We had our Bible study/home group meeting this evening. The group started when the church was going through Rick Warren’s study on the 40 Days of Community. Tim and I agreed to host a group and voila, we were given list of names and told to go forth and start a new group.
The 40 Days study has come and gone and we continue to meet. It’s been fun. All of the couples (plus one single mom) are fairly new to the church. One of them went many years ago, moved and is now back in the area. We lost one couple (to our group and the church in general). They have a toddler and twin boys and difficult work schedules–all of which make life complicated.
This month we’ve met twice and both times had a pot luck dinner ahead of time. We are enjoying getting to know each of the couples better. There is a range of number of children and their ages among us. Tim and I have five, another couple has four (the oldest is a teenage girl who has taken care of the little ones for us several times), the single mom has three children, another one is pregnant with their third girl, and the last couple is pregnant with their second girl.
Today a new couple joined our group. Hooray! I had met the wife at the Women’s Retreat (and enjoyed her in the brief moments we had chatting) but hadn’t seen her husband before. They are newlyweds (3 months this past weekend). The husband is in the military (due to be deployed this summer). We saw them in Sunday School class this morning at church and ended up inviting them to our Bible study this evening. Hooray–they decided to join us. We had a fun dinner with lots of food.
The coordinator of the Home Groups came and visited our group this evening, bringing with him a couple who is heading off to Alaska to work on the radio ministry there. They told us all about the work in Alaska and their hopes for the future. The husband is in Tim’s men’s ministry Bible study. It was interesting to hear them share their passion for this Christian radio work in Alaska and how God worked to get them ready to go.
The kids all played beautifully together. There was much running around and noisy play during and after dinner. When we started our Bible study time the little ones went upstairs and watched a movie. Joshua (and one of the little toddlers) stayed downstairs. Joshua read his book and looked through the host’s HUGE Civil War collection. The little girl played quietly around Joshua. The only time she made any noise was at the end of our visit when Sarah insisted it was her turn to play with the grocery cart. Oops, time to go home. Ha!
I tried to upload some pictures but couldn’t get it to work (and Tim isn’t available). I’ll go back and add some (unrelated but cute) kid photos.
Kathy
