Moving forward

It's been a while, I know. For the past 3-4 weeks, I've worked about 75 hours a week. There wasn't time for much besides sleep, so there was certainly no blogging. Things are beginning to calm now.

This week, I began my in-service for my adventure into the world of public school teaching. While I'm pretty nervous, I'm excited, too. This will be an opportunity for me to minister at the state's expense. This is also great because it provides a steady income with (fairly) set hours so we can focus more on our church plant.

Our mealtime at Manuel's Mexican Restaurant is going very well. We are developing some relationships with the waitstaff and are praying that God will bring us other folks with whom to develop relationships. We feel a great peace and energy about what we are doing. It seems to be slow and pointless at times, but we are confident that God has led us to this and will bless it as we are obedient.

I had another meeting with church planting guru Glenn Smith last week. My meetings with him were a continuation of our Church Planter's Assessment we had in June. It was a great meeting. Glenn was excited about what we were doing at Manuel's and said he had information about just such an outreach on his website. This was just more confirmation to us that we are on the right track.

Possibly the best news that came out of the meeting is that we are now fully assessed. This means the Union Baptist Association and the assessment team have approved us as church planters. What THAT means is that we are now able to receive financial support from both the UBA and the BGCT. There are still some steps to be taken. I'll have to meet with the UBA church planting consultant and with the BGCT regional church planter, but it is still more progress. We are excited to see God continue to work and confirm to us our call to plant Summerlake.

On a personal note, I could use your prayers. I took my teacher certification test on August 4th and feel pretty good about it. However, I won't learn my score until August 24th and increase in nervousness every day closer to the 24th. The difference in passing the test or failing the test is the difference between being paid as a full teacher and being paid as a sub. Pray that I will have peace. Pray that I have passed the test. Pray that regardless what happens, we will continue to trust that God is taking care of us and still in control. Should I not pass the test, it will mean Etta will have to get a job teaching and the boys will have to go to daycare. This is absolutely our last resort and something we pray will not have to happen.