Our Church's Grand Opening!

Saturday night was our big church family celebration... praising God for this amazing answer to prayer in our new church building! Gotta love Mark Di jamming on the keyboard!


SO grateful Jeff could be there... another huge answer to prayer! He is feeling so much better since his surgery!


Honoring Tom and Mel and all of the sacrifices and hard work they both made for this building to be complete! This isn't commonly known because they are such secret servants, but they had to cancel a family trip to the Grand Canyon with her dad because the building was in its final stages. Tom worked tirelessly and my dad did a great job communicating how effectively he served our church and also honoring Mel for releasing her husband to work many 6 day work weeks for many, many months!

Our last update from our "public relation specialists (spesh-she-al-it-is)"... these two did an awesome job making all of our building updates fun for everyone to hear and Mackenzie is really going to miss "Fast Freddy and Steady Eddy"

Interviewing Tom and one of the architects... this was one of my favorite parts of the evening, getting to hear all of the behind the scenes stuff... like how they came up with different parts of the design for the building and how they made it so it could be easily expanded as we grow (hopefully not too much... I already am overwhelmed by all the new people I have to meet!)

My brother Andy sang "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and all I could picture was the little 3 year old who still had a bottle in his mouth when we planted the church... he and Michael climbing the poles at the school and throwing temper tantrums in the front row while my dad led worship! God sure has been good... taking a strong-willed little boy and turning him into a godly young man!

A view from the back on Saturday night... and I thought this was overwhelming... little did I know what Sunday would hold!! Haha!

We were packed out... over 1,000 people were there, almost half the church was guests! Praise God that His Gospel was clearly communicated through worship and the message and many, many had opportunity to respond to His call on their lives! Every guest received the book, "The Cross-Centered Life"... what a great tool for God to be able to use in new and old believers alike!

And lastly, my favorite picture from the weekend. Here are two girls who truly haven't been treated as their sins deserve! God took two cliquish, proud, deceptive girls and changed us by His Gospel. Not only did He save us from His wrath, He has blessed us beyond our wildest girlhood dreams... with a friendship that is only intact by His grace, restoring Jamie's health, with wonderful marriages to our best friends (and crushes from way back when!) and amazing daughters that we are raising to love God. What amazing grace!! I can't look at this picture without giving glory to God... how good He has been to us!