Wow, what a weekend!

Saturday started with a leisurely lunch with almost all of the girls that I used to work with back in the SOS days! We had a wonderful time laughing and remembering the adventures we had in our early twenties ... driving all over TN in a motor home doing scholarship searches and career printouts for high school and college kids. We had some really fun times back then and made friendships that will last forever (you can't help it when you are together 24/7).

Here is a picture of the infamous SOS Winnebago (aka the Lemon).

A picture from lunch with most of the old Edsouth gang.

Saturday night Chad and I went to the Fireproof Your Marriage conference at our church. It was wonderful. Kirk Cameron was the speaker and Warren Barfield did the music. (For those of you that can't place Kirk but know the name sounds familiar, he was Mike Seaver from Growing Pains. I had his poster on the back of my closet door, and I bet some of the other 30 somethings out there did too :-) I was definitely a little giddy seeing one of my teen crushes in person.) Kirk was a fantastic speaker. He was insightful and funny and full of good scripture based principles for marriage. His wife was supposed to speak as well, but she got sick and was unable to come. I would have loved to hear her perspective on things, but Kirk did a great job with both sessions. He based one of his sessions on 1 Peter 3:7 NAS -- "You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that you prayers may not be hindered." He geared this more to the men, but I think we can all apply the points he gave: spend time with her, study and know her better than anyone else, honor her, protect her, open up to her and pray with her.

I have always loved the song from the movie Fireproof and other random Warren Barfield songs, but he blew me out of the water on Saturday. It was just him and his guitar, and he was AWESOME! The song "Love is not a Fight" was actually written about his own marriage--great story of God's work in his life! Anyway, if you've never listened to his music, check it out. I'm still searching to see if he has an acoustic album out there somewhere. We had a wonderful added bonus of getting to hear both of them again on Sunday morning at our church (the conference was held there). What a blessing this weekend was!

This picture and the one of Warren Barfield on the stage are courtesy of Feed Your Faith , the organization who was responsible for bringing this conference to Knoxville.


My friend from church and I stood to the side of Warren's table until he turned around and saw us. We were just going to take his picture, but I asked him to be in the picture with us. She took mine, and I took hers. He was so nice!


I think the poster I had was him in a sweater vest of some sort, but I can't seem to find it online anywhere. This "Miami Vice" tribute from the 80's will suffice.