Being blessed by John MacArthur

Our little church was incredibly blessed to have John MacArthur come to speak yesterday. He was in town for a meeting with some other staff and preached at our church while he was in town. It was SUCH a blessing having him here and was an incredible encouragement to have him commend our church plant both by his presence and by his words. He preached on Revelation 1 which is about how Christ is in the midst of his church. I literally cried through most of his message it was such a blessing to me. It was so encouraging to hear that in the midst of our hardest efforts and sacrifices, the blessings, and the pain that CHRIST is in our church.

Also, I got to meet him, thank him, and shake his hand for the first time. My life has been forever changed through God working through the ministry of this man and I am incredibly thankful. I well up with emotion every time I even think about him.

Such a huge blessing! You can hear his message to our little humble church recorded through our little humble recorder here. Just go to the podcast section on the right-hand side.

by the way- The picture credit goes to Tiffany and her iphone. Way to go T!!

Owen is three!

We had a wonderful time celebrating Owen's third birthday. We decided to set aside a day to do the things that we know he has been dreaming of.

We have been going through The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom in our preschool time. (We incorporate the Before Five in a Row curriculum as part of our preschool time- and The Big Green Pocketbook is one of the books the curriculum goes through.)

In this book a little girl gets on a bus with her mother and travels around town helping her mother with her errands. They go to an ice cream store, the bank, a jewelry shop, and many other places. Everywhere they go she puts some little treasure that had been given her from that place into her pocketbook (i.e. a receipt, a key chain, a box of crayons, etc. that had been given to her).

Every time we read this book Owen asks to ride a bus too and to go to the ice cream store. So for his birthday we fulfilled his dream to ride a bus and in some ways reenacted the story. We read the book to him before we left and he was so very excited. He brought along his backpack for his very own treasures.

He didn't say a word throughout the whole ride. He was just mesmerized. However, once we got off he couldn't stop talking about his experience and wanted to make sure that we were going to ride it again. When we confirmed that we would ride it back to our car he was ready to go to THE ICE CREAM STORE!! (dessert #1 for the day)

Our next three stops were the bank (to go along with his story and to purchase his savings bond from GG), the toy shop so he could pick out a toy, and the bar so he could have an emergency potty break :).

We got back on the bus and then went home for nap.

After nap Owen dream #2 was fulfilled: riding a horse! Since going to the fair last summer he asks to ride just about every horse he sees. So we went to a local ranch and he got to ride Brown Jug- the pony. T-T, Uncle Andrew, sisters, and Grandma Mumma joined us as well.

We then went to Sidewinders (a local restaurant) for dinner where he had dessert #2

Then returned home to have daddy's amazing cake made 100% from scratch! (Dessert #3!!) Matt is the new baker in the house and insists on being in charge of birthday cakes. Matt made, upon Owen's request, a dinosaur and a car out of modeling chocolate.

We are so thankful for you, Owen, and your zeal for life and compassion for others! You are such a joy to us and we are so proud of the little boy you are becoming. We love you!

Love, mom and dad