It's been a while....

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Hello everyone,
It has been a while and I don't even have much time today to stop and chat!!  I just wanted to update you all...after two years and three months we have finally had an offer to buy our house!!  This just happened last Friday and we hope to finalize and close on April 21st.

So I am in the midst of packing up the other half of the house since I had half done from getting the house on the market in the first place!!

We are really excited to see where the Lord would have us to be next, we are hoping to stay in this general area of SC and would like to find a house with 4 bedrooms if possible and a minimum of five acres.  As of next month if we have not found a place we will move into our travel trailer until we find just the right place.

In the meantime, I am coordinating the Ladies Mother Daughter Luncheon for our church coming up in early May.  This details for the most part are taken care of, we just have two major projects left to complete.

This next Sunday we have our Teen Afterglow at church.  This is a the last Sunday of the month and one family provides the evening refreshment for all our teens.  I had volunteered for this before I had been asked to do the Mother Daughter Luncheon and I had chosen March in case we were going to be gone throughout the Summer possibly camping.

So my husband is gone all this week until next Monday, I need to pack, I need to teach Kings Kids this Wednesday, Teach Sunday School, prepare for the Ladies Choir performance this Sunday, watch the nursery Sunday and then prepare all the food for Sunday evening........deep breath.....the Lord will get me through this busy week!!!

I need to do another post about reading the book Trim Healthy Mama and how much success I have had, however, that will have to wait until another day.

I pray all is well with the rest of you!!!

Looking for someone from Xanga...

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Hello Ladies,
Any of you who previously had Xanga accounts...

I am hoping you might remember a lady by the name of Chanin...Her blog page might have been: He Is My Stronghold OR NewSurrender.... She had a daughter that went several times on a soul-winning expedition to Lousiana.

was friends with blog owner MyExodus23

If you have any leads as to where either lady might have gone, it would be greatly appreciated.  I thought Chanin was on Facebook but I cannot remember now.

Thank you all.

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Well hello everyone,
It appears its time for my quarterly/semi-annual update!!  Life just seems to get so busy and it seems so hard to find time to sit down and post everything I would like to share.

We haven't gone anywhere, or done anything really exciting.  I have been really busy this year with church activities.  Was on the baby shower/ bridal shower committee and that took lots of work.  We thought we would only have one event or maybe two for the year and ended up having four.  Then we had the Mother-Daughter Tea back in May.  That took weeks and weeks of working on.

The Lord gave me a gentle push to get even more active and I decided to start going on Door-to-Door visitation every other week.  I have really enjoyed the opportunity to go out and seek those who might not have heard about the gospel!!  I also signed up to work at our Jockey Lot, which is another name here in SC for Flea Market!!  Our church has a booth there every other week and we set up a table and display and hand out gospel tracts and for those who are interested we have an area where they can sit down and we can sit one on one and show them how to be saved. The second weekend I went I was able to lead a lady to the Lord and it was the first person outside of my immediate family.

I finished up the 13 week study of the book of John with Hello Mornings a few weeks ago and am looking forward to the book of Ephesians starting in a few weeks.  This time instead of being a leader of a specific group, I decided to move up and help encourage a group of 15 Leaders and help encourage them to encourage the ladies in their groups.  This study looks to have about 2200 women that are going to participate with 150 leaders.

We are still progressing along with homeschool and we have a reserve of about 30-40 days right now and I think that will come in handy come this Winter when sickness seems to strike!!

I am looking forward to the last week of August, Kings Kids starts at our church.  I was involved last year but was having serious health problems and needed to step away, however, I think that is being managed and will be able to give it 100%.  The first week of September starts the fall session of Sunday School and I have been asked to teach the 5th and 6th grade class.  I am SOOOO excited.

So yep, just a continuation of a busy day in our household.  I pray all of you are doing well.

Start your day with Hello Mornings….

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Are you looking for a way to challenge yourself to walk closer with the Lord? 

Consider joining the Hello Mornings Challenge for the summer session.  This is a 13-week challenge to maximize your mornings, via online accountability groups…

If you like the Facebook arena, there are groups set up on the registration page for your time zone. If you are short on time but still want the chance to participate there are Twitter groups as well for the different time zones.

The 13 weeks is a focus on your walk with the Lord, challenging yourself to get up early…and that is a relative term based on the events going on in your life…exercise, pray, and study the Lord’s word.

Registration is open until Friday, May 3th.  It is only open to 150 women throughout the United States and overseas.

 Perfection is not a requirement. Just a desire to meet with God in the morning and a commitment to checking in with your group.

There is also a free Bible study for all HelloMornings participants, Meet Jesus, a walk through the book of John.

If you would like more information stop by Hello Mornings Blog and see what is happening, but don’t delay in registering. 

I am one of the Coach’s for this session and you can sign up under my name on the registration page: http://register.hellomornings.org/melissa-donovan/  if you desire!! 

On a journey

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I keep wanting to blog about what is going on in our life as a family and keep everyone updated and I always amazed at the end of the month that the whole month has gone by already.  When I do think about my blogging and what I am sharing, it always seems to fall short of what is truly important to me and that is my walk with the Lord.

I am wanting to share what is happening in my life and at the same time I just want readers to see that this is just my journey and not one to be compared to.  Others, I am sure are far beyond where I am at and I am sure there are others that are not where I am at.  As long as we are all on the path towards seeking the Lord, I think we are doing good.

With that said~~~Since the beginning of the year, I have had this strong, strong conviction on my heart to seek the Lord, to spend time with him.  It came through a series of different sermon’s at church and I believe culminated right before we had our Missions Conference in February.  I had also started to a series on Revive Our Hearts about the Song of Solomon How to Fall and Stay In Love with Jesus.  WOW!!

I have not finished the series and I am just amazed at what the Lord has shown me through listening to these broadcasts.  I have been able to focus my time throughout the day to make sure I am getting chapters of His Word read.  I want to share with you a few quotes that I heard in the broad cast…

“But I want to love Him with a passionate, fragrant love that engages my whole being and all my senses.

She has come to realize how wonderful he is, and she longs to experience his love in the fullest possible way. She doesn’t want to just know about him casually. She doesn’t want to just know about him. She wants a close, intimate, personal relationship with him. There was a time when she was contented with his absence, but not so any longer.

I think this is a picture here of a believer in Christ who has an intense desire for a more personal, intimate love relationship with Him.  This is somebody who’s come to be dissatisfied with the ordinary. They long to go further than average believers. There are other believers around you in your home perhaps or your church who are content with the status quo, just to go on professing Christ. It’s just a so-so, ho-hum relationship with Him. But you have been awakened to the loveliness of Christ. There’s something in your heart that can no longer be satisfied with a common, casual, distant relationship with Him.

You long for that intimate love relationship with Christ.”

This is where I am at.  I find it so hard to put into words.  The quotes from the broadcast resounded so much within me.  I just have this feeling that penetrates my soul it is in the very cells of my being.  So I have given up per se my Pinterest account…I have it but I know longer pin items to it, I see it was taking up too much of my time.  There are lots of great recipes on there I still plan to use and there are decorations on there for our Ladies Tea at church I will be using, etc. It has just come to be uppermost in my mind to make sure my free time is on those things that would really glorify Him.  Not that Pinterest is the evil one, but if something is taking so much of your time that you are no longer focusing large amounts of your day on the Lord but on a worldly pursuit, then it is time to let something go.

I believe it was in early March that I was at a Sunday evening service and was blessed beyond measure. Unbeknownst to the congregation the teens had been challenged by our Youth Pastor to memorize scripture.  I am not sure if the verses or chapter was assigned or if they were able to pick on their own.  What took place, was a young gentleman by the name of Timothy, came to the podium and recited all of John chapter 4 with no assistance.  I think Timothy must be all of 17. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the congregation.  Perhaps due to the conviction of the Holy Spirit upon most of us for not spending enough time to get God’s word in our hearts.  I am told he did it in a week earlier than the time allotted.

Well shortly thereafter, there was another broadcast on Revive Our Hearts You Need Hunger a three part series on how to memorize the word.  Janet Pope was the guest speaker and she has written a book on how she started this process in her life.  I might add she has memorized 14 books of the bible and over 100 chapters. She showed that we do not have blocks of time in our day to sit down and devote to memorization.  However, we do have time when we are getting ready in the morning, when we are folding laundry, when we are putting together the evening meal, driving children to sports practice, waiting in lines, waiting at practice, and the list goes on and on….when you add up those little snippets of time, you DO have time to get the word in your heart.

So I took the challenge I heard, just as she took it years ago when she first heard someone quote a chapter at a conference.  I started last week and memorized Psalms 1….yes 6 verses.  Some might scoff, but I say let them.  I did it, I set my mind to it and accomplished my goal and am moving forward.  My children are on board with the idea and we sat down this week to start the complete book of Titus.  One verse at a time day by day building on the previous verses.  I am looking forward to the blessings that abound for getting the Lord’s word in my heart and a constant mediation in my mind.

In the midst of all of this, I came across a blog post that mentioned The Hello Mornings Challenge A challenge to get up and seek the Lord first thing in the morning with prayer, scripture reading as well as exercise.  I took the challenge as well.  I was getting up at 8am previously and am now up at 7:30 and am seeking to get up at 7am.  The next challenge session starts May 6th and the FREE registration starts April 26th it will be a 13-week bible study of John and there will be a downloadable file to study along.  I am really excited to be apart of this Spring/Summer session and have signed up to be a an Accountability Coach to encourage those on my team.  I hope you all can join in if you have the time.

I also finally found a great deal on a used copy of Baxter’s Explore The Book, it is by J. Sidlow Baxter and it is the six volumes in one book and goes through the whole bible in an in-depth study.  I had asked my Pastor for a good study book of the bible as he does not recommend Strong’s concordance and he gave me this book that I mentioned.  I am really looking forward to being able to find out more about the bible and the people that wrote the books of the bible, etc.

Well that is it in a nutshell.  You see everything else just seems, to me, to pale in comparison to the Lord and my hearts desire.