LIfe Group Christmas party

I am going to be more diligent at blogging now that my life is going to have a lot of 'firsts' and 'lasts'.

We hosted our Life Group (Sunday School class) Christmas party this year.

It was the main motivation to get our house painted.

We have a wonderful group of folks in our class. They welcomed us in to the class as Fred took the teacher's responsibility. The class was actually compiled of 2 separate groups who lost their teachers. Earlier this year, another class had their teacher step down because of job responsibilities, so we gained them too. It has been a transition, but we have come together well. They really appreciate Fred's teaching and are always ready to give input in the lesson, so our class is always very interesting.

Fred shared with them last week about the job in Texas. It was a very hard thing to do as the class has gone through so many changes in the last couple of years.... After he finished speaking, the men stood up (Fred thought they were leaving) and came to him and prayed for him. The ladies in turn came and prayed for me. It was a very touching moment and as Fred said, it was making it hard for us to leave.

Today, one of the guys gave Fred a pair of boots. He just put them on and they look good! It's funny, Fred has never worn boots in his life! haha

This has been a very rough year, and since February, I have been saying that I can't wait for the year to end and SURELY 2010 will be better. I had no idea what God had planned for us. And as I look back, I know that HE had everything under control and that Fred and I have grown a lot because of it.

It is crazy how we can sit back and see God's hand in all this. God is allowing Fred to get a new job that will challenge him, financially sufficient for him to walk away from his current job of 20+ years, and putting us closer to his brother in a smaller town environment. And it continues: Colleen Ross has an uncle that has lived in Texarkana for many years and she is trying to connect us to him. One of the men in our SS class knows the commander of Red River Army Depot and he is going to contact him on behalf of Fred. Before we even get there, there will be people to help with all the changes we will be going through!

So let the adventure begin!!