Divine Design and Murphy's Law

Two Sundays ago was our second monthly ladies meeting! This was our first one without a team here. We are going to have it on the third Sunday of every month to make it easier to remember and advertise, but our Day of the Bible threw it off this month. 

I was super excited! For months now I knew I wanted our first Bible study to be True Woman 101: Divine Design. It is a ladies Bible study co-written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It is a perfect foundation for any ladies' ministry. I started several weeks before planning it all out. I am trying to pare down the 40 lessons into 8 culturally relevant 20-30 minute studies. It was fun coming up with illustrations they might relate to. I also supplement with lots of visuals when I'm nervous... visuals make me feel safe... so does lots of preparation! 

Norma came over and helped me prep our craft. This time instead of incorporating a cooking lesson we did a craft. I never took a photo of my example, but it is a macrame looking plant hanger. We were talking about being faithful to the Designer's specifications, so we were going to follow directions to make a beautiful design. I got dirt and a plant in mine and hung it on our front door that never gets used, next to all of my crisp posters and box full of visuals. (That I had finished days ahead of time.)

Well, Jimmy used the front door (it was a trap) and when that plant hit the floor, it looked like a mud bomb went off and covered everything within a couple feet. (Murphy's Law!) So much for my coping mechanism! My visuals looked like I had left them on the floorboard of my car. Nice! 

Here are some of our people before church:

It is going to be nice in our new building where there is space to fellowship without being right on the road. 

We meet outside for the worship time on these weeks so that the inside can be set up ahead of time. 

We had several first time visitors who had been invited by other ladies! That is what I was hoping would happen.

It is HARD to get those ladies talking and answering questions during the lesson. And if they do they whisper the answers. Some who have been attending longer finally started answering. I know it will take time. I hope we will have strong Christian friendships within our ladies ministry. They all giggled though. I can't get them to shout out an answer but I can get them to giggle. 

I love this photo:

Just working on their planters right over the sleeping babies. My life is like this photo a lot!

 I think we all had a good time!

Please pray for this ministry of our church!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

This was a first, Jimmy taught the kids class, while Nick and Juan preached to the men. 

He wanted to teach them about Baptism since our special Baptismal service is coming up this Sunday. Here is one of his visuals:

Yes, that is a football player baptizing another football player! They learned about immersion and what it symbolizes. It sounds like it was pretty effective!