a great day

Yesterday was a great day.  I wasn't feeling well Friday or Saturday and Sunday started out the same way.  We had our spring musical at church in the morning that I was singing in so I had to get up.  The musical went great, it's always such a blessing to sing at my church.  I love the people there so much and really view them as my extended family.

After service my Bible study class went to our leader's house for lunch and a small study.  We took Chuy with us and it's fun to see him follow everyone around sniffing them and figuring out if he likes them or not.  He goes back and forth on people a lot, ha.

After lunch we went to the Ransom Museum at UT to see the King James exhibit along with one of five Gutenberg Bibles in the Country.  It was pretty awesome to see such an old but important piece of Biblical and literary history.  The man who made it died poor, but he started a revolution that put the Bible into the hands of the people who wanted to consume God's word.  I'm so thankful for that.

Gutenberg Bible

 After the museum some of us went to REI, sonic, Michael's then home.  Sophie and I worked on some paintings for our Sunday school classroom while David and Alex played video games.  Once they were over shooting people on screen we watched some New Girl (hilarious!) followed by the amazing Doctor Who.

It was a great evening of just relaxing with dear friends, painting, and laughing.  We have some more canvases to paint but I'll try to remember to get pics of them up on here.  We're having a lot of fun painting them!

my handsome hubby chillin before we toured the exhibit

ps. I may have bought a 16 pack of glitter in fun colors.....can't wait to play with it!

day 12: my church

sanctuary before our wedding

Today I'm so very thankful for my church.  For over 7 years my church has been a place for me to grow, learn, and worship.  I've loved spending so much time there and with the amazing people that make it a church and not just a building in South Austin. 

This is the place I realized missions would be a part of my life, and then they financially supported and helped me go on numerous trips to New Orleans, Germany, Montana, and Northern British Columbia.

This is also where I met my husband.  Where we first sang together, became friends, had a serious talk before our first date, and where we finally got married.  I love that my family goes here too.  My blood family and my brothers and sisters in Christ.  The are all so much a part of who I am.

day 5: the ladies

the young young ladies

I just got home from our annual church ladies retreat.  We spent the night in Fredericksburg discussing empowered women from the Bible.  It was such a great time spent with women of all generations from my church.  I'm so thankful for all these ladies that I have surrounding me.  Each one is such a great inspiration and encouragement for me.  I know no matter what stage of life I'm in I will always have them there to help me and give advice.

Sophie, Angie and I all showed up at the retreat in jeans, purple tops, black pea coats, and converse.  Love these girls!

day 2: my praise team

Wednesdays are crazy for me so those posts might come on Thursday mornings :)

2 year old picture of us singing

Today I'm thankful for my church's praise team.  I've been blessed to be a part of the team for three years now and I love it!  It started out with a band and me singing along with our interim music minister.  Soon this new couple I didn't know was added, the Willinghams.  Since then they have become one of my favorite couples at the church.  David and I find it rare to find couples as goofy and laid back as we are, and the Wills fit the bill! (ha!..sorry, it's early, my mind is still in sleep mode so excuse my silliness)

The praise team is also something I get to share with David and my dad.  Both play guitar, so it's fun to play with them, especially since both have influenced me musically throughout my life.

The best part is I get to worship on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings with this small group.  Sure we have silly moments when my mic is twice as loud as the entire group, or when David Willingham (2 David W's...so confusing sometimes) just throws Lydia's shoe, but at the heart of these times together we are preparing to lead our church family in a time of praising, thanking, and loving our Lord.  I love it!

Hawaii

I'm not sure how much I've talked about it on here but I'm going to Hawaii this summer with some high school seniors and college students at my church. I'm pretty stoked about it to tell you the truth. While there we will be working with the pacific islander people who immigrate there to work in the tourist industry, and often live up to 20 to an apartment. We will also be helping out with the Baptist World Alliance Congress. We will get to experience worshiping with Christians from over 150 different countries all over the world...awesome!

I have to raise a good amount of money to go, most of which I have not raised yet. I'm not worried though, I have faith God will provide...He always has :) The total cost fro travel, airfare, room and board and meals is $1500. So far I have $190 in my account at church.

I just sent out letters to most of my family and family friends asking for prayers and any monetary contribution they feel led to give. I also decided to make some cute canvas tote bags to sell as a way of raising money for the trip. 100% of the money I get for these bags will go straight to my account for the trip this summer.

They are made from beige canvas lined in a fun bright Hawaiian floral cotton. The top-stitching on the outside matches the floral fabric. I also hand painted flowers on the outside in coordinating teal, green and gold.


You can see by the magazine pics how big they are. I bought enough materials to make 24 bags, but as of right now I've made three. If any of you would like to order one let me know and I'll start cranking them out.

I decided to set a price of $25 for each bag, or a donation amount you feel led to give for one of them. With each bag I will also include a prayer card with specific requests for our trip this summer and the people groups I will be working with.

If you'd like to order a bag you can comment here or email me at randamocity@gmail.com. Mostly I would love your prayers! Going on any length of mission trip is hard but rewarding work and only possible with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ lifting me up from around the world :)

community

A magazine I subscribe to and enjoy is Relevant Magazine. They also have a ridiculously funny podcast that has made me look like a big weirdo on the bus numerous times.

Last year the people at Relevant started a new branch called Neue which is targeted toward church leaders. They put out a quarterly book zine with some pretty inspiring and thought provoking articles. I just read one today and it really made me think. Here's an excerpt from the article about community by Jimmy Spencer

"Community is simply the network of relationships that are birthed from working together. This important work is to reflect Jesus and His message so strongly that it compels those we encounter to ask us why we are so unique. We at The Sherma Movement call this Viral Jesus. Unfortunately, we spend so much time motivating and training people how to do the work of the Church, we often have little time to actually do the work. I would implore leaders to get workers into society and allow them to experience, and sometimes fail at, being Jesus to others. This work builds the Kingdom, matures us and produces real community amongst those who participate. This is the Kingdom of God.

We should be conforming people to the image of Jesus. Not ourselves. God community is a beautiful mosaic of different people and practices. Adding unique people to our community refines us into who God intended us to be."

As a leader in my church this really spoke to me. The community we are building in our college group....is it for fun, or for the Kingdom?

Five of us are going to New Orleans this weekend to help the baptist mission there hand out candy to kids on Halloween and to help get all their Christmas decorations up. This place demands a lot of hard work and a heart for that community, and I love it. Every time I go though, I'm reminded that I need the same heart for the people of my own community in Austin. I need to yearn to love those that others don't, but who Jesus would go straight to. I pray my church develops this same yearning that I so desire.

We are beginning a campaign to raise money to build a new sanctuary in our church in an effort to reach out to our community more. I pray that in this process we, as a body, grow closer together because we are all working for the same cause. I pray we remember that it's for the Kingdom of God, and not just for a newer bigger building.

This was long, I hope some of yall made it to the end. I guess I should stop reading articles that tug at my heart and read some for my class in a few hours, haha.

ps. I graduate in less than 8 weeks!
pps. I've been thinking about seminary lately and I feel very drawn to marriage and family counseling or something along those lines. If you think about it, pray for clarity in listening to what God has for me :)

full of oops

My blogging is getting really spaced out...oops!

I'd like to say it's because school is getting hectic (now that I'm so close to graduating!), or that I'm super busy at church all the time but it isn't and I'm not. Considering I have two writing intensive classes and a science, my work load is pretty easy, and I haven't gotten behind on anything which is just crazy for me, ha.

Church activities do keep me busy but not in an insane way. Our college group is going through a growth spurt, but I don't mean in the size kind of way. We've all grown so close together. Such a great way to grow in a church :) Even though I'm graduating in less than two months I plan to stay in the group until next December when David graduates (hopefully!!)

The rest of my life is filled with far too many Disney tv shows, food network competitions and whatever else David makes me watch. Don't get me wrong, these shows have their advantages. There are NO skanky girl commercials on late at night on Disney and the content and language is always clean. Though my humor level and knack for intelligent conversation maybe lowering, I find it refreshing to not have my mind bombarded with the level of sex, language, and violence that society has deemed normal for prime time television. When I do watch adult shows it's usually just the office, haha.

I say all this to then say, I'm still knitting! I just have this problem lately of starting a new project before I finish another one, so I never have pictures to share of finished projects. Soon I will be making my Christmas knitting list and knitting like a crazy grandma up until December 24 at midnight I'm sure.

My biggest project is that blanket I mentioned a few weeks ago. All I have is this pic from my iphone to show you, but I think it gets across how awesome it is. It's super soft too, I love it.

I'm almost done with a gift for some special friends and will post pics when they get to their new homes, hopefully sooner than later. I might also be doing a little halloween accessory knitting this weekend, we'll see.

This post was random and longer than I planned, oops!

rain. rain. rain.

I know it's good for the earth and all, but I really hate driving in it...and I have a lot of driving to do this week. My Austin>San Marcos commute, jaw appointment in San Antonio today (my dad is driving half of the way!), and then on Thursday I'm headed to College station to see two of my favorite girls!

Yay for Sophie and Carolyn!

I'll be coming back to Austin Friday afternoon and then getting on a bus for Great Fall. I'm very excited about this year's Great Fall. Our college group has grown so much stronger and closer as friends, so it should be loads of fun.

On the knitting front I've been working on some premie caps for my church's Threads of Love organization. We knit/crochet/sew caps, blankets and vests for babies that are born premature. The hats are so tiny and cute. It amazes me that there are babies so small (I was a 9 pounder, and nearly 2 feet long...poor mom).

I wrote out my own pattern for the caps and I hope to get it up on here in the next week or so once I make sure the sizes I have are good. Maybe some of my knitting readers can knit a few up! You can seriously make on in the time it takes to watch a movie. I made a cute pink one while watching Bride Wars the other night.

Oh AND, I had a lovely lazy day with David yesterday. He didn't feel well and ended up staying home from school, then got some sad news from a friend so he was feeling a little blegh. I decided it was a nice day to be out and about so we ventured out to Bee Cave and got some yummy frozen yogurt at Yogurt Planet, got him a snazzy new hat at Marshalls and picked up a few other things along the way. We then ended up at his cousin's 8th grade football game where he ran a touchdown in the first play, then the team didn't score again, heh. It was beautiful weather though and enjoyable to sit with his family for a while. Then we watched Big Bang Theory with my mom and followed that up with Coraline with Casey and Whitney. A wonderfully relaxing day spent with the boy I love :)

i know he looks sad here but apparently this is his modeling face