Time in Tennessee

Before I talk about the weekend, I just have one thing to say....

WE HAVE HIGH SPEED INTERNET!

Yes, I realize it's 2010 and most people have had high speed internet for a long time. We, however, live in the country, and have only had two choices...dial-up or satellite...for internet. We did dial-up for awhile, and when we just couldn't stand it anymore, we got satellite internet. Well, it never was all it was cracked up to be, especially considering the price we were paying. It was not much faster than dial-up, and during high traffic times (pretty much anytime we wanted to be online) it would slow to a crawl. Watching YouTube videos, looking at pictures posted on Facebook, blog-surfing...forget it! It wasn't worth the time investment! Then we began hearing that some of our neighbors were getting AT&T U-Verse internet service and we checked into it. We made several phone calls to AT&T and were repeatedly told that high speed internet wasn't available in our area. We finally got connected with a local AT&T rep, who was able to get us set up today. I am far too excited about this....I'm not sure this is healthy!

Anyway, back to our trip to Tennessee this past weekend. We left on Thursday and drove to Nashville, where we had dinner with Bruce & Lisa Wethey. They are incredibly talented musicians who travel around the country leading worship in various venues. Check out their website at www.bruceandlisa.com! They came to our church back in November of 2008, and we met them at that time. Lisa had been diagnosed with a non-malignant brain tumor several years earlier, and she shared her story as they performed at our church that evening. Of course, it was of great interest to us, as Hannah was in the middle of her battle with glioblastoma at that time. Lisa was about to start radiation treatments at that time, and Hannah had already been through two rounds of radiation treatments, so we visited quite a while that evening. They continued to follow our journey through our emails. They came back and performed at our church a few weeks ago, and we had another opportunity to visit with them and get caught up on all that had happened since we had last seen them. Since we were planning a trip to Knoxville, we made plans to get together on the way. We ended up having dinner with them, and then sitting in our hotel lobby with them for a couple of hours. We really enjoyed our visit with them.

The next day, we traveled on to Knoxville, where we met up with some old friends of ours, Lindy & Crystal Apon. Back when we lived in Fort Smith, Lindy was the youth minister at our church and we became good friends with him and his family. Their son and Hannah used to play together a lot when they were preschoolers. We moved from Fort Smith about fifteen years ago, when Bethany was a newborn, and we had not seen them since then. It was great to get re-acquainted with them. We played frisbee golf, went whitewater rafting, played ping pong (well, at least Bethany and Brad did), and learned some new card games. Lindy is now the pastor at Parkway Baptist Church in Knoxville, and we had the great privilege of sharing our testimony there on Sunday morning. It's amazing how wherever you go, the body of Christ is there!

The main thing we came away from this weekend with was an increased desire to share our testimony of God's goodness and grace through the storms of life. Up until now, we have accepted speaking opportunities that have been offered to us, but have really not actively pursued them. We believe that God is calling us to be more intentional in seeking opportunities to share. We don't know really what that's going to look like--we have demanding jobs and a very active teenage daughter--but we want to be obedient to His call. We're beginning to work on a few projects...a website, informational materials, etc...and we'd appreciate your prayers as we seek to follow His leadership in this area. We are excited to see what God has in store for us in the days ahead!