With Mark Lamb and Mark Edwards at Victory FM
Toby deciding if he's brave enough to talk on the air
The view from our balcony in the outer banks - beautiful
At Kitty Hawk
Getting ready for worship at Hickory Ridge Community Church
Snow in Virginia - view out our back window on Monday
Some of the ships at Jamestown
One of the coasters the kids conquered from the skyride at Busch Gardens
Fife and Drums Corp at Williamsburg
Okay, this is a serious catch up blog. We have been traveling and I have not kept up, but it’s been a pretty amazing couple of weeks. We just got back from a 10 day trip to NC and VA with a lot of ministry, a lot of history, and a lot of family time.
The Tuesday before we left I was live on Greg Bullen’s show, Off the Bookshelf, on WMPC. I’ve done this show with Greg several times now, and it’s always great to be on there. I love his heart for ministry!
Then we packed up our whole family of five with all the stuff we would need for 10 days of traveling and all the gear needed to do multiple events, and somehow squeezed all of that and all of us into one minivan. My husband is a packing genius, that’s all I have to say!
We left Thursday morning and drove straight to Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, the home of WRVL, Victory FM. This is a great station. They cover the whole state of VA and also quite a bit of NC and some other surrounding areas. They have supported my ministry for a long time, and I was so glad we were finally going to be close enough to them to stop in! We got there for the afternoon show with Mark Lamb, and he even put my kids on the air for a bit, which was so kind of him. Had a great time visiting with Mark Edwards, the music and production manager, as well, and I just want to thank them for making the visit such a great one both for me and my family!
Then we drove on a couple more hours to stay in Charlottesville that night. We got up early because we had a couple of extra hours, and we wanted to take the opportunity to see Monticello. The kids loved it, which was a good sign considering the plans for our off time that week, and then we headed four hours south to the Outer Banks where I was doing a women’s retreat in Kill Devil Hills, NC.
The church we were working with for the rest of this trip was Hickory Ridge Community Church and they were just amazing. By the time we left, we felt like family! What a sweet church. It was such a fun God story too. The women’s director called me to see if I would do their women’s retreat on Palm Sunday weekend. Then the next day, the pastor called to see if I would do a concert and their worship services on Easter Sunday one week later. Neither of them knew the other had called me! I was trying to think of how to make that work since I don’t like to leave my family that long, but I hated to have them pay the travel twice when we realized it was exactly the same dates as my kids’ spring break. Voila! They can come with me, and we have a great excuse to check out VA while getting to do everything the church wanted us to do!
So that first weekend we did the women’s retreat. I was teaching on the life of Peter, and we had a wonderful time with all the women! The kids ended up babysitting the sound guy’s 3 little girls, so they had a ministry themselves. 🙂 We had a couple of hours to check out Kitty Hawk which was really cool, and then we headed back north to Chesapeake where I did the worship on the Palm Sunday services.
After those services, we went out to lunch with a few of our new friends from church – did I mention this was a friendly congregation!?! They were wonderful. Then we headed up to Williamsburg where we planned to spend our week days.
My husband, Nathan, had to work a couple of the days, and Sunday night it snowed 4 inches. Yes, on spring break in VA. So not fair. It also rained all day Monday and we were all exhausted by then, so Nathan worked and I worked about a half day, and the kids just sat and read and played games and watched movies, and it was a great down day. The next day Nathan worked, and the kids and I checked out Jamestown (which was fabulous! Don’t miss that if you’re ever there).
Wednesday we went to Busch Gardens where Toby shocked us all by turning out to be a coaster freak. I am not so much. Nope. I can do a couple, but I’d rather watch any day. Dad and sisters came to the rescue, and he got to ride almost enough coasters even for him.
Then we spent two days at Colonial Williamsburg which was also fabulous! I feel like they have improved this so much since we last went. There was a lot more interactive stuff which the kids loved. They even had a spy quest the kids could do, and we had to find the identity of a loyalist spy and then warn our own revolutionary spy. Pretty fun stuff!
Saturday we went back to Hickory Ridge and I rehearsed with the band for Sunday, and also gave a concert that night as part of their Easter weekend. Then the next morning I led the worship with the band on the Easter services, and we drove all the way home so everyone could be back at school and work the next day.
We are exhausted, but had so much fun, both as a family, and with the larger family of God. We’re already talking to Hickory Ridge about doing it again next year, and I hope we do, because I can’t wait to see them again!