It Matters

If you’ve read my blog at all within the last half a year, you know that we launched a new church last April.

It’s been a huge undertaking, as you can imagine.  There is so much more that goes into making it happen than just showing up on Sunday.  Of course, we fully believe that God is building this church, so there is great comfort in that.

However, it takes a lot of volunteers (I prefer calling them servers or team members).  We’ve stated before that no one at our church is on salary (maybe one day we will be able to offer a little to pastoral staff or something, but for sure not for at least the first year).

What that means is that everything that is being done is being accomplished by volunteers.  After sending out an email to our leadership team this morning, I was reminded just how important everything they (we) do is.

I had a guy playing electric with our praise band a while back.  He was a good guitarist, but was having trouble getting his parts down this particular Sunday morning.  I hate feeling unsure about things before a service starts.  So he was trying to reassure me, and said, “None of it will matter in an hour anyway.”  He meant that once the service was over that day, it wouldn’t matter.

At first I kinda smiled and chuckled in agreement.  Then it hit me. . . His outlook, albeit well-meaning, was completely wrong.  All of it matters.  And it matters for eternity.  What we are doing — every effort we give, minute we spend, everything — is making a difference in eternity.

Of course mistakes will be made.  (Sshh, don’t tell anyone, but I occasionally make them myself!)  But we should give our absolute best in all of our efforts because we don’t know who God is going to send through our doors and how our actions/efforts might effect the decisions they make about Jesus.

So, if you serve in your church/community/home/whatever, know that IT MATTERS!  What you do matters for eternity.

Our co-pastor has quoted this a couple of times in his messages.  It is from a local radio morning show and seems so appropriate to this discussion:

This is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.

I can waste it or use it for good.
What I do today is important, because
I’m exchanging a day of my life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever,
leaving something I have traded for it.
I want it to be gain, not loss;
good, not evil; success, not failure;
in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it.

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Keys Vacay, Finale

Thursday, after we launched the boat and were waiting on Joe Michael to get back from parking the truck/trailer, we looked up and saw this across the canal:

So cool!

Friday was our last day in the Keys and we really just wanted to relax.  We slept in and just stayed in our room being lazy and enjoying our last morning of our vacation.  Then we spent the afternoon at the pool and swimming in the lagoon.  Kevin and Christy came to hang out with us too.  We all had a fun time together!

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That night, we drove to Key West for dinner and sight-seeing.  We had to park forever away, but while we were walking to the restaurant, we saw and heard this:

(E)

Three boys, probably aged 10-12, singing and playing the keyboard on the sidewalk.  They were really really good!  I got video with my phone to show my kids, but the quality is crappy so I won’t post it here.  But it was a fun thing to see!

We ate dinner at Blue Heaven.  It was a great restaurant with a really cool atmosphere.  We had to wait a bit for our table, but we managed to keep busy:

(E)(E)(E)(E)(E)

Dinner was yummy and fun, and we finished it off with a delicious (& monstrous) piece of Key Lime Pie!

After dinner we walked along Duvall Street.  But we got off to a late start by the time dinner was over, and we started at the ‘wrong’ end of Duvall.  Joe Michael was ready to leave after only a few minutes of being disgusted by some of the things we saw (which I will not be posting about here!).

Saturday morning we pulled out of the resort around 6:30 and were home, albeit exhausted, about 12 hours later.  It was such a fun trip!

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Keys Vacay, Pt. 3

I have a confession: I don’t like to snorkel.  Yes, I went to the Keys, and I don’t like to snorkel.  I’m fully aware that there are beautiful fish and reefs to see; I’ve seen them before.  I’m fully aware that you must snorkel (or dive) to be able to lobster.  I know, but I don’t like to snorkel.

I know it’s silly, but I don’t breathe well through a snorkel; I get claustro or something.  And when I’m down in the water, in addition to not breathing well, I start thinking too much.  Ya know, about what might be watching me or about to get me or whatever.  And that doesn’t ease my breathing at all.  So go ahead, call me a chicken; I don’t care.  I really do love being on the boat and watching everyone snorkel.  I’m not saying I don’t ever snorkel, but I didn’t on this trip.  And I don’t regret it because I had a wonderful time.

Wednesday was the start of the Lobster Mini Season.  Morgan and I hung out by the pool pretty much all day while our husbands went out and tried to learn to lobster.  Apparently, there’s a specific way to do it: one person pokes it with a special tickle stick, then the other captures it in the net.  Our friend, Kevin (whom we stayed with the first night down there), had given Joe Michael a few numbers of places that they had lobstered before.  Joe Michael and Erich met Kevin out on the water to watch him and his brother in action and learn what to do.  Then they went out on their own to find some lobster.  They only got 5 or 6.

On Thursday, Morgan and I joined them.  I didn’t lobster with them, but I cheered them on from the boat and took some pictures:

Got one:

Morgan got the job of putting it in the cooler and it tried to get her!

As far as lobstering success in regards to numbers goes, well, they got less than the previous day!  Oh well, everyone had fun!

That night we went back to Island Fish Co. with Kevin and his girlfriend, Christy.  Woohoo for more Key Lime Coladas!! 

(E)

Tomorrow, I’ll finish up the vacation posts!

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Keys Vacay, Pt. 2

So, we went to the Keys for the Mini Lobster Season.  Well, sort of.  I went to the Keys for a vacation, and if lobstering was part of that, so be it.  Haha!

But the Mini Season started Wednesday, so we had Tuesday to spend however we wanted.  I remember how much I loved Bahia Honda State Park as a teenager, so we decided to spend the day there.

About 5 minutes after getting settled on the beach and getting in the water…

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…a couple of storms threatened from the Atlantic.  We knew one was going to scoot by without bothering us, but the 2nd one wasn’t as gracious.  It was quite a hike to get across to the beach we were on, so once we heard the thunder closer, we grabbed our stuff quickly (nice cameras, etc.) and made a mad dash for some cover.  After stopping for a minute under about a 100 ft. tall metal bridge, we decided that probably wasn’t the best place to be in a storm, so we found shelter elsewhere.

The bad part of the storm passed, so my crazy/hilarious husband entertained us with a rain dance:

And he totally may divorce me if he sees I posted those!  Haha!

Once the rain passed, we walked up through the most mosquito-infested path…

(E)

…to the big bridge to look out over everything…

…and take some photos…

(E)

(E)

Across from the bridge we were on.  The first one is just for perspective for the second one:

Then we went down to a different part of the beach and took a few more pictures:

[Side note: any photos with (E) behind them were taken by Erich, who has an amazing gifting with a camera!]

It was a great day!  We stopped at Sparky’s at Key Colony for dinner on the way back to resort.  Yummy dinner again!  I’ll pick up tomorrow with some lobstering!

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Keys Vacay, Pt. 1

Sunday, July 24th, we got up, got the fam ready for church.  We gave our three kiddos extra hugs and kisses before the service started, led worship (as we always do) and then skipped out on the rest of the service (as we had planned, and made arrangements to do).  We were now on VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We could feel it as soon as we got in the car to leave church!  It was like something had already lifted and our minds were already in vacation mode!  All we had to do was meet our best friends at our house, put everything in the truck, and tarp the boat, and we were off!

Morgan and I were prepared with lots of reading material for our long ride down.  I was in the middle of The Help (if you haven’t read it, you must! It’s amazing!).  How long?  We thought it would be about 15 hours to get there, so we had planned to stay somewhere along the way that night.  But we made great time and got there in about 12 hours!  The first night we stayed with a friend who had rented a 3-bedroom townhouse and who wasn’t expecting the rest of his family for another day or two.  It was perfect (except that Erich & Morgan’s room apparently smelled like pee!).

So, Monday, we drove the short remaining distance (<10 miles) to our resort and went to check in.  One room was ready.  While waiting for the other room, we decided to eat some lunch and look around a little.  We took Erich & Morgan to their room and went to ours.  Uh oh – got a call saying that Erich & Morgan were totally in the wrong place, that the resort staff had been extremely slow to respond (and fairly uninformed when they actually did), and that when they figured out where they were supposed to be, E&M ended up taking a trolley ride around the entire resort only to realize they could have walked right next door!

Some of Erich’s incredible pics of the resort (seriously, this resort needs to hire him for their advertising):

I don’t think I even got any shots of our room, but here is the view off our balcony from our bed:

Once we got everything worked out and got settled in our rooms, we took the boat out into the Atlantic to find a reef to snorkel.  It was a gorgeous day, but very windy (which ended up being the theme of our boating adventures for the week).  We took a pretty good beating and had fun getting soaked by the spray and flying through the air with every wave on the boat!

Eating dinner out was one of our favorite things about vacation.  With my insistence that we not eat at the same wonderful place every night (Island Fish Co.), and with Erich’s iphone app that gave us ratings for restaurants, we found some great places to eat!

We got a towel guy at the pool to snap our photo before we left for dinner Monday evening.

Monday night we ate at Island Fish Co.  The food was incredible and the drinks were very yummy as well!

The Key Lime Coladas were especially yummy!

Tuesday we went to Bahia Honda to sight-see and enjoy the beautiful beach.  I went there with my family as a teenager, and remembered how much I loved it.  I’ll pick up there tomorrow!

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Blue Springs

Joe Michael and I just returned home, on Saturday evening, from a week-long vacation in the Keys with our best friends.  We had a really wonderful time, and I will be blogging about that later.

But we were so exhausted.  We led worship on Sunday at church and then pretty much laid in the bed the rest of the day.  So imagine my surprise, on Monday morning, when hubby wanted to jump in the car with the family and drive to a park about an hour away.  I will admit that I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the idea, since I hadn’t quite recovered from our 12-hour trip back from the Keys.  Plus, my suitcase was still laying on my floor just begging to be unpacked.

But I agreed, and I’m so glad we went!  My husbands’ parents and his sister and her two kiddos (“the cousins”, as my kids call them) came along as well.  Everyone had a wonderful time, and here are the pictures to prove it!

The park was Blue Springs, and well, it was spring water, meaning very very cold!  My husband insisted that there was no easing into the water.  He felt he needed to just dive right in!

My nephew, Chandler had a pretty great dive as well!

Danielle, my niece, was one of us who got the job of holding Sadie.  Sadie wanted to swim, but then was too cold once she actually got in the water.  So here’s Danielle holding her.

Claire jumped in also.  It felt good, being in the heat once you had cooled off in the freezing water!

Claire & her daddy:

This was a great place for kids to swim and play.  In addition to the diving board, there was a kiddie-pool area where it was shallower, and a big slide the kids could slide down into the water.  All the kids had fun going on the slide.

Wes climbing up~

And he’s off into the water~

Claire waving to me from the [almost] top:

Danielle going off into the water~

Shana (my sister-in-law) with Sadie duty:

And Sadie playing with Shana’s sunglasses~

Three out of the five cousins who adore each other:

Sadie jumping to Daddy, and Daddy holding her:

There was a real nice covered picnic table area where we left all of our stuff, ate lunch, and sat around warming up after coming out of the cold water.  Sadie enjoyed her lunch, and mostly her CapriSun:

Grandaddy:

Shana, Sadie, and Grandmomma getting some sun together:

And a sweet interaction between Shana & Sadie (whom Shana has nicknamed “Turkey Lurkey”):

My beautiful Claire:

Chandler:

Both girls enjoyed laying out in the sun on their towels:

It was a really fun day!  The kids are already begging to go back again!

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