A Sunny Sunday

When my parent's moved our family from the midwest to the Pacific Northwest in 2001, I was excited for the rain!  Although some of my family quickly found the rain depressing, I have always found it cozy and refreshing.  I did not miss the sun or heat and I always enjoyed the cloudy, rainy Pacific Northwest...

However, I have to admit, that over the past two years as we've spent most of the fall, winter and spring in Montana and California, I have become very fond of the sun! :)  It is awfully nice to wake up to temps in the 70s and enjoy the beautiful sunshine all day!  Tomorrow we are taking the boy's to a pumpkin patch and we won't need coats or rain boots!   Woohoo!

Our fall tour is off to a great start! 
We ministered at a church in Redding on Wednesday night and then also led worship and Josh shared his testimony at their Celebrate Recovery, Thursday night.  -  I am always totally blown away by the time of worship we have at CRs.  Talk about a group of people who worship with abandon!  Praise the Lord!
Friday night we did a concert at another church in Redding.  We went to this church a year and a half ago and absolutely love the heart of the pastor!  It was a gift to minister there again and although the turn out was very small, God moved in a powerful way to encourage us all through fellowship and worshiping together!

Yesterday, we moved the trailer to a different RV park, closer to our next few churches.  We've stayed at this RV park several times and absolutely love it here (great management, quiet guests, pool, playground, good wifi, and clean bathrooms!)  As we were on our way, I was reminded of the first time we stayed here.  We had been planning to stay at a different park, but when we arrived they said our trailer was too old (our last trailer was a '67 and looked super ghetto - so it was hard to blame them).  We weren't sure we were going to be able to find another place with availability at the last minute and I was super stressed.  I called this RV park and explained the situation to the manager.  He was awesome!  They were booked up for some of the nights we needed, but he worked hard to make room for us, showed us lots of kindess and grace, and even gave us a discount!  We've developed a great relationship with this manager, who also used to be a pastor and has been a huge encouragement to Josh! -  Just another example of God's sovereign hand at work, when we felt like things looked bleak!  God is sooo good!

This morning we led the service at another repeat church.  It is always a blessing when we are able to form long-term relationships with churches.  Josh shared a really powerful message from James, weaving in the story of God's deliverance from his job in construction and God's leading and provision in starting this ministry.  Then, I shared briefly about God's provision of our new house.  It was a gift to be a part of this church's service today!

We are looking forward to enjoying a day off as a family tomorrow!  Stay tuned for sunny pumpkin patch pictures! :)