What a Day!

This week our pastor emailed to have us share in our church service this morning. We had made a little plan with the pastor -- he told us what questions he would ask us and Nate and I briefly (read: on the way to church this morning) went over what we thought we would say.

The plan WAS for us to answer a few quick questions, show a video presentation I had made on imovie and then the church would vote as to whether or not they would financially support us.

That WAS the plan. Easy peasy lemon squeezey.

This is how it all went down:

We got up to the front and looked out at all the wonderful, beautiful, godly, family-like people in the congregation. All of sudden it seemed very real ~ we are leaving all these loved ones. Nate was asked the first question, which I believe was this:

Nate, we know you went to Togo with a team over Christmas, what has God been doing in your lives since then?

Sounds easy, right?

I think Nate said about four words and then just stopped. Emotion came over him. He started to say what we "practiced" and as the emotion, the reality, the je-ne-sais-quoi, of the whole thing hit him, he stopped talking and teared up.

I looked at him and in my head was saying, "Um....this is NOT what we practiced."

He got emotional, so I got emotional (which, if you know me, I hate being emotional...I'd like to think of myself as having the same emotional capacity as a paper weight). Then I looked in the front row of the congregation where my parents were sitting and could see my mom, crying. More people were crying.... AH! It was crazy.

As Nate was answering the first question, he paused to gain control and a sweet sweet man in our congregation hollered out, "You can do it, Nate!", which was great because it brought a little comic relief.

We did regain control, answered the remaining four questions without much incident and then stepped down while they showed our little video presentation (which I'll try to somehow add to this blog.)

We left the auditorium, the church voted, we got approved and all of sudden we were back in the service to hear our dearest friend, Joleyne, speaking before she prayed for us. I loved her one line, as she really fought back tears, when she said, "Erin and Nate, I promise I will be your biggest supporter, but right now, I'm your biggest cry-baby...."

So, what does this mean? It means we've been approved by our church! Our church is behind us, encouraging us, praying for us AND financially supporting us! And two other families approached us to offer personal support on top of that. Woo hoo!

It was a great day. Miracles #16, 17, and 18 today.