I was happily back at our church after a week being gone! Love my little bar…

Here are this week’s highlights:

Every church has problems. Ours happens to be that we have great attendance in August, which means we are feverishly planning for fall growth! I will gladly take this particular problem.

Jace Lundervold called me a “Little Hottie” today. So what if he’s four years old.

Indiana brought in a bag of money for our new building. Rock on! She’s in elementary school and I can’t wait to see that dream come true for her (and all of us!).

Mark spoke on offenses…yep, that cuts right to the heart of so many of our struggles! We need to live in peace and freedom at all costs. Sometimes that is easier said than done.

Alissa lead worship for us today! Great job to the whole team! You put Alissa, Matt, and Emily on microphones at the same time and I am blessed! What incredible voices!

Rachael, our Kid’s Chaos Organizational Genius, is out of town in Montana. She normally keeps Kid’s Checkin, the Little Adventurer’s and the nursery functioning. Whenever she’s gone and I do her job, I love her more. Dear Board, I will be asking you for a raise for this woman at our next meeting. It is well-deserved! She seems to calmly keep the whole world turning, while I am a distracted, sweaty mess. If you had the “pleasure” of trying to talk to me this morning, you know what I am talking about.

My friend’s little girl was born three years ago with a heart defect. I remember praying for that baby through the surgery and talking with my friend about it through tears. Since then they have started coming to church (and the heart defect is long healed)! I was holding up that little girl today to help her wash her hands over the sink and saw the scar on her chest in our reflection in the mirror. It was a reminder that God is faithful, He has a plan, and our job is to pray and believe for the people that God has put in our everyday lives for their most important needs. When I prayed those many years ago I had no idea how important that family would become in our lives! So grateful for how God orchestrates our relationships!

Would you join us in praying about our future? We have a great vision for a coffee shop geared for parents with kids, plenty of room for teenagers, and several other side ideas to best utilize our facility to impact Hazel Dell. We have been focusing on the 78th street car dealership, but recently we have had another opportunity that could work equally as well. Same vision, similar location, better financial situation…bottom line…wherever this journey of faith takes us is fine as long as God is driving! We definitely know WHAT we are called to do, so we will leave the WHERE up to Him! We just want wisdom and open doors.

In the meantime…if we had about another $200,000 in the bank, we could get moving toward our future immediately. Thank you to those who continue to give! Now is the time!

Jeff and Angela Welk, who helped launch this church, had a little baby girl named Avery this week. Congrats and we love you!!!!

Love our people, love our staff, love our God! We continue to enjoy ministry and pastoring this church. We are so blessed by your support through growth, lots of decision making, and a little chaos now and again. Have a great week!

Mark and I have recently gotten the “privilege” of cleaning out our church storage area. This created a chain reaction to clean out our own STUFF. What an eye opening experience! The amount of useless items or useful items that we don’t use has been shocking…to say the least.

We are purging our lives of just about everything, but it hasn’t been an easy process of letting go. It’s like my brain knows that I don’t need these things, but there is still that “ripping off the bandaid” effect with some of those items. The reality for all of us is that we easily let unimportant things become important in our lives and the end result is frustration and confusion.

It has been quite a burden to have this project looming over our lives, so although I am in misery at every step, I want it dealt with. And the good news is that it is getting easier with every toss! I am now addicted to letting go!

We all have something in our lives that is getting in the way. It may be a literal object like we are dealing with or it may be another addiction in your life. It could be an emotional connection to a person that you shouldn’t be with…whatever you have in your life that is useless needs to go! If it isn’t making your life the BEST it can be, it’s not worth it! What a lense shift for me!

We are working hard to accomplish our goal in the next week or so. And then we will move into maintenance mode where we never allow ourselves to go back to where we were! This is not a one-time job, but a whole new life choice that we are making.

So, get onboard! Lose the weight, let go of the offense, put down the bottle, take a trip to Goodwill…but do it now.

We’re back from a week off! Mark went to summer camp with our 3rd-6th graders and then camping with his brothers, while I headed with my girls to Montana to see my parents. We all had a great week, but it’s REALLY nice to be back together as a family! My girls were lacking their “Daddy Time” all week and now are following him around everywhere he goes. I think he’s enjoying the extra attention!

I wasn’t at our church yesterday, so my highlights are second hand info, but here goes:

Andrea and Matt Garner co-preached yesterday. I heard it was a great message and that Matt was hilarious! I read the message before hand and so it doesn’t surprise me that they delivered it well.

It is ridiculously hard for me to miss our church. I trust our team and don’t worry about them at all, but I WANT to be there! Good problems!

Thank you to Chrystal Arellano for being “me” yesterday and getting everything ready to go for the morning! Everyone who drinks coffee is very grateful for you!!!!

They switched up worship and did a song at the end. Lots of people said they enjoyed that!

Our attendance was surprisingly high. This weekend is marked over the last four years as one of our lowest attended. If our number from Sunday is our low for the year, we better get moving! Literally…moving.

Speaking of moving…I watched the TV show Hoarders on Netflix all week. Let’s just say that I am now motivated to sell everything I own. I never want stuff to have a hold on my life! In honor of Matt and Andrea’s message on Idols, I never want anything but Jesus to have a hold on my life.

Our students had a GREAT week at summer camp! Thank you to Kim Goodrich, Mark Newell, Sarah Sherland, and Alyson McCormick for giving up time this week to be cabin staff. Your role at camp is vital and we appreciate you for being a part of it!

So excited for our 5th Anniversary Celebration on Sept. 18….YAY!!! We are going to have so much fun giving God the glory for North Creek! I love where we are at and I love where we are going!

Amy will be sending out some information for the Women of Faith Conference in October via our email group (you can sign up for that at www.coffeechurch.com). It’s going to be some amazing GIRL TIME with God! I love the women at our church and so any excuse to hang out with them works for me!

Alrighty…off to go throw some things away and get my life organized for the fall! Enjoy your week and we’ll see you on Sunday for our new series, “Catch and Release”. It’s all about offenses and forgiveness!

I’m in my hometown this week of Kalispell, Montana. I spent my first 18 years here in the same house, so every memory I have of childhood through high school graduation is in this town. I love my Montanan roots, but I do agree that Montana is a whole world unto itself. I was in the store today and heard a grandma say, “I used to wear my grandson’s pants, but then I gained too much weight and now I’ve gotta buy my own.” Priceless. Only in Montana…

On the flip side, though, Montana is a place where people really do live a little slower and care a little deeper. It’s still the place where people pour out of their houses when the firetruck comes down their street to see what they can do to help. Not just some people come out, but EVERYONE. Cars keep an eye out as kids ride their bikes down the middle of the road because there are no sidewalks, and every other vehicle is a pickup truck with a dog in the back. Pretense and image is largely set aside by values like hard work and trusting in a good handshake.

Lots of people that molded and shaped everything about my life are still here. Neighbors that greeted me on the day of my birth still live all around my parent’s house. They kept an eye on me all of the time and I knew they’d tell my parents if they saw me do anything wrong. Now they tell me how grown up I look, although in their eyes, I will never be the 35 year old woman that I truly am. I am frozen in time during the stage of big, frizzy hair and crooked teeth. I’m “Gary and Sandy’s Girl” no matter where I go.

Montana is the place where my secrets can’t hide. Everybody here has known me forever and there’s no sense in trying to pretend to be anything that I am not. It is always a healthy reminder of the fact that what I do doesn’t matter to anyone here and it’s more about how much I care. It’s humbling and healthy to come home. It keeps me grounded.

I’m grateful for the heritage I have of having only one home. I know it’s rare for most people to come back to the same bedroom that once held their crib and I consider it a privilege to have so many people in my life who have ALWAYS been there. They are all a piece of me and that’s why I love my Montana roots.

Another Sunday of loving Jesus…what a cool thing to do!

We got to baptize Matt Schmidhamer today! Congrats to Matt for making a public declaration of your commitment to serve Christ. We are proud of you!

My best friend from high school, who also happened to be my roommate during part of college came over this afternoon. She’s a pastor’s wife also and it is so nice to have someone who has known you for 20 years and is in ministry. Jenny gets everything I say without a lot of explanation!

Pastor Kim, our Kid’s Pastor was out of town for her sister’s wedding. We miss her!

We had a few goodbyes today. College student, Amanda Ryn, is heading back home after a summer in the ‘Couv. Many blessings to you! Also, Justin Goodrum and his two cute kids are moving to Georgia tomorrow. I feel like God moved him here for a specific purpose for the short time he was here and I look forward to watching that story unfold in the future!

The kids leave for camp tomorrow! Please pray!!!! I know God will change hearts there! Thank you to Mark, Alyson, and Sarah for going with our students and showing them Jesus.

Worship at North Creek = AWESOME

Vanessa preached for the first time! Could she be anymore amazing? Josiah and Vanessa rank high on my favorite people list! You can catch her sermon online as of tomorrow.

Tons of new guests. Welcome to July at the Coffee Church!

I love Jesus. I love serving Jesus. I love watching other people serve Jesus. I hope your week is full of all of those events! Have a great week!