Sunday, April 25, 2010

New Life

What follows is taken from an index card put in our "envelope" this weekend. At the college retreats, ever since we've started attending, they have put up an envelope for each person in attendance and people can place index cards in them to be used to offer words of encouragement.

Wow! What a moment. What a feeling. Thank you for sharing that time with me. Completely incredible and overwhelming. Knowing that someone prayed for me was so heart warming and comforting. To piece together the past few weeks and be able to recognize God in my heart and on my mind is a truly epic moment/feeling. Last light I had the perma-smile while sleeping..... I am truly blessed in all aspects of my life. As I embark on my walk with Christ I will always remember April 24, 2010 and the mountain we moved with the arms of God wrapped around us. It has a been a true blessing spending time with you and your family this weekend. I look forward to spending time with you all in the future.

May we all know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God who creates us and the fire of the Holy Spirit both now and in all the days to come.

With Love.....

This little gal is a new believer as of around 11:45 pm last night. New life in Christ - Hallelujah! I challenged a close friend of mine (who's face you'll see all over my blog) to see if this friend of mine would invite this "little gal" to come to the retreat as she's recently started attending church and CCF with her. I won't go into a lot of details, but despite her upbringing in church, she had never asked Jesus Christ to take residence in her life. So, after Mikayla and I went to bed, John stayed up with her and our friend that brought her - and led her through the prayer, and answered a ton of questions. Wow, wow, wow!!!! So, amazingly cool. I wish I could have been right there, but I think God used each one of us just the way He wanted to. This morning, it was so exciting to greet her with tears in our eyes. Mikayla and I gave her a whole sand dollar I had found on the beach, representing her wholeness in Christ - and to keep to memorialize the weekend. PRAISE GOD.......

Once Kaela gets all of the pictures uploaded (many taken with our camera, so I won't hesitate to use the images!) - I will put up a picture-laden post of the weekend retreat and all of the great experiences we had. In the meantime, I will end this post with some cell phone pictures taken of Mikayla and I this morning on our traditional "special morning walk" on retreats. This time, we ended the walk praying together - specifically for her future husband and staying strong in this life ahead of her. Very, very special!




5 comments:

sara said...

how awesome is that?!!! and what a privilege to be part of it!

love the pictures of you and your daughter!!! Those times are so special and will have big impact on her later that you can't even imagine now!

and wow, do your teeth look white in that picture! :) just a bit jealous is all!!!

j.nelson said...

BAHHHHHHHH!!!! boo-ya baby :) oh steph oh steph oh steph. yup i'm speechless and that's about all i can get out. what a freaking weekend!

StephieAnne said...

Sara,

The teeth white thing, that is funny because they really aren't all that white....using "Crest Strips" is the one thing I haven't gotten to on my "to-do" list before Orlando. However, I have been tanning a bit as I don't want to burn on my first day there - so that's probably what caused the illusion!

But, beyond that - HALLELUJAH - GOD IS SO GOOD!!!

kleephotos said...

This is so great! Okay Steph, just a warning....the reason why I haven't posted pictures yet was because I had to go through 2400 of them. So now I have finally narrowed it down and picked around 1200 of them :). So you might be spending a while looking through them. Enjoyed hanging out this weekend!

StephieAnne said...

I know, Kaela - you are AMAZING!! I just got through pulling out from the first 5 albums you put on Facebook. Given how many were taken of just our kids, it's hard for me to narrow them down. You rock, girl. This ministry is SO BLESSED to have you!!!!!