So tonight Travis and I had the honor and privilege to help with our churches Thanksgiving Outreach, which is awesome! We made the enough green bean casserole to help serve 16,000 people, SERIOUSLY!! How awesome is that! Glory to God for the heart of our church to serve the community! (Geez, enough with the exclamation points, I get a little carried away and the more excited my brain gets the more excited my typing gets and before I know it I have screamed at you in every sentence...its a nice happy scream though)
We joined The Ark church about 4 years ago, neither of us ever really growing up in church we decided very early on in our marriage that we were not cool enough to try and do this alone. Oddly enough even though we didn't have a "churchy" background, or necessarily know a lot about The Bible, or sadly did we really understand the power our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ had, we were both believers and had an urge to make this marriage a testament of God. The honest fact is, we loved church and had actually started meeting people there, but we were both hung up on our own human feelings of nervousness and fear of embarrassment of how little we actually knew (and still know, lets be honest, I still sometimes learn about some of the stories from The Bible while helping in Ark Kids, thank goodness for Veggie Tales, and great preschool teachers, lol), however we have quickly figured out God didn't let that stop him with His plan. In reality, that feeling I was putting on myself was exactly that, a feeling that I was letting myself have, an insecurity from the enemy that is down right silly. The more I let go of my life and give it over to God the more I get pushed in the opposite direction that I ever thought I would go. Our first major thing we did was before we got married we took the Financial Peace University (that funny enough cost us a 100 dollars that put us in anything but financial peace after we paid that, lol), and let me tell you, it was amazing. It taught us so much right off the bat about money, marriage and God that we never knew, it even gave us some really super awesome friends from it! Then shortly after we got married, like real shortly, like 4 months after we said "I Do" we were randomly asked to participate in a marriage class...and by participate I mean help facilitate a group on a class about marriage, now if your reaction was like ours, you probably said "That is such an honor but you do realize that we have been married 4 months and just last night had a fight where we dumped each others belongings down the stairs...well ok so your reaction probably wasn't exactly like ours, but still. So with a little nervous, giggle, we said we would do it. BEST. THING. EVER! Not only have did we grow as a couple, but we also learned as a couple, the group we were with was amazing, they taught us so much. Sometimes we laughed the whole time and sometimes we cried (well I cried, I always cry) but we always left there being like wow! Then feeling like old veterans, we decided our serving was good, and we had done what we needed to do, flexed our muscles, kissed out biceps, and peaced out to became just "Church goers". Now you may have seen a theme coming up in this, but God pretty much laughed at me when I told him "thanks for the opportunity, I had done my duty and was just going to coast for a while". He quickly had me right in amongst it again. I'm not sure what came over me the day I signed up to work in the preschool with 3, 4 and 5 year old kids. Snotty nosed, shirts tucked into their underwear when they come out of the bathroom, always wasn't to be a line leader, and hold your hand kids. When I tell you I feel in love with it, I mean I fell in love with it! There was little boy in there that was 5 years old and he had down syndrome, and as much work as he was to keep up with for the hour a week I helped, I loved that kid, I prayed for him so much, and just wanted to hug him every time I saw him. He was my little buddy! I was always a little disappointed when he wasn't there. This hour a week in the preschool has been so precious to me in ways that I didn't even realize. Oh and I wasn't kidding when I said I had learned things during our Adventure Land Bible lessons, lol, wait that's not funny, I'm serious!
So that is a little back story on where we are today, Thanksgiving outreach. About a month ago Travis and I were approached by the youth pastor about helping with the youth group on Wednesday nights. Since I'm a jump right in kinda girl (which let me tell you my husband absolutely adores about me, NOT) I was like oh yes, lets do it! Then reality set in (I'm pretty sure I heard that creepy duhn, duhn, duhn music) if i felt like 5 year old kids knew more then me, then teenagers would eat me alive. I got scared. Real scared. And even after doing it for a month or longer now, I'm still scared. But I know that this is exactly where God has placed us! I have been put right in the middle of some of the coolest kids, and adults I know that know more about the Lord then I could ever imagine knowing, but yet I feel at most peace with it then I have with anything in the entire world. He's got this!
Ok, so here is really how we got where we are today (I promise no more rambling about other things...I hope, I just cant help myself, its like my fingers want to type one thing and my brain says not talk about this...dang it, there I go again) Thanksgiving outreach tonight was all of the Ark Kids and AYC volunteers and kids. It was so cool, we mixed industrial size cans of green beans, with industrial sized cans of cream of mushroom, and table spoons of pepper (which may or may not have accidentally gotten wind blown straight up into my nose, to which I ran out of the tent and accidentally sneezed on a lady...good thing we were at church surrounded by nice people) just being there surrounded by so many people that would give their time and love and support to our community blew me away. This was a seriously awesome display of the heart of our church, one in which I am proud to call my church family and be confident in the fact that this is EXACTLY where God has placed my and my wonderful husband!
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