of the answer.
1. What did you want to be for a living when you were in highschool? I wanted to be a lobbyist (went to college with this mindset) or a hostess for the UN (foreign languages changed that dream).
2. If you could change your profession now, what would you be doing? EASY! I'd be a Children's Minister.
3. What gift would you never want to get again? as not wanting to offend the giver I shall not answer this
4. What do people remember you for that you wish they wouldn't? The funny embarrassing stories don't bother me most of the time when shared. I do regret that people recall and try to use against me when I threw a glass bottle of sprite at my sixth youth minister.
5. What do you do when you're lonely? Get on the phone or chat on the computer.
6. What is your biggest regret? (not sure if biggest is sharable) I regret the impact my decision to go to Meredith has had on my life.
7. When you die, what song do you want sung at your funeral? hummm..just one song? I have g-ma's list with about 7 songs she wasn't sung or played. He Is Here sung by everyone and there is the Geoff Moore song that I've always liked but I can't think of the title right now...when I figure it out I'll let you know
8. What is your greatest accomplishment? accepting my call to ministry...odd how what I thought would be my greatest personal defeat isn't guess I'll have to keep learning that one as I stop trying to make God think He doesn't know what He is doing
9. Where do you want to be in 5 years? Completed my master's degree (I was saying that 5yrs ago..ugh) and have a career job that fits my ministry area. And to have going the knowledge and faith that I should have increased during these 6yrs of being here.
10. What is your favorite thing about where you're living now? All the space and I can afford it.
11. What is your least favorite thing about where you're living now? the distance from church (so the lonliness somewhat)
12. What would you miss the most if you lost it (not including people)? Loading up your car for a hurricane evacuation will make you think about this one materially. But helping with the hurricane's aftermath, I'd say water. Perhaps, ice would be the better answer since that way it could be cold and then melted to water.
13. What are you really talented at? Coming up with at the moment activities for children.
14. What "motto" do you try to live by? I'm sure that a motto could be applied to my life but I don't live by one.
15. If you were going to start up a little shop, what would you sell? Homemade Ice Cream...no plain chocolate of vanilla available
16. What do you argue with your parents about the most? probably a tie about how much we talk on the phone and if I get enough personal time
17. Do you want any (or any more) children? No! I am not going through that pain!
18. What is the #1 thing you want your children (or the children around you) to learn? What a real relationship with Jesus Christ is and to make it work for them.
19. If you could to go school and learn something just for the fun of it (completely unrelated to work) what would you learn about? Sewing (but I don't think it would be fun...just cost effective)
20. What is the most touching thing anyone has ever done for you? ;) gave me a bath! lots of touching involved with that. emotionally, I'd have to say kept/still keeping a secret and loving me anyways.

Picture in Morning Worship

OH, how I wish I could have taken a picture during worship today. The children's director was leading the baptism part of worship. The children's director is a woman and she was in the water, in the white doing the dunking! My soul was smiling when I saw such a wonderful amount of acceptance offered through the actions of my church.
I do hope to continue to see such wonderful things as this as I continue to grow in my faith and excitement about Jesus here.

Rita Help --The Mini Mission

Today a group from my new church went to help with some of the Rita devasation in East Texas. I was honored to be able to call and say I could go to help. The journey took almost 3hrs as we were in evacuation like traffic. (ended up being a four car wreck far ahead near a bridge) Thankfully some of the passengers knew alternate routes so we headed on back roads to get to our destination. You could certainly see when we got closer to the devasted areas as there were more trees through homes and tarp covered roofs. The church that was send us to our assignments was FBC-Kirbyville. We reached there and all went to the bathroom. Then we divided up into the Chainsaw group and the Food Group. Jokes were made most of the morning about the risks for the Chainsaw group. We were going to have only four do the food so more could help haul, but the Kirbyville pastor's wife said that hauler for the wood weren't as needed. So we sent more to food. The area we went to still had many places with no power or power just within the last couple of days. Some of the homes still didn't have drinkable water. We set up near a tree outside of a church building. As people came by we were able to offer them jugs of water, cans of food, snack items, and eventually ice. I enjoyed my task of carrying water jugs to the cars of the people. Later in the afternoon, I suggested that we use the children's wagon someone in our group had brought to be able to deliver some of the ice to those down the road. We took about 20bags of ice to those people and let them know food was available if they wanted to come get it and we could also give them more ice. Overall one of the things that can't be said enough is that most all of the people we were helping didn't want to take more than there share. I had to reassure many people that it was ok for me to have given them three jugs of water for two people. (heck we would have done more but we didn't know we were going to get more water when we started) Things slowed down around 3:00pm so we loaded up ourselves and headed back to meet up with our Chainsaw crew. When we got back to them the group worked together to haul limbs from a yard, then we grabbed drinks and headed to come back home. We listened to the Astros game on the way back. (oh joy..lol) As we got almost all the way back, we came upon traffic again. We again used the intelligence of the church members to take some back roads to get us away from the traffic. The funny part about this back road thing was that we took the same exit each time!
Two wonderfully positive things about this day was that the senior pastor was very much involved with this and totally had a servants heart as he went where needed! I truly love my new pastor. The other was that God made it so we didn't face mosquitos. We only batted at LoveBugs throughout the day. This was a true blessing even though we were all prepared.
I very much look forward to helping the next time.

Why am I a baptist?

One of my friends asked me awhile back about why I was a baptist. She was asking me because of my frustration with the Southern Baptist Convention. Through doing a letting survey and finding the church for me, I was able to come to the reasoning of this to my soul. I wanted that reasoning to be deeper than being a preconception southern baptist.
Below is the response I gave to her:
Soooo...you once asked me why I was baptist. I have started various answers at different times. Since reading the news updates on and the blog exchange for NOBTS, I am reminded what is ingrained in my about being a baptist. Politically I don't enjoy the way many in the convention make God out to be. Granted I do believe that NOBTS is a special breed of staff and education. This was not something that I knew forsure before being there and at Southwestern. Here is a link to an article of focus as they clean up the seminary. http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=21828 This outreach mentallity is very much part of being a baptist to me. The Cooperative Program is for the shared funds to reach out. When I read that article I don't feel like Dr.Kelly is even hinting that some aren't called to help minister to this city. This is my upbringing. The education of missions was big when I was a child. I wanted my friends to be saved. (I almost lost my middle school best friend because I was so gunho and didn't understand how God could be accessed differently in a different denomination.) While I never took to the memorization of scriptures, I always understood that God said it and there aren't errors in it. Even with my liberal baptist college education, I still believe this. I think it is in the people that it gets screwed up in what we think it says. While there are other things that make being a baptist unique, these are the main two reasons that it is dear to my soul even when I feel hatred from those who make decisions as baptist leaders.
Point to ponder: Has my life been very baptist lately? Sadly no. I'm working on it again as I get to know my neighbors and build relationships with them. Oddly, it was during the time that I was doing FAITH that I shared with people the least. I somewhat wonder if that was partly do to my surroundings or if I forgot what sharing really was about. I am glad to be back to have the spirit of desire back in me to hold truth to God's word and to believe I can share with others about him.