Women at Crossroad's Recap

I have talked and talked and talked about Women at Crossroads, and I'm finally going to tie up all the lose ends and give everyone a break on the topic.  Until next year.  {Because there will hopefully be a next year!}
In this post I talked about how excited I was to finally see the conference materialize.  The whole thing started in March, and the thought of pulling a conference together in three months was a little overwhelming.  I wrote about my battle between peace and anxiety over what might happen at the conference.  And then in this post I wrote the day before the conference, I expressed my fears and frustrations.  All a part of the process, or so I'm told.  So I want to start this post out with a big "thank you."  So many of y'all offered me encouragement while my head was spinning off into another dimension.  Every comment and e-mail helped calm me down.  Not to mention all of the prayers that were said for this conference.  I can tell that tons of prayers went up for Women at Crossroads because the end result was more amazing than I could have ever imagined.  =)  

   June 8 & 9, 2012

Friday, June 8:  6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

We started off in the Fellowship Hall.  You'll notice in the pictures that everyone "working" the conference was dressed in black and had pink lanyard name tags around their necks.  Guests were met by some ladies from our church passing out goody bags.  The goody bags were absolutely amazing.  I was so pleased with them.  Every guest got one, and every bag included a Gideon's Bible, an Itinerary for the weekend, spray hand sanitizer, a Women at Crossroad's notepad, a pink Women at Crossroad's click pen (who doesn't love a good click pen?!), some scripture tracts, mints, gum, a pack of Kleenexes, and a registration card.   We also had sticky name tags for everyone so that we could hopefully learn names and make strong connections with everyone who attended.

Then, we had a little station set up for mom's to sign their children in to child watch services.  We didn't know most of the children or mothers, so we had a system where each child got a numbered name tag and the mom's got their number.  To pick their children up, they had to have the right number.  We also got the mom's name, child's name, and any special care instructions.  

Then, we all ate dinner together.  My sweet daddy and some other men from the church spent all day Friday bbq-ing chicken.  

We had lots of wonderful helpers in the kitchen, including my darling husband.  =)  He was so supportive of the entire thing and I can't sing his praises enough.  

It was so great to see different races mingled together in an all-white church.  Where we live, going to church is very much a family event and churches tend to be either all black or all white because of it.  It was great to have both.  =)  

After everyone had fully tummies, we moved into the sanctuary.  We borrowed furniture from a local furniture company to decorate the stage.  Even though the conference was obviously held at a church, I wanted to make sure everyone felt comfortable and casual all weekend, free to be themselves.

  Another thing I loved about the conference was the mixed-up order of everything.  It was so different from a regular church service, and I loved the "spice" of doing things out of the ordinary.  A local lady sang for us and led us in a praise and worship song.  Her voice gave me goosebumps.  Our main event for the night was a speaker named Maria Owens.  She's regionally renowned and does conferences all over the southeast.  You may have heard of her - her name is Maria Owens.  She has such an amazing story and the fact that she came to our little hick-town conference was icing on the cake.

After the conference was over, everyone was invited back to the Fellowship Hall for dessert and coffee.

  We encouraged everyone to come back fro Saturday but some people let us know they wouldn't be able to.  Still, everyone was just overflowing from what happened Friday night.  We cried, worshiped, held hands, praised God, and were ourselves.  Everyone in the Fellowship Hall was bubbling over.  Later, my dad told me he looked at my husband and said to him "Look what our girl did," and Mr. R got choked up and couldn't respond.  That just melts my heart.  =)  And not to toot my own horn in ANY way, but I was just so emotional the entire day because God gave me this idea.  I was obedient, and everything that happened was because of HIM and not me...but a part of me just could not believe the amazing thing I had put together.  It was a late night & Saturday would be an early morning, so after everyone left we cleaned up and headed home to get some rest lay in bed and think about everything, unable to sleep because of the excitement.  =)

  

Saturday, June 9:  9:30 am - Noon

Saturday was a completely different format from Friday.  We did start out with food again, breakfast in the Fellowship Hall.  We chowed down on fruit, cereals, granola bars, yogurts, muffins, and topped it all off with juices or coffee.  Then we headed on over to the Sanctuary again where one of our church members briefly discussed the good and bad girls of the Bible.  It was really cool to hear about the bad girls who had happy endings.  Obviously those are stories I can relate to pretty well.  We had more praise and worship music, and we even had a little comedy skit that had us all laughing to tears.  Then, we broke off into small groups that met in classrooms.  We had five topics and everyone got to choose two classes to attend.

The topics were:

1. Sexual Abuse - led by a woman who was sexually abused by her uncle and cousins from the age of 3 until she was a young teenager.
2. Depression - led by a woman who struggles with clinical depression, an inherited  from her father who committed suicide
3. Being a Single Mom - led by two single mother's with completely different circumstances and upbringings
4. Drug & Alcohol Abuse - led by me, having struggled with drug & alcohol abuse from the age of 14 to 22.
5. How Well Do You Know Your Women - led by a church elder, discussing women of the Bible further and the importance of being well-schooled on them

After the second class, we invited everyone back over the Fellowship Hall for prizes and dessert.  We had a table of prizes set up and we drew from the registration cards.  We gave away Bath & Body Works candles, lotions, and body sprays; local cookbooks; a ton of items donated by Tupperware; devotional books, Christian CD's; a wax warmer and three different wax scents; some Christian comedy DVD's; and a set of stainless steel kitchen spoons with a canister.

Every single person in attendance got a prize because of the enormous amount of prize donations that were made by church members and local businesses.  We were also able to give away one grand prize...and the grand prize was a complete surprise to everyone attending and to most of the conference workers.  Only 8 people knew what the grand prize was in advance.  

Because of the generous donations of two local businesses, we were able to give away the living room set that was displayed on stage all weekend.  That's one sofa, one love seat, one chair, one coffee table, two end tables, two lamps, and a rug.  =)  

I want to share with y'all the story of the woman who won our grand prize.  Her name is Marian, and she's from Florida.  She has a son who lives here, and while visiting him she attended a church that advertised Women at Crossroads.  She thought it sounded interesting and decided she would come back up for another visit so that she could attend the conference.  I learned this because she was in one of my Drug & Alcohol Abuse classes.  She was the only one in the room I wasn't familiar with, so I asked her name.  She told me her name is Marian, and she told me why she was there.  She also told me, "You'll remember me."  Later that day, when I drew for the grand prize drawing of the living room set and pulled her name, she just erupted with tears.  The look on her face was of sheer disbelief.  After the crowd had calmed down, I went and talked to Marian.  She tearfully told me about her son and his family, and how much they struggle to make ends meet.  She wanted to give the living room set to her son because their living conditions are very poor.  I was happy that the living room set was going to someone in need.  She was happy because she was able to help her son in a way she would not have been able to, otherwise.  The fact that SHE won is a total God thing.  Can you imagine how many different things had to fall into place for a woman from Florida to be able to attend a tiny little first-time conference in South Carolina?  God put all the pieces together long before I ever came into the picture.  Every single thing about Women at Crossroads screamed to me...
God is Good.  =)  
I still can't believe that God used me in such a big way.  I would say I'm at a loss for words, but that's clearly not true based on the super long post I just wrote.  It was such a busy weekend, but it was such a blessing.  I'm honored and humbled that God chose me.  He picked me to lead this, and He made all the pieces fall perfectly into place every step of the way.  Every fear and frustration I had along the way was comforted by His shining perfection.  For the first time in my marriage, I feel good about serving along side my husband.  I feel like God used this conference to teach me so many things about Him, about others, and about myself.  I hope that He wants us to do this conference again next year.  I hope that the problems within our church clear up or that I can bring the conference with me wherever I go.  It was such a huge blessing...my cup runneth over...and through the conference I've been asked to serve in other ways in my community.  I am proof that God can take a mess and turn it into a message.  And I'm just so incredibly thankful.  To God be the glory.      

Women at Crossroads

Hey.  :)  
I am super busy right now.  And when I say "super busy" I mean that the hubby and I are out of food and clean clothes & I don't have time to do anything about it.  So we're going away for the weekend to buy clothes and eat out.  Haha.
Remember back in....oh...March I mentioned something about this idea God had given me for a women's conference?  If you don't, click here.  That idea has become a reality that is going down next weekend.  Oh my gosh.

I am not in any way trying to toot my own horn.  This conference is about God, not about me.  But one of the points of this blog is to record the emotions I feel - good or bad.  So, just allow me this moment to record my feelings about the conference coming up in 7 days.  
I am leading a conference.I am in charge.Why did God think that was a good idea?!  I've never done anything like this before in my life.I've only attended one conference.  One.  And now I'm organizing one myself.  How is this possible?How is it possible that a year and a half ago I was selling drugs and now I'm organizing a conference in hopes of reaching the unchurched.  Because I care.  I care about the people in our community who don't know God...and that "caring" is very new to me.  It's mind-boggling.
We are prepared for 100 people.  When we first started planning, we took into consideration that our church is pretty small - we have room for about 150 people max.  Our fellowship hall holds even less people.  We also took into consideration that our church is in the middle of nowhere - at least an hour away from any major cities.  Our pastor told me that in general 6 to 8 percent of people invited to any given event will show up.  He also told us later that it takes 8 invitations before a person will come to a church event.  I'm not a math person, but I calculated some things and based on the numbers our pastor gave us...we'd have to invite 1,667 people eight times each to have 100 people show up.  So that's what we planned for...100 seemed like a really big goal.  But now?  With fliers and/or save-the-date cards in most of the local businesses, fliers handed out door to door, groups and events on Facebook, ads in all of the local & not-so-local newspapers, radio announcements on Christian and secular stations all the way up to TWO HOURS AWAY, letters sent to over 50 local and not-so-local churches, and then just word of mouth.....what if planning for 100 people wasn't enough?
When I start to think of how packed our church could be....I feel so much anxiety about not having enough, not having done enough.  I try to think about how Jesus fed over 5,000 people with just a 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.  (Matthew 14: 13-21)  I know in my heart that God didn't give me this idea and allow everything to fall perfectly into place for it to fail.  I know that.  So I calm down.  And then I hear a tiny voice in the back of my head telling me lies.  It would break my heart if the conference wasn't a huge success.  I've put so much work into everything...not to mention the committee of 7 absolutely amazing, godly women who have worked diligently as well.  So I remember how many people have been praying for the conference.  And I remember that we serve a God who hears our prayers.  
So, to summarize, it's a constant battle between peace and anxiety.  I know I'm behind on blogging...I know I'm behind on e-mails.  I know.  I'm sorry.  But all of this will be here when the conference is over and right now...Women at Crossroads is my priority.  If you can, say a little prayer for me, all of the ladies helping, and especially for the women who will attend.            

Women of Joy Conference Recap

I have had the most amazing... life lately.  I almost don't even want to write about it...because writing it all down means that it's past-tense stuff.  And I'm just loving living in the moment...  However, moments like these deserve to be documented.  

 Several months ago, my daddy had this great idea that my mom & I invite his mom to come to a Christian's women's conference with us.  Just to let you know why this is important as briefly as possible, there have been some problems between my mom & her MIL and during wedding planning, there were some problems between my grandma and I as well.  Daddy felt like his mom may have been saved as a child but he wasn't sure.  He wasn't raised in a Christian home and questioned whether or not either of his parents were Christians.  So, we did invite her and were excited about hopefully burying all of our hatchets and maybe even exposing my grandma to the gospel in a new kind of way.  Fast forward, and my grandma came to EVERY NIGHT OF REVIVAL two weeks ago.  She brought her Bible.  She seemed happy to be there.  This was a huge deal because she has always been a Sunday-morning kind of person.  Needless to say, we were all thrilled that she was coming to Revival.

Fast Forward again, and it's Friday - time to go to the conference!  We leave as soon as I get off of work, pick up my grandma from their beach house, and head to the conference.  We got there a little late, but were still able to participate in the praise and worship time led by Charles Billingsley.  I'd never heard him (or head of him) before, but he is an amazing musician and worship leader!  Amazing.  He has such a tender heart for the Lord and was honest.  He talked about how the traveling parts of his job are hard because they take him away from his family.  He mentioned a friend of his who is a pastor who is resigning because of an affair he'd been having.  Y'all know I'm all about people who keep it real, so I really liked Charles Billingsley.  Then, we listened to Carol Kent share her testimony.  She had an amazing story about dealing with the pain of having their son in prison for murder...she was so amazing to listen to.  Then, we left and checked into our hotel for the night. 

Saturday morning, we had more praise & worship with Charles Billingsley.  Amazing, again.  Then Sheri Rose Shepherd spoke.  She might have been my favorite speaker.  She's a former Mrs. America who used to be overweight.  She was gorgeous and funny and real.  At the end of her speaking time, she had us all stand up and say our wedding vows to Jesus.  She had a table set up, like the other guests, and I got a "wedding ring" to use as a witnessing tool.  Also, it's super cute and will always remind me of the amazing weekend we had. 

Then, we had a bit more music-time with Charles before getting to my favorite lady at the conference, Anita Renfroe.  Anita is a Christian comedian!  LOVE!  She is so spunky and I could related to many of the things she joked about.  :)  I thoroughly enjoyed being able to laugh at clean humor with my mom & grandma.
After the comic act, we had the afternoon to spend doing anything we wanted.  The conference was in Myrtle Beach and we've done about everything there is to do at the beach.  We decided to try something different and we went and painted pottery!  :)  I've painted pottery before, and I love it!  My mom and grandma had never, but we all enjoyed it.  I can't wait to get our pieces back.  :)  In perfect timing, we were done and headed to go get dinner with the other ladies from our church attending the conference.  Then, back to the conference for a concert that was SO GREAT!  Mandisa sang first, and she was absolutely stunning.  She has a set of pipes on her and she sang for the Lord!  Next up was Brandon Heath.  I really fell in love with his sound and can't wait to download some of his tunes!  :)  After the Saturday night session, we all went to I-Hop for dessert and coffee.  Except it started pouring down rain and we all looked like drowned rats.  It was a had-to-be-there type thing that had us all laughing.  After we stuffed our faces full of sweets, we all retired for the night.  My mom & grandma got ready for bed, and then I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.  When I came out, they were talking.  And they made up that night - both of them apologized.  My heart was so full...
Sunday morning, back to the conference to hear Thelma Wells speak.  She was a hoot!  She spoke about grace and mercy, and shared some of her life story.  She was a funny & godly women and we all really enjoyed listening to her and learning from her.  
***
Then, Sunday night I was back at our church where I presented all of the information about our own conference to the congregation.  Everyone clapped, but clapping is easy.  Being involved takes work...so we'll see how it goes.  :)  
I later found out that during revival, my grandma rededicated her life to the Lord and I couldn't be happier!  I know for a fact now that I will see my grandma in heaven and nothing compares to that joy.      
My heart is full...God's blessing are so good.  I'm a happy girl.  Except that my husband won't stop dipping. & I'm keeping my kisses away as motivation but it's not really working... :/  Other than that...everything here is GREAT! 

Coo Coo Kachoo, 

Mrs. Robinson

Motivational Cough Drops & Mr. R's FIRST SALE!!!

This week has been killer, so to say that I'm happy to see Friday is an understatement.  Work has been so crazy busy... life in general has been busy.  We are almost completely out of food in our house.  Am I the only one who waits until the very last minute to go to the grocery store?  I don't know why I wait so long, because I love Wal-Mart and that's usually where I shop.  Anyway.  I made this really cool mega-list of all the dinner's we'll eat in the month of May with my daily exercise matched up depending on how long it takes to cook that night's dinner.  Last night I whipped out my handy-dandy meal & workout plan and wrote out a menu for next week.  How CUTE did it turn out?!  I love it!  

Side Bar:  Y'all have got to get some of these markers if you have a chalkboard in your house.  For real.  They are amazing and will change your life.    

The little framed chalkboard is just an old picture frame I had lying around.  I painted the glass with chalkboard paint when I was working on this project and got a little out of control.  It happens.  :)  Then, I worked on making my shopping list for the month of May based on my meal plan for the month.  Hopefully, I won't have to grocery shop again until April!  If you'd like to use an adorable little shopping  like the one below, click  here  to get your own.  

Meanwhile, everyone is sick.  Me, my husband, my dad, my co-worker, and my grandpa.  Stupid head cold came out of nowhere!  Thank GOODNESS for the motivational cough drops!  They're totally saving the day.  And my throat.    

Everything mentioned above here is completely irrelevant.  It's just every-day stuff that tickles my fancy, but the REAL point of this post was to tell y'all that.....
my....

{wait for it}
husband......
{wait for it}
MADE HIS FIRST SALE!  He's officially made money now and I'm so proud of him!  He sold his first policy and got paid and I love him and am proud that he has stuck it out this far!  He works hard and isn't compensated until someone buys a policy from him - so keep him in your prayers as he continues to build his business.  So, his first clients were....us and my parents.  But what we bought from him was really inexpensive.  The payment he received was spectacular!  In one day, he made about half of what he made in a week at his old job.  We are excited!  I'm SO proud of him!  I love him so much!  I know God put us here for a reason...and this is his first taste of new-job-success.  So many of y'all have left comments saying you'd pray for us...even more of you have e-mailed me and let me know that you've been keeping us in your prayers.  Thank you so much!  They are working.  :)  
And one more thing....today after work, my mom + me + my dad's mom are going to the beach for the weekend!  =)  Girls night(s)!  Pop bottles!  Not.  We're going to a Christian women's conference and I'm super duper excited about the possibilities!  It's going to be a blast and I'm curious to see how the hubbers does without me.  Considering I was so pitiful when he left me for business trips...haha.  I won't be home until Sunday afternoon.  Sunday night at our church I'm addressing the congregation to fill them all in on the women's conference WE are hosting in June...so wish me luck!  I'm not a public speaker.  
So yeah.  That's life lately.  :)  

Coo Coo Kachoo, 

Mrs. Robinson

Reaching Out ~ Women's Conference

To keep with the Christian theme while we count down the days until Easter...this post is about something BIG going on right now!

Yesterday's post was about being responsible to people.  I recently realized a group of people that I am responsible to...a group of people that I've been failing.

I work in the office of a factory.  We currently have about 50 employees who work on the machines, and the majority of them are black.  Where I'm from, there are black churches and white churches - because we all like it that way.  I don't want to walk into a black church anymore than a black women wants to come to church with me.  I'm not racist, so don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say.  I'm not sure how it is in other places, but where I'm from and where we live, the churches are all very old and have been around for generations.  People go to church with their families...and as a matter of tradition between relatives, we have black churches and white churches.  But we are not segregated.  I hope that makes sense.  My point is, why don't I reach out to the people I see at work all the time?  And so the gears started to turn.  Over the course of a few days to the end of the week, God put an idea into my head that I wasn't comfortable doing.  But I couldn't shake it, so I shared it with our Mission Sister's leader.  She loved it, and we've been working very hard on it ever since.  What is it, you ask?!

    

{Please don't make fun of the very simple & quite lame "logo."  We're much more concerned with the content at this point and we don't even have a name for the conference yet.  So, this'll do until then.  Please continue reading.  Thank you.}

Dates:

June 8-9, 2012

Time:

Friday Night from 7 - 9 pm

Saturday Morning from 10 am - noon, or 3 pm

Location:

Our Fellowship Hall & Sanctuary

Content Information:

• This will just be a starting point, to plant the seeds, so to speak!  In August or October, we plan on scheduling a one-day meeting to "water the seeds."  Then, in November we'll invite all of the attendants to a Thanksgiving social gathering to touch base with everyone and keep in contact.  Then, in December, we'll have a similar function but the entire church will be invited in hopes of introducing them to our members and congregation after they are comfortable with us.  
• They'll receive goody bags when they first get to the conference.  They'll get a registration card to fill out (so that we can stay in touch and keep inviting them back!), some note-taking supplies, a track to salvation, information about the conference and what we're offering, and some other goodies like hand sanitizer.  
• Friday night we'll have dinner in the Fellowship Hall.  When everyone is finished eating, we'll move to the Sanctuary.  We'll have some praise and worship music, maybe a light and humorous skit to break the ice, a main speaker (or two), some special music, and then we'll offer to pray with anyone who feels like they might want to pray.  Then, we'll tell them about the small groups on Saturday.  There will be sign up sheets because the class sizes will be limited due to space restrictions.
• Saturday morning will start with breakfast (or maybe just coffee and fruit).  We'll have another praise and worship session in the Sanctuary.  Our "service leader" will explain about the small groups and introduce the small group leaders so that the audience will know who to look for.  Everyone will be able to attend two classes - but each small group leader will have contact cards.  If anyone wants to ask questions or get further information, they'll know how to get in touch with someone.  Finally, at the end of the hour, we'll meet for a light snack or lunch before parting ways.

The conference is totally free, of course.  We'll operate off of the budget the church gives us.  If we need more money, then we'll figure something out.  Our speakers, music leaders, kitchen team, and small group leaders will all  be volunteers.  So far, we've had a few people volunteer to lead a small group!  

 Small Group Topics

-so far- 

Abuse (Sexual and Physical)

Drug and Alcohol Abuse (That'd be my class....ahh...scary)

Depression

Being a Single Mom

And I'm sure more people will come forward and volunteer as God calls them


Conference Name Ideas
Our church is at a crossroads and this for women.  So...something about crossroads and women.
Women at a Crossroads
Crossroad Women
Woman at a Crossroad
...something like that.


Now, we are just down to waiting on or recruiting volunteers and making decisions.  =)) 

So, what do you guys think?!  I'm sort of terrified because I'm "in charge" and I've never done anything like this before.  But, I know God picked me for a reason.  He gave this idea to me when he could have put in the head of a much more qualified woman.  God doesn't call the qualified - He qualifies the called.  It's crazy how He called me...He picked me...out of all the more qualified women in our church.  It blows my mind every time I think about it.  I'm so excited about all of this!  =))  To feel God move in my life is such a wonderful feeling...I wish it on all of you. 

I'm scared.  I'm nervous.  I'm clueless.  I'd love some feedback!  Have you ever attended a women's conference?  I'm all ears to any tips or suggestions you've got up your sleeves!  I'm very thankful for how supportive everyone from church has been.  We already have some volunteers and EVERYONE has been so enthusiastic!  & now, I'd love to hear from you!     

2 Days Until Easter!!