We are super excited that we were able to lease an incredibly cool building downtown. The address is 90 Main Street and if you're even half as nosy as I am, you can click here to take a cool little tour of the building! The tour thing was made by the previous tenants; the owner of the photography store did a TON of work to the space!
Our first Sunday in our new space is March 11th!
Anyway, I thought you might be curious what a week in church planting looks like from my perspective!
A few notes before beginning:
- I did/do things that I purposely didn't document because not everything in my life should be documented on the mighty internet. Those things are important and life giving (meaning I'm not hiding things that are hard) but just not for the consumption of the general public.
- I do some things that I would do whether or not we were planting a church! You and I probably do some of the same things on a weekly basis.
- This week had more "big things" than usual.
Sooooooo, first up: Sunday!
We have scones for breakfast on Sundays! Gracie would eat scones for breakfast every day, but we have to have limits on some things in the world ;) I mix and portion scone dough and then freeze them! I bake them from frozen, so I'm not a crazy scone making person on Sunday mornings.
Why scones on Sunday? I read something once about a pastor's family that let their kids eat dessert first on Sundays as a sort of grace to them. And, our daughters have no idea that there has been somewhat of a stigma about pastor's kids...they like that their dad is one of the pastors and that they have first dibs on helping in the nursery. But, we want to offer them a special sort of grace on Sundays when they are sharing their mom and dad. They don't know that's why we have scones on Sunday...which is kind of the point!
I greeted on Sunday, so this was my view from the back:
Yeah, we're back row sitters.
Gracie and I went grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon...and, let me tell you, Aldi is a ZOO on Sunday afternoon.
I usually grocery shop on Monday (because it's a zillion times less busy), but I wanted to get a head start on the week. Also, Gracie needed to get out of the house :)
After movie night and putting the girls to bed, I went to a worship team meeting where we tried out some new songs to see which ones we should add to our rotation.
I felt weird taking a picture of people practicing, so I took this awkward picture of my foot and the treat Becca made instead!
Monday:
After I dropped the girls off at school and went to the gym, I came home and made some meatballs.
The meatballs are baked, but I put them in the slow cooker after they were baked to keep them warm for supper. That worked out great and it thickened the sauce a bit. Totally a win!
We had a small group leaders meeting for supper. Instead of planning a regular meal, we did appetizers! People brought their favorite appetizers and it made for a fun meal!
It's so nice that the girls are getting to be old enough to watch the little kids so we can have an essentially uninterrupted meeting. They took the little kids to play downstairs while the adults talked about how we're doing, how the groups are going, and had a time of prayer.
Tuesday:
We celebrated our two year Dubuque-iversary (in other words, we moved to Dubuque 2 years ago)!
We saw the movie Peter Rabbit and really enjoyed it! There were lots of funny comments and slapstick physical comedy which is totally my jam (I'm kind of like a middle school boy who thinks there is nothing funnier than someone unexpectedly falling)!
The girls wanted to go to Applebee's to eat, so we went and got a bunch of appetizers to share. It was quite possibly the most mediocre food we've ever paid cash money for, but it was super fun to go together. OK, it was plain fun. Some of the girls were hangry and emotional, so it had its ups and downs. But, that's life!
Wednesday:
We had supper and a meeting that was open to everyone at church, so it was a pretty full house! I made a baked chicken alfredo that was really good! People signed up to bring the rest of the meal.
Becky Morrow Entertaining Pro Tip: buy a big disposable pan when cooking for a crowd! I quadrupled the recipe, so using one enormous pan was way easier than using four 9x13 inch pans. You just have to add time to heat it all the way through!
Thursday:
I volunteer in Maggie and Gracie's classes on Thursdays. This is definitely something I would do whether or not we were planting a church. I've done this since Leah was in 4K. I love getting to know their teachers and classmates! Also, I have this incredible amount of respect for teachers...they work SO hard and care SO much. I'm happy to do what I can to make their day the tiniest bit easier!
Note: I reeeeeeally lucked out with my visitor tag up there. You have to have your drivers license on record at the school to come in. The first time I registered, I still had my Wisconsin license which had a good picture on it. In Iowa, you aren't allowed to show your teeth in your photo. I'd been practicing and practicing a pleasant, toothless smile in anticipation of my driver's license. But, I started to laugh when they took my picture and quickly closed my mouth. Consequently, my driver's license picture is a mess and I look like there is something seriously wrong with me. My Wisconsin license picture is what got stored in the school's system, and I'm thankful for that every week!
I do fluency practice with the 3rd graders which is really fun! I enjoy talking to them one at a time. And, for what it's worth, I don't think any of them knew what a "damsel in distress" was. Even the best readers stumbled on it!
Kind of funny :)
Anyway, so that was a lot of stuff from my week! I'm always a little curious about how others go about their day to day life, so I hope you enjoyed that peek into mine!
Also, we'd love it if you wanted to join us on Sunday! We start at 10:00 and have nursery available for kids age 4 and under!
