January 28, 2008--Candidating

We had such an amazingly wonderfuly day yesterday. It was long and tiring, but it was so worth it. We managed to leave almost on time with very few complications and it took about 3 1/2 hours to get there. We were about ten minutes late for Sunday School. On the way, I took a drink of water out of Erick's water bottle and didn't screw the top on well enough when I put it back down on the floor. It spilled all over his sermon notes and so I spent the next fifteen minutes or so holding them in front of the heater vent in the van trying to dry them out. I also accidentally ripped my dress when I stepped backwards out the van from unbuckling Timothy when I got there. It wasn't too bad--just made the slit in the back a little longer than I wanted. I didn't have time to fix it before the service. I sang my solo from the Messiah, and I was incredibly nervous all of a sudden. Erick thought it was funny, since I've sang it so many times before, but I think the reason I was so nervous had to do with the fact that I didn't have my book in front of me. He preached and I thought he did really well. He preached on "Hearing from God." After church, we had a potluck dinner (Erick brought his famous chocolate orange pies) and then we talked with the board for awhile. We went and saw the parsonage again. The kids loved it. They had so much fun with some of the other kids that were there (not many, but a few) and they roamed all over and got their shoes all muddy. They went to the evening service in their socks or barefooted, because their shoes were all lined up in a muddy row in the foyer. Erick preached the evening service, too--an introduction to the gospel of John. He's planning on preaching the whole series if they vote him in. Then they all came around us and annointed us with oil and prayed for us. It was such a beautiful time. The people in the church are all so wonderful, and we've fallen in love with them already. They are going to wait a few days, and they want us to pray and see where the Lord directs us, and then we are supposed to call them back and let them know, and then next Sunday morning if we give the go-ahead, they will vote on us.