Gottcha!!

You thought you were going to read something interesting? lol

Naw, just thought I would stop by and see my own blog which has been woefully ignored lately.

Let's see.....

I am behind in my online photography class but I hope to catch up this week.
I had my last day crop as a Creative Memories consultant last weekend.
I am going to go and crop with my friend Ruby at a Croptoberfest in DeSoto this coming weekend.
In about 2 and a half weeks, I will be leading a scrapbooking retreat in Collinsville.
My friend Marie could use your prayers as she continutes to wage her battle with cancer.
My friend Renna is going through Chemo so she could use your prayers as well.
My new friend Ryan who wants to go to New Guinea as a missionary needs all the prayers he can get for sponsorship and one time donations!
Fall is on the way. I love Fall, it's my favorite time of the year.
We have 2 bdays in this house tomorrow! Wooo Hoo!!

I think that's it for now!

See ya! God Bless you!!

WOW!!

Can you believe it's been April since I have been here?

Hmm...what's been going on with me lately?

Oh....I am so enjoying the Beth Moore "Breaking Free" bible study I am doing this summer! This week we are studying about God's unfailing love. Unfailing love. Unfailing LOVE. Even though our friends, our spouses, our parents, our children fail us, God will never stop loving us. He will discipline us but he will not stop loving us. I have been smiling since I started reading the lesson. I am not the type of person who feels like it is hard for someone or God to love me because I have never suffered from lack of self esteem! Many people, however, just don't have a good picture of themselves. Even without the good picture, God still loves them for who they are NOW. We don't have to be better or try harder (although we should always strive to grow) but God loves us anyway NOW. He sent his son for us....his son who was so bruised and battered at the cross that he didn't look human anymore. Jesus covered all our sins with blood. With love. There's that smile again!!

I am so reaching for more of the Potter and and hoping to learn more about being Clay - about being mold able and flexible and understanding the loving hands of the Potter.

I am still praying for my friend Marie that she continue to receive healing. Her doctors discovered another tumor but Marie is in good spirits. My smart friend Jeannie once said that "cancer is a win-win situation for Christians". Either you stay here and live or you go home and really begin to live. Sounds like a win-win to me!! Marie told me that she has witnessed to others because of the cancer. What a blessing in disguise.

One of my other friends, Renna is going to talk to an oncologist this week. Her doctor believes that she has breast cancer. Renna is a mighty woman of God - she is lucky to have friends and family lifting her up in prayer! I hope to talk with her this week!

That's it for now! God bless you!!

A New Small Group!!!

To continue my story a little bit we have to catch up with where I am now.

After my pastor died in the small church that I attended in Corinth, I moved back to my previous church. I didn't want to go back, I felt like I would be going back to Egypt. The Holy Spirit continued to guide me back there and so I went. I renewed old friendships, I renewed a friendship with someone who became my downline for my Creative Memories business, I got closer to my Pastor and his wife than ever before but I still felt like it was only for a season.

In the meantime, my oldest daughter had started visiting a church near where we live. She asked me to visit with her. I really liked it - its a non traditional Southern Baptist church but it's HUGE and almost everybody there is college age! Matt, the pastor, said that if you are over 30 then we have prayed for you to come! lol

So since I was going to my former church by myself and really felt like I needed a family connection, I started regularly visiting with my daugther but looking backward - like Lot's wife. I was comparing this new church to my previous churchs. I felt like the current church isn't spiritual enough, the music wasn't what I liked, there are too many people, etc. Why do we look back? Why do we look back at things in our lives that cannot be changed. The death of my pastor really threw me into a tailspin. I had a million questions. Why would God give him a ministry and then take him from us before that ministry was built up? Why didn't our former church help him get him ministry started? Why did God make him struggle so hard? Why do we look back and use that lense for what we did like and then compare it to what we don't like? You know what - if I don't know the answers now, I won't ever know them. Who am I to question God? I have to keep moving forward because like Lot's wife, looking behind only leads to pain and death.

At this new church, I was still unhappy for about two years. Since we are so big, we only have the same service over and over during the weekend to get 5000 people through the campus on weekends. There are no midweek services. To connect with each other, the church wants you to join a small group before taking a membership class to make sure that everybody is on the same sheet of music. Where is joining a small group biblical? I like to throw out the biblical part when I don't agree with things!! I didn't know anybody - because I didn't volunteer for anything. The only people I met were all my daughter's age and as much as I would like to be 20 again....that just wasn't working for me. Oh poor me!! Do you want some Whine with that Cheese?

So, the pastor's daughter in law from my previous church invited me to a stamping party at my former church. I went and at the end of the party, the consultant asked me if I went all the way down there to church (because she lives near me) and I said no, I go to church in the town of Highland Village. She said she did too. I can only believe that was God's way of sending a rep from my current church to me at my former church to ensure that I knew I was in the right place! Thank you Lord for that!

I don't know what has keep me from joining a small group. I didn't feel led to join any specific group. I didn't want to get to know more people, I felt like I had enough friends in my life. But when I got right down to it, I didn't have contact with people in a real setting. All my friends seem to be online. I am not living my life with any other Godly women in real time. I finally decided that I was missing that in my life. Maybe a small group would be the perfect thing for me! It was time to start moving forward again.

I went online and found a group and shot off an email and got a response the same night. So off I went on Tuesday to my new group. They are ladies in all stages of life 35+ and I had an awesome time. They all know each other already so I just have to jump in and get involved in the things that they do together outside of the small group - like cooking classes, Ranger games, weddings, etc.

I really don't have friends that call me up for movies or shopping. I have lots of scrapbooking friends but we don't hang out together outside of scrapbooking. I need people to live my life with. I think real life can't be replaced and should not be replaced by online life. I haven't had a best friend since high school. I need in person friends. This is going to be so awesome! Ladies to pray with, to grow with and to walk through life with. I only hope that they like me as much as I liked them. We filled out prayer cards on Tuesday so a brand new person is praying for me that I didn't know before Tuesday. I am lifting up someone else in prayer that I didn't know before!

Isn't God awesome? I think he is all the time!!

Please keep praying for my friends Marie and Tracey. Keep praying for Wendy (Stacey's Mom who is battling cancer). The Coppell Relay is coming up, they are on my heart everyday!!

Prayer

Many people who know me, know I love intercessory prayer. Especially for people with health issues. I especially seem drawn to cancer and there has been a big impact in my life through several people with cancer - some I did know and some I will have to wait to get to heaven to meet!

How did the story start? Well, one day on a planet far away...whoops...wrong story!! lol

When I first moved to Texas in 1990, I had been out of church since I was 19. I grew up in several Southern Baptist churchs and at the age of 19, I moved out of my parents home and in with a roommate. A roommate that didn't go to church and lived for clubbing. I tried to stay in church but I remember sitting in church yawning one Sunday thinking to myself that it was stupid to get up for church and not be living the Christian life. So, I dropped out. The pull of a sinful life was way more strong for me than to live a Godly life. So from the age of 19 to 31, I lived a sinful life. Drinking, sex, drugs, cursing, etc, I did them all. Around the age of 26 or 27, I quit dating and decided that I was happier without men! I quit clubbing, drugs, sex and became a homebody. I also struggled with depression - which is a generational curse in my family that had plagued me since I was a teenager. for years, I wanted to go back to church but just never found the courage to go again. Not by myself!! At the age of 30, I felt like I needed to move away or die. I contacted the old roommate in Texas and she knew of a job opening. So I applied, ran off to Europe for a three week trip, came back and gave my notice and was out here 5 weeks after applying! The first weekend guess where I went? To church with my old roommate!! She took me to her Church of God (Pentecostal) and I really didn't like it at first. There is just no sitting on the pew in a Church of God. You have to become involved and actively worship! To my surprise, I really loved the Pentecostal way.

We moved from that side of the city and then joined an Assembly of God. During my years back in Church, I told God that one day I would like to lay hands on people for healing. After an awesome ladies retreat at Oral Roberts University, where I was slain in the spirit for the first time, I went to church on Sunday of the same weekend and we had a spirit filled service. The holy spirit told me to go down front and be annointed by one of our ministers. I walked right down to the alter and asked our minister during the alter call to annoint me. I wasn't sure what I was being annointed for but I knew I needed to be obedient. So I went and I was annointed.

I left that church to join a pastor previously from that church, in his new ministry. One night during alter call, a man who was a preacher from Canada prophesied over me that I would have a healing ministry. People would ask who I was and others would answer that I was sent by God to heal. I still get goose bumps to this day when I think of that phophesy! The Holy Spirit much later revealed to me that the healing ministry was what I was annointed for when I answered the alter call at my previous church.

I thought it was going to be a church ministry where I work under the leadership of a minister. My former minister had just started asking me to pray over people at the alter when he died of a sudden heart attack one Saturday years ago. I often wonder if he could have been saved if I had been reached the day he had his heart attack but we KNOW he is in a better place.

My ministry seems to be to help friends in need of prayer. Many, many times I have been woken at 3:00 AM to pray for friends, relatives of friends and my own parents. I have often wondered why it's at 3:00 AM but that seems to be the time the soul is at it's lowest, according to research, so I think its a great time for the Holy Spirit to give me those people that I need to pray for. I just have to let the spirit guide me for the prayers. I don't know who it is that I need to pray for or what I need to pray for until the spirit gives me the names and needs. I do know that I believe each time I pray for someone that they will be healed. Each time. There is no begging. There is only the asking for healing and just then thanking God for for the healing! Just believe when you pray. Cancer isn't a big thing for God. God is still in the healing business. There are way too many stories of people still being healed and set free for the stories not to be true!

Why tell my story today? A sweet friend, who I hope to get to know much better, was told by her Doctor today that she might have bladder cancer! She MIGHT have cancer. I think whatever the lump is, it can go away between today and the biopsy that she needs. I would love to hear her tell me that the doctors were standing around scratching their heads or that they knew it was cancer and that now it's gone! Thank you Jesus!

That's it for today. My friend Tracy could use your prayers right about now. It's been a tough day for her. Let's lift her up in prayer. God knew Tracy when she was in her mother's womb. God knows how many hairs she has on her head. God ALWAYS answers our prayers. Always.

Have a ROWDY good day!!

It's me Again!!

I am back to fasting again!

This time it's soda's and chocolate! This will be very hard for me but I believe it will be great for me and my friend Marie.

Marie, who has been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer has been feeling great! She contacted me yesterday and said that she isn't feeling good and in pain. She goes to the doctor this week to see what is going on! She did say today that she is feeling better - she should be after prayer for her last night!

I decided that everytime I think of cokes or chocolate this week, I will pray for Marie! There might be thousands of prayers said just this week for Marie.

Keep her in your prayers, God knows who she is!

Just Catching Up!!

Hey there!!

Let's see...where do I start?

Work is going well. I am still learning new things everyday!!
Scrapbooking happens occasionally.
I have been invited to a Close to my Heart stamping party by my friend Sherry.
I am going on a retreat hosted by my friend Saucy weekend after next.
I have decided to go back to Bama for our family reunion this year and am flying in for that! I love to fly!

I am a committee member for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life in Coppell, TX this year. So far, I have raised $150 as an individual. Last year I raised over a thousand! I would like to top last year!

My link, if you should feel inclined to donate is http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeHighPlainsDivision?px=4332724&pg=personal&fr_id=6034. Just leave me a message if that doesn't work! Cancer is just a devastating problem in our society. When people are affected by cancer, everybody wants a cure. The American Cancer Society needs money to find a cure. It's that simple. This will be my 8th Relay!! I am getting so excited!!

Did I miss anything?

See Ya!!

Where does the time go?

Wow - it's been a while since I updated my blog!! Here I am!!

My 30 day fast went without any accidental chocolate!! I did have a cookie that was questionable as to whether it was white choco or brickle and I bit into it spit it right back out! I wasn't going to take any chances!! I did get to have lunch with Marie while I was fasting for her! She looked amazing!! She is feeling well, she said that she can eat practically anything and almost all her symptoms are gone!! I believe she has been healed!! Wooo Hooo!!

Margaret - my former pastor's wife - who was my first fast of Scrapfreak and chocolate is doing great!! The doctors tested her blood and found no cancer. She had a stem cell transplant because the doctors believed that it was the best way from keeping her cancer from ever returning. Her good blood cell count never bottomed out to zero and during her second day after the transplant, she had an AMAZING amount of good cells. The people at the hospital told her a count that high had never happened before - she said that it was what people had been praying for!! She did so well, they let her go home in 2 days instead of 5 and she was at church and sang with Weldon from the pulpit within a day or two!! Our God is an Awesome God!!

That's all for me - just great news!!! Woooo Hooo!!