Weekend church activities

Pearls and Dreams

Ok, inspite of my husband being in the hospital this weekend, I had a very active church weekend, and ... I felt the best way to keep my sanity in tact, was to follow through with my committments.

Friday Night, I went to small group as usual, only this time, I was facilitating it. Something so far out of my normal activity, so far out of my comfort zone ... I was sure I was not going to get through it.
Tuesday night at my Habitat class, I'd invited one of my class members, I'd TOTALLY forgotten I'd invited her, so when she walked in, I was shocked. We had a smaller than normal group, but more than we'd had the week before. I started out with an ice breaker that I'd made up myself ... and it went pretty well. In the Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren says that we have each been given a SHAPE (spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personalities, experience) and then he talks about all the people who were 'misfits' before God called them into his service. I made up 5 questions relateing to SHAPE and then the 6th question of "what Biblical misfit do you most relate to and why?"
I got 100% participation ... including from the coffee shop owner (church member who hasn't been participating in our small group) AND my friend from Habitat!!!!
They all laughed and had a good time. Then we watched the Rick Warren video, then we broke into groups, I broke them up, we had 8 females, 4 males and made the males go into one group, and devided the two female groups ... I, sigh, behaved myself and split my best friend and I up, which really impressed our associate pastor with my maturity (grin)
We then had prayer time ... prayed for Don, for my knee which is REALLY REALLY hurting, I'm having a lot of fun in physical therapy, but it's not giving me a whole lot of relief. I'm loosing hope in that 2% chance that it'd save me from surgery.

When we broke up, the associate pastor came up to me, and she gave me a big hug and said "You did GREAT! You're a natural and I really know you're headed to this being the norm for your ministry!"
Um ..thanks for the complement ...now let me go back and hide in my nice quiet little music office where I mess around with sheet music, not people!!!!

Saturday morning, our church was putting on a state wide childrens ministry conference ... I helped the registration table. That's all I was signed up for, but on Thursday, I'd agreed to be an all day gofer. On Saturday, I backed out of the all day gofer because of Don being in the hospital and just did what I'd originally committed to.
90 minutes of signing people in, helping them register for their break out sessions, greeting them and telling them the plan for the day and then I was done.

Off to the hospital to visit Don then back to the grocery store to pick up sherbert & punch for today's ministry fair. Back to the church to put it in the church freezer to keep my teenaged monkey's er boys out of it ... and people were still milling around as the last session was settling in.

This morning, get up, put my hair in pig tails, put on the orange red and yellow tye dye kids ministry tee shirt, flowere flip flops, hawaiian hat and flowered lei and off to church.
Ministry fair was coming after church! I woke up late. I normally go in at 9 so I can be there to help the worship team with any gofer stuff ..but I didn't wake up till 9. Oh well. I'm sure they understood. THey saved my job for me too (grin) I wonder if Carla knows how much that means to me that she didn't just do it, but that she knew I'd do it for her when I got there! :)

During Sunday school we helped to get things ready for the ministry fair ... I learned soemthing new ... there is a reason they put fresh pineapple on the list of foods to avoid when you're latex allergic ...after cutting 1.25 pineapples from Hawaii ... my hands were red, splotchy, raw and swelling ... and well ... I'm allergic to them. My ears itch, my throat itches, I have a mild case of hives from the 5 to 8 slices of pineapple I injested. I should have listened ...
So, add fresh pineapple to my list of kiwi, strawberries , latex ... why doesn't canned pineapple react??????/

Then, I ran up to the kids ministry wing. This was the first week of PIPP JR ... the prayer ministry I talked about a few weeks ago. I went from class to class to grab the few kids that would be participating. Shock of all shock ...and I had TWELVE kids who feel strong enough about praying for their leaders that they're willing to step out of what's normal to pray outload for their pastor!!!!!
how cool is that!!!! 10 of the 12 prayed out loud!! Without prompting!! My son, and my best friends daughter were the two hold outs. BEnjamin,, has a shy streaak in him, his OCD kind of paralysis him in these situations, he'll be ok

Then the ministry fair ... we served sherbert/lemon lime soda in dixie cups with umbrella's at the kids ministry table and got 6 new recruits. I don't know how many new recruits the youth group got .. I know they got one ... me ... as a praayer warrior lol


It was exciting to see all the different ministries the churhc is invovlved ... in cluding our small groups, the habitat home, the missions, the music, kids , youth .... and I'm in sooo many of them ... now wonder I'm tired all the time and a happy tired at that!!!!!!!!

I'll try to post more later.

It was a good but utterly exhausting weekend.