Hey guys, I’m sorry it took me so long to put up another post. As you might know, my grandfather died last week and so, I’ve taken some time to process it all and to grieve. Today was his funeral. This has been a whole emotional rollercoaster week for me…
We’ve had 2 concerts last weekend, so it was a matter of getting myself back together to sing. In the rehearsals on the day of the concerts, I just broke down and cried. Sitting in the car driving to the concert I thought: I really don’t want to do this, I really don’t feel like doing this, well, I didn’t really feel like doing anything for that matter… But the Lord is so faithful to comfort and to teach me something even in this time. He put it like this: You have 2 choices, either you sit here and don’t like anything that’s going on, stay sad and feel terrible the whole concert through OR you can do something good eventhough you don’t ‘feel’ like it. You can be friendly, you can minister, you can do your best, eventhough it goes totally against you emotions. Of course, I had a reason to be sad and Stacy even told me in advance that I didn’t have to sing if I didn’t want to. But during that car ride to the concert I decided I was going to do my best at this concert and glorify Him, because no matter what I feel like, He is worthy of all my praise. So I did. I prayed for God to help me do this and do it right. And let me tell you, the loving Father that He is, He made this concert to be one of the best we’ve ever done! 🙂
The concert was on Friday evening at Vinings Worship Center. A cute little church and with mighty big people in it! 🙂 Lovely people, so hospitable and they have a wonderful profetic ministry going on too. We played a couple of Stacy’s songs, while being so encouraged by the reaction of the people in the church! That was so nice! 🙂 Then we went over into free worship, it was wonderful! People singing together with us, praising God! Beautiful! 🙂 Cornel got to minister to them in a great way, people praying and dancing… 🙂
At one point, Cornel played a spontaneous song with the pastor and another man in church, he was profecied over that he is going to praise the Lord more in music, so he could come up and start doing it right away! 🙂
The profetic ministry is mostly done by Harriet and Economy, great women of God wit their hearts in the right place! We had a time of prayer and they also ministered to Cornel and me, and to Stacy too. It was a very special and blessed time! Here they are:
After the concert we took Harriet out to dinner at IHOP, the International House of Pancakes! 🙂 And yes, the blueberry pancakes were AMAZING! 😉
Our second concert was way up into the Georgia mountains, at Cartecay UMC, a lovely church too with lovely people! Very friendly and open. There was a big storm that night, we had to sway across the road because of the broken branches and everything! This time Edgar could come with us, since he normally works when we have concerts, but not this time! 🙂 So that was special!
Here’s the church and us setting up for the concert:
We first sang a couple of Stacy’s songs with the 3 of us, then Stacy sang 2 with a track from the actual cd in the making, so the people would also get an idea of how the cd is going to sound. Then Stacy sang her song Leaving it all Behind, with which she made it to the finals of a christian radio station contest last year (you can find it on Youtube if you’d like to see it… ;))
After the concert, there was a chance to talk to the people of the church, while enjoying a cookie or muffin (yum yum! :)). A lot of people asked me about our humanitarian organisation in Romania (if you want to know more about that, you can check it out at www.talmid.net), the differences between Belgium, Romania and America and well, we just had a really nice chat with everybody! 🙂
We spent the night at David and Theresa’s house. They are such lovely people and their house up in the mountains was sooo beautiful and peaceful! I felt like we were right back in our mountains in Romosel… 🙂 It was so nice to meet them!
The next day, Sunday, it was tourist day! 🙂 We got to visit places and really play the tourist for a couple of hours! Of course, we ARE tourists… 😉
We first went to see Amicalola Falls, a beautiful nature park with a gorgeous waterfall. You could either walk through the woods on hiking trails or climb to the top of the waterfall with stairs. Of course we took the stairs… Grrr… 😉 604 steps up and 604 steps back down… Oh yes, that’s 1208 steps, I know… I felt that… 😉 A LOT of stairs… Good thing Cornel is such a kind husband, helping my out of shape butt up the stairs to the top… 😉
Finally at the top, I thanked God for Coca Cola… It’ll get your blood sugar right back up! 😉
And if that doesn’t work, you can count on Cornel to fix the problem… 😉
We got some great pictures up there too! Here are some…
After the climbing and all that nature, we went to the more touristic part of the day and went to visit the little town Helen. It’s supposed to be a “European” looking town, but I think only Americans see it like that… 😉 But nevertheless, it was a charming little town where we could really act like tourists! 🙂 We walked around, visited little stores, like the glasblowing store, ate at an ‘international’ restaurant, ate a huge ice cream, played pool, arcades, saw pirates and watched people struggle to stay on their tubes in the water… (Cornel and Edgar had a really good view from the restaurant balcony, they had so much fun with that!) 😉
So that was our weekend! 🙂
Now last week we also did some great stuff, I’ll write some now and some in the next post in a couple of days!
One of the things that happened last week was a Twinkle Recital! 🙂 What is that you ask? Well when Stacy’s students start learning the piano, the first section of lessons is learned with twinkles, different songs that they have to play first with one hand and then with the other. There are 4 twinkle songs. When they have mastered all those 4 songs, they have a twinkle recital and get their twinkle reward from ‘Miss’ Stacy! 🙂 It’s all very cute and fun! So last week it was Annika’s turn. She has now mastered all of the twinkles! Good job Annika!!! 🙂 The recital was at Stacy’s house and of course I had to come and watch! Annika did a wonderful job and played the twinkles very good!
After playing all the 4 twinkles, she was given her twinkle award by Miss Stacy! Her parents were very proud too of course!!! 🙂
Annika’s mom also brought lots of yummyness! And strawberry punch… 😉
Of course there was a lot of practicing going on last week too…
And oh yes, we bought half of the Victoria’s Secret store in their semi-annual sale… 😉
More next time! 🙂
Here are some funny things in America as usual:
- They have a drive through bank where you can just put your cheques in a tube and then it sends it to the people inside the bank, they process it and give you the money for the cheque… Looks very sci-fi… 😉
Amy’s showing it to me: - In the same drive through, they have an ATM machine where you can just put all your cheques in (like 50 at a time), it’ll scan them and then put the money on your account! Same with money, VERY sci-fi… 🙂
- The toilet paper is very thin… 😉
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