Digging and Dunking

Yesterday was an amazing day. It had a really rough start though. I have been so nervous about life living in someone else's house that I was on edge with everyone before church in the morning and everyone got the brunt of my anxiety. I am so thankful for my family that loves me and forgives me!! We made it to church about 40 minutes late and I cried through the whole service. I knew that it was stuff I needed to hear, I just didn't want to hear it! 

During the 10am hour instead of Sunday School we went outside to have the ground breaking for our new sanctuary. North Baptist Church has been growing and we are currently at 3 services (we've backed down to 2 for the summer but they are both really full most Sundays). All of the permissions are in place from the city and we were ready to break ground. A few people spoke, including the mayor as we stood in the new sanctuary outlined with white paint then everyone had the opportunity to help dig with the over 100 shovels that people had brought to the church for the occasion. We even made the news. Here is a picture of us at the dig that my friend Melissa took. 

We then went to the 11am ser

vice because I needed to hear it again and be there for the whole service. It was re

ally good. David Whiting's brother Greg preached on Esther a story I have heard tons of times but it was neat to look at it again now. He talked about how our circumstances are not a series of unrelated events but allowed by God for His purposes. It is so comforting to know that our loving God is in control. God is in control - will I trust Him? He gave 4 "so what?" statements that were really good:

1. Be aware that God is working, even in times of silence.

2. God has placed you where you are (right now at 477 Rugby Ave for me) for His purposes.

3. God is the hero, He is in control, even when things seem hopeless.

4. North Baptist Church [and I are] here for such a time as this.

At the end of the service we sang the new song for the month called Lift High

"Broken people, call His name. Helpless children, Praise the King.  Nothing brings Him greater fame When broken people call His name.

Lift High - your chains undone, All rise - Exalt the Son, Jesus Christ - the Holy One, We lift our eyes to You

Sinners all, exalt the Son. Your ransom paid and freedom won. We will see His kingdom come When sinners all exalt the Son.

Lift up your heads, oh lift up your heads, Look on Him"

I'm thankful for the work that God did in my heart today.

After church we wanted to give Brian and Kristina a chance to settle in and recooperate from their vacation without masses of Maas' but we didn't really have any plans. We were playing on the playground after getting the kids and my friend Rebecca invited us over to share lunch and play. It was a fun afternoon and she even edited part of the essay which was great.

At 6 we all went up to Durand Eastman Park on Lake Ontario for the annual Church at the Beach. 13 people were baptized and we got to sing and hear their stories of how God has worked in their lives. It was so amazing. I am always astounded at how God works differently in every person's life! It was an outreach too because we were right by the bike path and people would stop and listen to us sing and to the stories. I got the chance to talk to a lady outside the porta-potty while waiting for Abigail's turn (she told me the potty was 'yucky!') and she and her husband stopped by for a while on their walk. One thing that I thought was really neat about the baptism was that each person had someone who was significant in their spiritual walk help to baptize them. It was really moving. 

After the baptism the kids ran around and played. A little boy named Drew told us that he is going to marry Hannah which made us think of a funny story that we hadn't blogged about last week so pardon this interruption my blog about Sunday. We were talking about how it was important to learn to respect and obey mommy and daddy because it teaches them to respect and honor God and others who may be in authority over them in the years to come since they will only live with us for probably around 18 years. "Why?" I was asked. I told them because then they would be grown up and go to college and get jobs and get married and stuff. Abigail turned to me and asked "Me too?" I said yes and she said with wonder in her voice, "I'm getting married!" It was SO funny! The rest of the night she kept telling us that she was getting married like it was going to happen in the next 5 minutes and kept us laughing. 

Back to Sunday. It turned out to be a perfect day both for the dig and the dunk. God is so good! It looked like it was going to rain but it didn't and the cloudy day made it so that it wasn't miserably hot or hard to see. The sun set on the way home was beautiful too. 

Alright Nan, I blogged. Are you happy? I can't figure out how to upload pictures to this computer (I still haven't totally figured out the Mac thing yet) so when I download pics to our PC later I will upload them here.

One last quote that was in our bulletin: "We are faced with great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations." Chuck Swindoll