HIS ladies beach retreat!

HIS ladies is the name of our Bible study group that meets every other Thursday night. We meet at Charity Cooke's house across the street from the church and it has truly been a blessing to me. I got an email 3 years ago from Charity with an invitation to start coming to this newly created Bible study, but I was new to the church and thought "oh, they are just being nice and inviting me ... I probably won't go." Well, two or three weeks later when I had not responded, I got a call from Iris Woodard asking me if I was coming to the Bible study. I said, "oh, me?! I thought the email I got was just generic." She said "no, we would love for you to come." Now, I have to say ... getting a personal invitation, knowing that somebody does care about you, meant SO much more to me than anybody could imagine. I am mostly an introvert (who can be an extrovert at times), but it takes me a little while to open up. Because of that email and phone call that was sent 3 years ago, my life has been blessed abundantly with Christian friendships, girls that I couldn't imagine going through life without. So this past weekend we took a little beach retreat to Atlantic Beach. We did this 2 years ago and decided it was time to do it again. Last time I went, Tucker was in my tummy! MY, a lot has happened in two years! Anyway, I offered my grandparent's trailer again so we decided to stay there since there were only 7 of us and we could all fit. When we first got there, there were 2 huge roaches on the kitchen floor!!!! One was dead and the other one crawled away too quickly and hid from us. It wasn't so bad until ... we saw the 3rd roach and then the 4th roach. The 4th roach was crawling up the wall and we said "OK - who's really down with going to Hampton Inn?!" SO ... off we went at 1:30 in the morning. We all slept in the same room AND we got continental breakfast instead of going out to breakfast so it all evened out. It was something to laugh about and remember our trip by! We had SO much fun. We talked and talked and laughed and laughed until 4:00 in the morning!! OH MY GOODNESS!! We were soo exhausted! When we woke up on Saturday, we got showers, ate continental breakfast, and went back to the trailer to work on our craft for our husband's and hang out. We prayed for our husband's (which is so important and something I need to do more of!) and talked and talked and laughed all day again. The crazy thing was we didn't see any roaches while we were there on Saturday. We decided to take a walk on the beach and do our bible study out there. It was the calmest and most beautiful I have seen Atlantic Beach in a long time. God's creation is BEAUTIFUL! I think the bible study was intended to be short, but the Holy Spirit was there. He had other plans. We all ended up in tears, opening up, growing together and just talking about how to encourage and strengthen one another in the Lord. GOD, You are soo soo good! We then went back to the trailer to clean up, pack our stuff, and head to eat at Sanitary before we made the trip back home to our husband's and babies. We got back about 10:00. Shannon, who was 37 weeks pregnant and scheduled for her c-section October 31st, texted us on Monday and had gone in for her routine check up and there were some complications so she had an emergency c-section that day. PRAISE GOD that she is ok and so is the baby. They are all healthy and happy. And thank YOU, Lord for your perfect timing. We joked about her going into labor while we were at the beach, but we didn't realize that she was THAT close to having him :) HE IS PRECIOUS!! Thank you, God, for wonderful friends and ladies in Christ who help encourage one another and are there for one another. We definitely missed all the ones that couldn't be there but they are just as special to us :)