WE DID IT !

We have settled in to North Coast Family Fellowship in Seaside and it feels SO RIGHT!
We should have done this years ago but it was a very hard decision for us.
We are so excited about the atmosphere and the feeling of worship that goes on at NCFF ! It is just a breath of fresh air every week we attend. We visited around for several weeks and nothing felt just right until we got there. Yes, it is a big church but we are finding already that it isn't that hard to get acquainted. We turned in a form they have in the bulletin for new people and that Monday received a phone call from a lady in the office just wanting to get to know us. I talked to her for probably 30 minutes about how you get to feel at home with so many people you don't know and especially how we would ever get to know the pastor. She had some great ideas and
then said would you like to have coffee with Pastor Glen sometime to get to know him.
Later that day he called but we weren't home so he e-mailed us and we set up a time to meet with him. Spent a good hour with him at a coffee shop and came away feeling like we knew our pastor! He is a great guy....enjoy his preaching very much. He is going thru the book of Romans right now.
Later that same week we got a call from the Sr Connection group (because we had put our ages down) inviting us to their weekly meeting at the church and then we received a card from a prayer group on Friday saying they had prayed for us. Immediate responses! They are doing all the right things to make people feel welcome and included.
We signed up for a small group study and have gone two weeks now and have met a neat group of people there. We meet every Wednesday night. They really focus on small groups because that is where the intimacy comes with the body. (Like our Care Units at BBC years ago ! ) That kind of fellowship is what it's all about! The last two weeks we have attended the morning adult Bible Study on Sunday mornings before church and that has been good too. Another way to get acquainted. We are going thru the book of Ephesians.
I love the worship and atmosphere of the whole worship service on Sunday mornings too. The music rocks at times but they still incorporate some of the good old hymns and older songs in the service too.
We have twice in one morning seen people come up to a person that is ill and pray with them standing right in the hall. Not just, we will be praying for you this week. Which I'm sure they did but we were impressed that they also prayed right then and there for them too.
The love and concern seems so genuine among the body that it just radiates thru the church.
Pastor Larry (the associate pastor) always greets everyone at the door when you leave and when we first started he wanted to know if we were new in town and we told him no we are just sort of in and out checking for a new place of worship.
So he said one week, "Oh yes, you are just in and out, right " and we told him "No - we are in!" Our decision had been made!
So, of course, we got a welcome to NCFF from him.
God is so good in helping us over the hump. We have season tickets to a monthly concerts at the Liberty Theatre in Astoria and last month was our third concert. The couple that has season tickets sitting in the row right ahead of us introduced themselves to us at our last concert saying, "Well, if we are going to sit in front of you every month, we may as well get acquainted" so we all introduced ourselves. Well, you guessed it. The very next Sunday we met them at church for the adult study. Yes, a familiar face in the midst of strangers. God is good !
Actually it takes us about the same amount of time to get there as it did to BBC because although it is a little farther, you go highway speeds so it only takes about five minutes longer. Well worth the extra time !
As I said before, this was long overdue and the feeling of freedom and worship is permeating in my life.
God is faithful if we just but listen to his instructions ! SO ALL IS WELL AND AT PEACE!

Question for Today ?????

You just lost your entire phone number list to a cyber gremlin.
Who 's number would you look up first and why ??

Cute Huh !

This is my favorite bear.....His name is Rumples. When Lorraine and I redid our bedroom we used a beautiful picture of a mama bear and three cubs as our focal point so I decorated with some bears I had before to compliment the picture.
This special bear has been around for a LONG time... and is very special because Bob gave him to me years ago.
The circumstances are what made it so sweet. We were in Portland a long time ago - just the two of us, don't remember why none of the kids was with us - but for some reason we had a spat on the way up. When we got to Portland we both had different stores to go in to so we went our separate ways... I got back to the car first (or at least I had thought I had) but when I reached the car and unlocked the door this big fuzzy bear was in my seat all seatbelted in. Yes, Bob was forgiven and all was well again because of this big, soft bear.... Thanks Bob for this fun memory ! What a sweet thing to do.
Rumples still has a special place in my heart....as does my very special husband!