Tattoos aren’t addicting, I promise!!! September 12, 2009

So in 2006, I go my first tattoo.  It was definitely a spontaneous decision the day I got it, but honestly, I had been thinking about getting one for the longest time.  So I got this little ankle tattoo.  Just a few musical notes, and no, the notes are not a song!  Yes people have asked me if the tattoo is one of my favorite songs. Anyways, I did not even think about getting another tattoo after I got the first one done.  Mainly because I just don’t think I could pull it off.  Well lets fast forward to 2007.  2007 was probably one of my worst years here in Destin.  Believe it or not, even though living in paradise is a dream come true, I still found a way to be completely miserable.  I had a lot of stuff going on personally.  Well throughout that year, I was constantly reminded of something that was spoken over my life way back in 2000.

REWIND….to January 2000.  I was living in Brevard County, aka, Merritt Island, Cocoa Beach area and was fully involved at East Coast Christian Center and the Youth Church that Pastor Eric and Darlene ran.  I had become pretty comfortable where I was at in life.  Nothing too exciting, but I had fun singing in the worship band, volunteering at the church, and working.  Well we had a guest speaker at the church that was doing a mini conference, which meant that TNT (which was the youth church) would not have a normal service, but we were encouraged to be there anyway.  I had to be there because I was singing in the band.  Everything in me that night did not want to stay, even though the guest speaker was Andrew Wommack.  Well I decided to stay after I sang.  The whole pressure of knowing that I was a leader at the church kept me from leaving.  Little did I know that the very act of me staying has led to a lot more than just a long night of listening to someone speak.  At the end of the message, Andrew asked all the youth to come up to the front to be prayed for.  I walked up there and waited.  Waited for my turn to be prayed for, which usually includes the laying on of hands, some tongues, some encouraging prayer, and then they move on.  As I was waiting my turn, I remember hearing Andrew get to certain people and speak a word over some of the teenagers, typically something that God specifically shows a person and they share it with them.  Well Andrew finally go to me, and he just starts praying for me then the next thing I notice is that he wasn’t moving to the next person, he was still standing in front of me.  He started saying  some things to me about traveling, to pack my bags, but one of the things that stuck out to me was that he said, “God just really wants you to soar.”  That’s all I remember, SOAR.  I couldn’t keep it out of my head.  That I night, I journaled what happened.  Quite a humbling experience since I was not in any mood to really stay that night.  I never really forgot that word, but I put it on the back burner for a bit, then the next month, another guest speaker came to the church, Chris Hill.  He did the same thing with the youth.  I’m not one to not get prayer, so I went forward and he was doing the same thing with the teenagers.  Praying over them and speaking a “God-word” over them.  Well he got to me and stopped and started praying for me and spoke the scripture Isaiah 40:31 and mentioned the word Soar.  That night, I decided I needed to look up what this word meant.  This was too much of a coincidence to overlook.  So I looked it up:

SOAR

I was blown away.  From that night on I tried to figure out what God was doing.  I had no clue and it frustrated me.  Months went by and then the next thing happened to me.  In June of 2000, I had the opportunity of meeting Mike Pilavachi and Matt Redman from Soul Survivor.  We hosted a worship conference at the church….AMAZING.  Well Mike Pilavachi was speaking one morning and he mentioned one sentence about an internship program he hosted at his church in England.  As soon as I heard that sentence, I KNEW that I was going to be doing that.

FAST FORWARD…to March 2001.  I left for England for this internship program. One of the most amazing times of my life.  I learned so much there from evangelism to speaking, to worship to prophecy.  Well the day we were learning about prophecy, we all had the opportunity to operate in that gift.  I do believe some are more in tune with the prophetic than others, but I do believe we can all hear from God and speak into the lives of other people.  This was a day for that.  I remember like it was yesterday telling my roommate that I bet someone will mention something about the word soar and left it at that.  So we all had our turn to be prayed over and had the people in the room say something if they felt God was leading them to.  It was my turn.  Lots of anticipation.  People are praying and then the one guy, one of the leaders, starting praying over me and just goes on and on and finally says….and you know, God really wants to SOAR.  At that moment, I lost it.  I couldn’t hold back the tears.  But I still had no idea what it meant.

Ok now we have to fast forward again to October 2003.  This is when I realized God was calling me to Destin.  I had yet to tell my mother.  Oh and when she found out, she didn’t talk to me for days!  I felt really confident in this decision.  Little did I know that God had all this orchestrated.  Each year, East Coast themes the year.  2004, the year that I made to move to Destin, was themed “READY TO SOAR IN 2004″!  Dead serious!

Fast forward to 2008….I had the itch to get another tattoo.  I wanted it to be something that was super meaningful to me and I instantly came up with a design that incorporated a word and scripture that has shaped my life since 2000.  The next thing was to find a location to put this baby.  I wrestled with it and never got that feeling of , yup…this is what I want and where I want it.  I didn’t forget about it, but just didn’t think about it anymore.

August 30, 2009….I finally did it!  I inked myself another time.  I love it.  It’s a constant reminder to me of how faithful God is to speak to you, lead you, and guide you, and that God has a plan for each one of us and that it’s not a one time plan.  It’s continuous.  God has reminded me that He is not done with me.  That this is only the beginning.

Isaiah 40:31

For those that are not too keen on tattoos, I understand.  I have simply used tattoos as a way to express myself.  Will I get more?  Not too sure.  For me, it’s not about proving that I can be super-Christian, but to walk in the freedom I have in Christ.

Not one, not two, but three honeymoons!!! May 24, 2009

That’s right.  We had 3 honeymoons.  Because of Dave’s accident, we had to push back our official honeymoon a month.  But as we mentioned, we decided to make the most of it and stretch out the honeymoon over 3 trips.  Here’s the rundown:

Trip 1:  Since our wedding and reception was located at Harry T’s in Harborwalk Village, Rockie, Dave’s mom, hooked us up with a room at the Emerald Grande so we could have a good night sleep before we left for North Carolina the next day.  We had the best view at the Emerald Grande.  11th floor overlooking the harbor.  We do live in paradise!  The next morning we headed out to Swannanoah, North Carolina to stay at a friend of the family’s house, Jim “Shag” & Pat Forst.  They are two of the best hosts we’ve ever met.  We had such a great time, ate the most amazing food, and discovered a new coffeeshop, The Dripolator.  We stayed at their house for 2 nights and then got up very early that Tuesday morning to head to Augusta, Georgia, to go to a checkup appointment on Dave’s hand.  His hand is what got the brunt of all the burns.  His hand looked great.  It’s amazing how quickly the body heals!

Trip 2:  Our “official” honeymoon was finally here.  We headed out on Friday, February 27, to North Carolina, where we again stayed at the Forst’s house, but this time for a bit longer.  We had great food again and played Quarters.  It’s a game that you will learn to both love and hate at the same time.  We walked around Black Mountain and stopped in our new favorite coffeeshop, the Dripolator, and checked out some local shops.  We went to Asheville that Sunday and checked out a church, then headed into downtown Asheville where it started to sleet.  We then decided to go and check out the Biltmore Mansion…Amazing!  When we left there, it had already dumped about 4-5 inches.  The night before we left the Forst’s house, it ended up dumping a total of 15 inches of snow in Banner Elk, which was where we were going to spend the remaining portion of the honeymoon.  We were so excited because looking back at when our trip was originally planned, we would not have been as lucky.  Well we headed out to Banner Elk that Monday morning, but not before we had to UNFREEZE the locks to our car.  That’s right, we didn’t think about not locking the car when it was going to be that cold.  Needless to say that after an hour of trying to unfreeze the locks, we finally got the car open and headed out. So glad the drive was easy.  We arrived at our little chalet which was perfect for the two of us.  So quaint.  The next day we headed out to Beech Mountain and picked up our gear and started the four days of skiing/snowboarding.  We enjoyed the view and getting our legs used to skiing again and then headed to Sugar Mountain the next day.  By the end of day three, the snow really had melted, but we decided to go ahead with the fourth day, which we are so glad we did.  We were able to get the last bit of skiing in before the mountain became complete slush.  After the fourth day, we were done skiing.  Our bodies were so sore, so having the hot tub available to sit in and relax was so nice.  After we had our fair share of skiing, the weather was so warm, that we were able to walk around with jeans and t-shirts on.  We headed into Boone to eat dinner and we stopped by a saloon and played pool and listened to some bluegrass music for about 6 hours.  Good times.  The next day we just chilled out in Banner Elk and cleaned up the house to get ready to head back home….12 hours of driving.  Yippee!!  We had a great trip home and we were ready to be back in our home by the end of the trip.

Trip 3: The final installment our of honeymoon consisted of theme parks and family get-togethers.  We headed to Orlando to stay at the Portofino Bay Hotel, courtesy of my sister Jeanna, and to go to both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios.  We were so excited to go, especially since this was Dave’s first time going and riding upside-down roller coasters.  We got to Orlando pretty late so getting up early was really hard, but we did and got to experience both parks and do everything we wanted to do. Dave’s favorite ride was The Mummy and The Hulk.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dave so giddy after a ride before.  Awesome!  Later that night, we had dinner reservations at Mamma Dellas.  Oh my gosh was their food amazing and the atmosphere was perfect.  We had opera singers and accordion players serenading us.  After dinner we headed to Universal City Walk where we spent most of our time at Margaritaville.  We just happened to go there when Jimmy Buffet’s band, The Coral Reefers, were there playing.  It was a great concert and a great way to end the day.  The next morning, we got up and headed over to Rockledge, which is where Esther’s family lives.  It was there we celebrated Victoria’s birthday.  That’s Esther’s niece, who was also the flower girl at our wedding.  We enjoyed visiting with family and relaxing.  We headed back home the next day reminiscing of the last few trips we had taken and relishing in the moments of relaxation we had.  We knew those days were going to be over soon.  It’s back to the day to day grind and now that we are heading into the summer season, that means we will both be extremely busy.  Dave with work plus adding music gigs and Esther with being Dave’s personal roadie and church stuff.  All in all, we have been so blessed to have been able to stretch out our honeymoon over three trips.

Here are some pictures from our trips….Enjoy!

We’re Married!!!! May 23, 2009

January 24, 2009…A day that will forever be engrained in our heart & mind.  The day we decided to, in front of 200+ people, promise that we would love each other for the rest of our lives.  A day that was supposed to be rainy and cold turned into 70 degree weather with just enough sun to make it a perfect day!  God definitely had his hand on that day! From the family and friends to the food and the dancing, the day, in our eyes, was absolutely amazing!

Here are a few pictures from that special day.

Oh, and we can’t forget the man that made this all official…Pastor Eric!  What would life be like without him!  Thank you Pastor Eric!

Easter at Shoreline April 10, 2009

We are gearing up for our 5 Easter services this year. We are super excited because of the opportunity to reach so many people within 2 days! But….we have been crazy busy. For some reason, when it comes to big Sundays like Easter, we like to do as much as we can to make things look really good. This year, not only are we going with a Monty Python theme, we decided to revamp the entire Real Info area, add a staggered service (which is a service between are normal two services…hence the word “staggered”), we are trying a new check-in system with the kids, I have never in all my life ordered a 12 dozen bagels and 20 dozen donuts, stuffed over 200 popcorn boxes and will eventually stuff 200 koozies for McGuires (our church service at a bar), we have new banners to put outside the Rave Theater (that’s we have our main church service), and we just recently debuted our new lobby signs to help people find their way around the theater. Whew!!!!

There is so much more that we have been producing, but this blog post would go on forever.

Well if you have nowhere to go for Easter, check out Shoreline Church

Rainy Days March 26, 2009

I hate rainy days. It makes me drowsy, lethargic, and annoyed. I try not to drive in this weather in this area of Florida during this time of the year. Accidents waiting to happen. Plus, Dave doesn’t work when it rains or there’s the slight chance of bad weather, which means he doesn’t get paid. Argh!

Anyways, enough complaining. I am thankful that I get to still live and breathe another day and see how gracious and merciful God is to us.

But God’s not finished. He’s waiting around to be gracious to you. He’s gathering strength to show mercy to you. God takes the time to do everything right—everything. Those who wait around for him are the lucky ones. Isaiah 30:18 (Message Bible)

Shoreline’s 4 years old!!! March 16, 2009

So yesterday at church we celebrated 4 years in operation.  HOLY COW…I cannot believe it’s only been 4 years.  For some reason it feels like twice that.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, but to say that we are only 4 years almost sounds ludicrous!  But….It’s true.  I think that in the 4 years we have been doing this whole church planting thing, we have somehow managed to move from a rinky-dink start up church, to a church that is well established and growing.  (FYI…that is a good sign!)  It’s amazing to see for how young we are, we generate the most amazing things!  It’s been a blast being a part of the whole thing.  Looking back to some of the pictures, videos, songs, and series that we have done, I am blown away by the level of excellence the people of Shoreline Church have and, as we have continued to grow, how we have continued to produce services that have even more excellence than sometimes the week before. 

Happy Anniversary Shoreline Church!

Dave’s accident March 11, 2009

Ok, so two weeks prior to our wedding, Dave decided he wanted to burn himself on his face and hand…with 2nd degree burns!  Yeah, not the most favorable thing to happen, especially when you have professional pictures to be taken! Ahhhhh!!!  Anyways, considering the ordeal, God had his hand in all of it.  Not the part of him getting burned, but the part of “Working all things together for good to them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose”<Romans  8:28>.  Not only did we have the  most amazing wedding ever (And yes, people still comment on it), but we have literally had 2 honeymoons, plus another mini one to Orlando in April.  We have been truly blessed.  

We met a wonderful family, The Moser Family, while we were at the Burn Center at Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta, Georgia.  Their son, Jaime, was burned on Christmas Eve.  He is doing wonderful and I know why…He has an amazing family that loves the Lord.  Please keep him in your prayers as well as the rest of the family.  They are believing that he will be able to go home soon.  Pray that he continues to recover quickly, that he has no complications, and that his wife Natalie has a safe remainder of her pregnancy and an easy delivery.

Anyways, here are some pictures of what Dave looked like the day of the accident and how he healed.  I’m am in awe of how quickly he healed.