Valentine's Day with the Shredder

With a title like that you are probably thinking that I spent my Valentine's Day shredding old pictures or letters. My college friends are more than likely recalling the awful days of a college relationship I had and laughing! Actually I was just shredding a pile of junk mail that I had let build up. :) Hal spent Valentine's Day with guys he works with at a Mexican restaurant in Highland, Illinois outside St. Louis. I know what you are thinking..."that stinks," but we actually celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday night. We had a great dinner at Ruth's Chris where I will now join our friend Micah Hale's love for their fabulous sweet potatoes. Even though I tend to agree with Hal when he says that Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday, I do think it is a great time to tell those you around you that you care about them. I hope that you all had a great Valentine's Day and you know that we care about you and more importantly God is mad about you! Happy Valentine's Day!

January

I am not sure where January went...it was gone before I knew it! The last half of the month was crazy! Our DNow weekend was great. I had 10th grade girls and Hal had 9th grade boys. We had an awesome weekend of worship and fellowship. We both enjoyed getting to lead the students through Romans 3 and Romans 12. I think I had forgotten what it was like to be that age! Their conversations made me smile, and at the same time I wanted them desperately to grasp the message of Romans 3 and 12. I wanted them to see how dirty we are before God..how sinful and nasty we can be, and how we are unable on our own to have a right relationship with God. And then I wanted them to see so clearly that God has made a way through Jesus. That through Jesus' sacrifice, we can be declared not guilty and be justified before a Holy God. We talked about how we are justified when we stop trying to justify ourselves and depend 100% on the finished work of Jesus Christ. Then we got to look at how to present ourselves to God in Romans 12. We looked at what it meant to be a living sacrifice for God...and how we could do that in our everyday lives. We looked at ways that we have been conformed to this world...and then focused on transforming our minds!

The Monday morning after DNow we were both at the airport by 6. Hal was off to Atlanta, and I was off to Fayetteville. It was a crazy work trip. I got to see snow, but we had to cancel Krissi's shower. :( Then it was time to come home...and it was February!