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I have no title for this...

I just need you to pray for me.

I'm having an "off" day. Things just aren't quite right. Not sure what's going to make it better.

I know I'm being dramatically vague, but I just can't go in to the details.

It's just a bummer of a day.

Thanks.

Lookie!.....Pics!

Pics from Retreat. I hope you enjoy. The first pic is the pulpit. The other flowers in the sanctuary were just like these.

This is Patty Ross. She plays a 12-string guitar. She writes her own songs - and they are beautiful.

This is one of me and my girls doing sign language to "I Can Only Imagine". I sang and the girls did most of the sign language. They did real good. Love those girls.

I told you guys how excited I was to be invited to sing with Kyla Rowland. Here's the proof that I did, in fact, sing with her - and her sweet husband, Bob. I can really "let her rip" with them. They like to sing loud. I do too!

This is Kyla Rowland speaking to us. She delivered just the right words that were needed that night. I'm thankful that God gave her the words that were needed that night - we had one come back to the altar and rededicate her life. What a joyous time we had, but how much more were they rejoicing in Heaven?!

This one may be a little hard to see. We had to use the "night vision" setting on the video camera. Let me explain this picture a little. I hope you can make out the cross. It's a wooden cross. Those white things are cards with prayer requests on them. That Friday night, we nailed our prayer requests to the cross while the song "Nail it to the cross" by The Whisnants played.

This picture might be hard to see, too. After the prayer requests were nailed to the cross, Bop (in the white robe) came out with a huge red piece of fabric. The fabric represents the blood of Christ covering our prayer requests. It was a very powerful moment when the fabric was draped over the cross. It makes me think of how God would approvingly look at the finished work of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

This is Mom giving a welcome Saturday morning. The cross behind her is a little easier to see in the light.

This is me, Mom & Bop. We travel locally and sing in different churches, too. This is always a refreshing time for us - even though the 3 of us were up to our eyeballs in "stuff to do" during this weekend.

Some of those girls got a little rowdy after the praise service started. They were like that in all 3 seating sections. It was good.

Kyla reminded us about how wonderful Heaven would be. Sometimes, you just need a reminder that this is not the end.

I think Kyla was "filled to overflowing" on this song.

Hope you enjoyed getting a little glimpse of what a wonderful weekend we had. If you're interested in a video, leave me a comment. The videos are $10 for the set. All of the proceeds will go toward the State Ladies Auxillary hosting the International Women Active for Christ conference when the National Association of Free Will Baptists comes to West Virginia this next summer.

See y'all later.

I did it - again.

I must admit - I never thought that my spare time would be learning how my big car works. It never seemed like something I might even be remotely interested in.

Having said that, being raised by a single mom, you just learn the most cost effective way to do just about anything. So, if I tried, I could probably change my oil, but I'll just let the guys at Wal-Mart think they're doing me some huge favor. =)

Sister is most disgusted by the fact that I'm not afraid to try anything - and usually, I end up with something that works like it's supposed to or looks like what it's supposed to.

Anyway, I called the parts store that I originally bought the spark plugs and wires from. I spoke with someone different than I had the night before. He informed me that the lunkhead that sold me the first set of plugs failed to tell me that those plugs were for a 4-cylinder foreign made car. I have a 6-cylinder American made car. Do you see a problem?

I called said parts store, spoke with "Jim", and asked how much the correct plugs were. There was a $4 difference in the price of the plugs. Ok. These just came out of the box. Will you exchange them? No. So now, I'm out the price of the cheaper plugs and the price of the correct plugs.

So, I contacted a different auto supply store. They laughed (and then apologized) at the mistake the guy from the first store made. They set me up with new plugs and wires. Their plugs (same manufacturer, same plug) were almost $2 more than the first store, but they did a price match. YAY, SECOND STORE!!! And my new best friend's name is "John".

After amputating my arm and leg to pay for the correct plugs and wires, I went home to change them out - AGAIN!!!

Do you believe this?!?!?!?!?!?!

Anyway, after I managed to finish slicing off every finger letting my engine chew my arm off again changing out the stupid plugs for the correct ones, I held my breath and started the car. I knew something wasn't right with the first set of plugs. The car was "putting". You could hear that something wasn't quite right. After changing them to the correct ones, it only sounded like an exhaust should "putt".

(Insert fiesta music and me shaking my booty right here. Well, maybe not shaking my booty. That might be a danger to me or some innocent bystander.)

So, after much laying on my engine (it gives new meaning to the "laying on of hands" that scripture speaks of), my car runs muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better. That's one step closer to having it back on the road.

I'll be back with the summary of the lesson I taught last night during Youth Meeting. Even the kids were commenting on how timely the lesson was.

I did it.

I finally finished changing the spark plugs and wires in my big car.

I know you're asking, "Why didn't C do that?"

My simple answer, C has not one "handy-man" bone in his body. He does ok at the plant - with the machines he works with. But not at home.

My neighbors were getting a kick out of watching me crawl into the engine of my car. At one point, I was laying on the car with my feet off the ground. I'm sure it was very funny and scary to watch.

Funny, in the fact that it looked like the engine of my car was eating me, and scary, in the fact that my hinder parts were sticking out in rare form.

I'm sure you're wondering why all the rush to get this car fixed.

Well, C informed me that they're switching him to second shift but that he did turn in a request to remain on third. He still must go to second, but his supervisor and the 3rd shift mgr are trying hard to get him back on 3rd.

So, he will probably take the little car and I'll take the big car. It's been really nice, these last few months. We've been sharing the little car because the big car was having issues. Now, I'm trying to fix the issues because we won't be able to share a car anymore.

Pray for me. I'll be calling my real mechanic to see if he can work the big car in this afternoon or tomorrow. All I know - it needs to be on the road by Monday. That's when the big "schedule shift" starts.

Pray for C. Another guy from our church started right after C. They've done the same thing to him. He said the adjustment from 3rd to 2nd isn't fun. He's been on 2nd for almost a month. He told C that it was veeeeeeeeeeeery sllllllllllllllllllllllowly getting easier.

I'll let you know how the car thing works out...

Where was I?......

Oh, yes. I was telling you about the long weekend, but I've had a few long weeks at The Office where I've not been able to finish my story.

I know you're terribly distraught.

Anyway, I did manage to change clothes in the 2 minutes I had left after walking from the van into the room where my clothes were. I did manage to change and be out for starting time. A little (read: lot) sweaty perhaps, but there and ready to lead congregational singing while being out of breath. It's a vision of loveliness, isn't it? (Do you think I can't hear you laughing?)

The thought for the weekend was "Farther On - I Can Only Imagine", and it became more than I could imagine that weekend. We started the evening off singing "The Unclouded Day". You've never heard it sung til you hear 200+ women singing it in 3-part harmony. Wow! What a sound.

We had some special music by one of our new good friends, Patty Ross. She wrote her own songs - and played them on a 12-string guitar, no less. They were beautiful.

The girls from my youth group did a fantastic job, too. I'm so proud of them.

Kyla was the speaker for this meeting and she was truly led by the Spirit. She just laid out what God wanted her to say, and we had one person go to the altar. Her mom goes to our church. She'd gone to church when she was younger and stopped coming. I was surprised to see her there, but I'm glad she was. She rededicated her life and committed to raise her daughter in church. What a big step for her.

After the altar call was over, we broke for light refreshments. By this time, it's about 9:15. That's almost 3 hours of church. It didn't seem like it at all.

When we came back from the break, there was a slideshow of cross and sky pics. This was one of Bop's projects. She'd gone to different churches in the area, as well as any road trip that was taken, and took pics of crosses on the outsides of buildings, crosses that were standing in the "church yards", windows that had crosses in them, she even went to the cemetary and took pics of tombstones. (You get some of the best cross and church pics from the cemetary.) Well, while these were rolling thru like a slideshow, we'd picked some scripture about the cross and had different women read these passages. Then, the slideshow was turned off, and a recording was played. It was a man reading scripture in monologue style, telling the story of how man fell, God sacrificed Christ to be the redemption for man's sin, and how we can take all our cares and lay them at the feet of Jesus for Him to take care of. During this recording, there comes a black-robed individual dragging a cross up the aisle. When the voices on the recording came to where Christ was crucified, the black-robed person laid the cross on the floor and drove spikes into it. Then, some music started to play - the first song was titled, "Nail it to the cross". One by one, the ladies came and nailed their prayer requests to this cross. After the ladies were finished, the black-robed person went into the room behind the platform. Then, a white-robed person came out with a huge, red piece of fabric and draped it over the cross.

Women were shouting and praising the Lord. It was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever been a part of. After we were done praying for the requests we nailed to the cross, we dismissed for the night.

Stay tuned to find out how Saturday went...

I'M BACK!!!

Where to begin? Hmmmmm. (This might get a little long - sorry!)

#1 - Long weekend.

I spent the long weekend working on the Ladies Meeting that was coming up. Lots of time spent at the sewing machine. I finished my costume and a couple other projects for the upcoming meeting. Then, we (Mom, her BFF - Bop, C, and me) spent all day Monday at church decorating. Bop & C took care of the fellowship hall (seperate building). Mom & I worked on the main building.

Lots of wreaths, flowers, potpourri, and such flying around in the sanctuary. It turned out beautiful, if I do say so myself. There was also much ladder lugging. Do you know how heavy a petrified wooden step-ladder is? Waaaaaaaaay to heavy.

Mom fixed a huge flower arrangement for the top of the piano (baby grand in the sanctuary) and one for the communion table, but they needed something between these arrangements and the wood. Our sanctuary has dark wood in it. The piano is kinda dark, but the communion table is cherry wood with mahogany stain. So, Mom bought 2 tablecloths in a country blue (the sanctuary has blue carpet and pews) , one was draped across the top of the piano and set the arrangement on top; the other, I cut about 15" off the end. It became a table runner for the communion table. The rest of it was used as a regular table cloth for the registration table.

We absolutely wore ourselves out on Monday. Now, I know you're wondering, did you cook out or anything, seeing as how it was Labor Day and all? No. We had a delicious meal, which was picked up at Subway on the way back from one of the numerous trips to Wal-Mart. Rest assured, we did not starve.

#2 - Practice with the girls from the youth group.

I can't remember if I told you that I was going to have the girls from the youth group help me with the theme song for the Ladies Meeting, but that was the plan.

I was going to use all 5 of them to help me. Then, one of them (SG), her mom had to have emergency surgery. She was out. Down to 4. Then, I got a call from a different one (S). Her parents decided to have her (and her younger brother) pick one sport to play per school year. (It makes sense to me. You can't be in 684 places at one time, so they get to pick one.) Well, she picked volleyball. It just so happens that this is volleyball season. I told her to go have fun. She's out. Down to 3. Yet again, my phone rang. It was B's mom. She explained to me that, even though B told me she would do it, she gets stage fright - so she won't be there, either. She's out. Down to 2. I told E and M that it was up to them. They told me they were up to the challenge.

#3 - Friday.

I left work about noon-ish. Then I stopped to pick up some ham salad, pick up C, drop off a deposit at the bank, pick up some lunch, and get to church as early as possible. We got there about 1:30. Which was good considering that there was a FOOTBALL! GAME! ON! SATURDAY! And there were only 9,670,000,000 people in our city - all for the game. You could say that traffic was bad. Actually, that would be an understatement.

Kyla came down to set up her stuff. We did a sound check while she was there - boy, did we sound good!! When we got done, she left to get a little rest, a bite to eat and the diva look going. Then about 5:30, Mom came back. No sooner did she set her purse down, her cell rang. One group of ladies (from a town about 2 hours-ish away) called and said that their bus was broke down at their hotel in the other end of town. They needed a ride. So, I asked Mom for her keys and took her minivan. (I would've drove my car, but I only have a small car.) By the time I pulled onto the parking lot with those women, I had 3 minutes to start time. Talk about pushing it.

To be continued....