Imagine my happiness...

...that I would get home yesterday afternoon and find that my power and water had been cut off for non payment! :-) I had only come home to get my card reader and kind of 'regroup' before I went to meet my friend, Terri, for dinner before heading to Terri's to show her how to download pictures from her camera to her computer. Needless to say, that little 'no power, no water' notice forced me into a major change in plans. I KNEW I had paid it, but came in and looked and there it sat on my counter, under some other bills that I need to pay.....needless to say, an oversight! About the time I was standing here wondering what I was going to do, Terri called to tell me that our friend Connie's husband was out of town and that she and her sons would be joining us for dinner. I told her that I'd had a little change myself and that I was still planning to meet her, but that I was going to have to find somewhere to spend the night since there would be no 'necessities' here to come home to when we got through with all our computer stuff. I had already called Gina and left her a message telling her to call me ASAP because I had an emergency, but as it turned out, Terri's husband was out of town and I wound up spending the night at her house. It actually all turned out fine because after we had dinner, Terri and I went to her house, fed their horses, she did a couple of other things, then we hooked up with Connie again (she lives in Terri's cul-de-sac too) and went for a walk....about a mile from what Terri said. When we got back, we got to work on computer stuff and did that until almost midnight, so that worked out pretty well all the way around.

I told Terri this morning before I left that I was bound and determined to find some sort of 'silver lining' in that little episode with my bill and had determined that it was much better that it had happened yesterday than today or tomorrow because I would have been so late getting home from choir practices that it would have been really inconvenient to find somewhere else to go at that later time. Plus, with Terri's husband being gone, it gave us some great one-on-one time to spend just doing whatever. One-on-one time is really my favorite kind with friends just because the conversation tends to be so good, so I really think it all worked out like it was supposed to.

Except for the $50 reconnect fee I had to pay when I went to get all this settled this morning! :-)

Here's the other thing...I was on my treadmill Monday night and was deciding that I needed to start doing that everyday and use it as my 'prayer walk' time. Romans 12:1-2 kept coming to mind:

"I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing unto God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will."

I thought it was cool that after I'd made that determination of walking on Monday night, even without the power of a treadmill, God knew I was serious and gave me the opportunity to do it again last night with Terri and Connie. Even if the 'prayer' part wasn't there so much, the exercise part of it was and it was really cool to me when I realized that.

After I got through on Monday night though, although I knew what it said, I went to Romans 12:1-2 in my Bible and read the rest of the book. It wasn't that much more, just a few chapters, but there were a few verses in Romans 14 that got my attention too. I've been dealing with some things internally that these verses spoke directly to and when I read them, I was just like, "Wow." I could not have known when I started recalling Romans 12 that Romans 14 would have such words that I needed to heed as well. I am always amazed when God works like that.

We have practice tonight and tomorrow night for our 'God and Country' program on Sunday night. It is going to be on the lawn of the old courthouse in town and hopefully there will be a great community turnout. They're telling everyone to bring blankets and lawn chairs and flyers are out around town. We're all hoping for a great ministry opportunity for the community and a great chance to reflect on what we believe about our God and our country....'the land of the free....and the home of the brave.'

Lastly, below is the picture from Carabba's that I promised a few weeks ago. Our children's choir group had gone to dinner with gift cards we had all gotten for Christmas. Terri's camera was the one that had the picture in it, so when I was over there last night, I e-mailed it to myself so I could get a copy printed and post it here as well. Just to give you faces to go with names, since I've mentioned them here, Terri is the third one from the left on the back row...Connie is the first one on the first row on the right, next to me.


Hope you're having a great week!