A Snow Storm To Remember...

We'll call it the blizzard of '08, for all practical purposes. Friday, March 7 and Saturday March 8th were blustery days full of snow. It was all light and puffy, but in all I think we got about 14 inches. After getting home late on Friday to a worried husband, it was really nice to be in a warm house and let the world swirl outside. Around 11:30pm Friday night we got cabin fever and went out to run around the house and make snow angels. It was truely a winter wonderland! Saturday was more of the same and we actually spent the day working at cleaning our house, and got almost the whole thing done! What fun to work together on much needed projects. Sunday we had a good time worshipping and going over the Sunday school lesson together. We missed being in church though and realized how much we love meeting with our church on Sundays.

Winter Retreat

The Winter Retreat (Feb.21-23) with the youth group was a great time! We went to Marietta, Ohio to the two-house property of a friend of the church. It is almost on the West Virginia border and rarely snows there. However, for our wintery weekend, it had just snowed 2-3 inches. It was fun riding fourwheelers and sledding down the mountain. We spent the weekend on a study of Colossians 3-4. It was the end of a study of the book of Colossians. The title of the weekend was "Set Apart For Life" and the emphasis was about what the Lord has done and given for us to follow Him for a lifetime. We talked about being different from a culture that readily gives up on most everything and anything.

Session 1 - Set Your Hearts - Our first call is to salvation and to the passionate love of God

Session 2 - Set Your Minds - The love of God with our minds is a great gift and key to knowing Him and growing in Him.

Session 3 - Set It Down - Weeds that would choke out our faith. We talked about letting God take out the deepest rooted habits and frequently shallow sins in our hearts daily.

Session 4 - Set It Up - Establishing character and strength, building blocks for ways to live like Jesus

Session 5 - Set For Life - 4 places God has set up for us to live out holiness - Family/At home, Work, Church, Evanglism.

We were really blessed by some of the things that they shared and also by the way the Lord pulled everything together. Matthew and I had never given talked for a whole weekend, much less spent so long on one verse/chapter, but God opened His word to us and it really was a growing time and something that He did!

It was good to have a good mix of people there and we are asking God what all He has for us in the next few years. We love these guys and pray that God will continue to open their hearts and minds for ever deeper love and service to Him.