A story and a blessing!

So I just discovered our first crayon on the furniture incident! I bought Josiah his first crayons on Monday(previously he just used markers, pencils, etc. cause that's what we had around). I always put him in his highchair to color in order to keep the coloring contained and except for a few colored pencil markings on the tile from when he drops the pencils this has been a successful feat ...until Monday apparently! After he finished coloring and I got him out of his highchair unbeknownst to me he somehow managed to hold onto the black crayon. I found him still clutching it a just few short minutes later and at a quick sweeping glance determined no creative coloring had been done anywhere. Today as I was on my knees getting a ball out from under the end table I found his lovely artwork...two large black crayon scribbles on the side of the sofa! Thankfully a little incredible and a rag did the trick and it came out easily! I had to chuckle a little knowing this little first won't be the last, especially since Jay and I both had some infamous coloring on walls and furniture incidents as children.

I wanna brag on the leadership in our church for a minute now! Last night Jay and I attended an elder appreciation dinner, it was mainly staff and elders and spouses in attendance. It was such a neat evening. The purpose of the evening was to honor our elders for their Christlike leadership in our church. The staff members had all written some words of appreciation for each elder and named a fruit of the Spirit that they most thought of when thinking about that particular elder. All the words written by each staff member were compiled into one letter and our preacher read them over each elder one by one. Being somewhat new to the church it was so neat to hear more about each elders character and the fruit they were most known for. I was moved to tears just listening to it all...partly because our preacher was choked up and seeing someone else cry is about all it takes for me to start blubbering, but mainly because I was overwhelmed and humbled to be a part of such a loving, encouraging, and unified group of leaders. At the end of the night, Carl (our preacher) described our group as having "miraculous unity even with all our diversity" and one the way home we discussed how this is how God intended it to be in His church. I wish so much this is how it always was in every church body...can you imagine how the gates of hell would be pushed back as a completely unified church made a powerful difference in our communities? That they (the world) would know us by our love...that's my prayer today! I am so very thankful and totally humbled God has allowed us to be a part of His church and that He has faithfully guided us to where we are!