You, YOU will go out with JOY!

One of God's great blessings: meeting with people that are of one mind...seeking God's hand in what they are doing...I was able to get a glimpse of that yesterday at a meeting I attended.

As you may recall, I worked with a team of area women to plan a large women's event/retreat back in April. We have just started to plan the 2010 event. We renamed it: Oil Belt Ladies' Day. The word retreat in the title was a little mis-leading...it suggested the event was 'over night', which was not the case.

I'm very happy that most of our team members are returning. A couple of ladies needed to step off because of other commitments. We've been able to add a couple of new ladies. Funny how we didn't really set a number of people for our team, but we seem to hover around 12...what a great number!

With these 12 ladies, there are 8 are churches represented--four churches have two women each, and then there are four churches that only have one woman come from them. It just worked out that way, but it seems to 'work', which is key! The churches are spread out over a 70 mile radius. These ladies have truly bonded as a team...in spite of the fact that their only face to face meeting time is when we get together every 6-8 weeks.

We have an on-going prayer effort where the retreat is concerned. We keep up through e-mail, for 'big' stuff going on in our individual lives, and 'small details' and 'large concerns' about this event. One of the ladies is having a baby very soon, and we're all very excited about getting to 'hold' him when we meet again! Three other team members have family members with serious health concerns, that we're all praying about.

Our first official meeting to plan the 2010 day was yesterday morning. Even before we 'started' the actual meeting, the conversation found its way to color scheme and theme for the day! I could tell just by the way these women were talking, they'd all prayed about this meeting because we were all on the same page!

One word and one color seemed to be threaded through the pre-meeting conversation.
THE Color: lime green (of course, I was very pleased with this, because I love it--not the 'neon lime green' but the pretty feminine one!)
THE Word: Joy!!!

We decided that Isaiah 55:12 will be our theme scripture...take a listen...look it up!

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Don't you just love that? To honor Our Great God!-- JOY!

What a fun and blessed team I get to work with! I went out with great joy just from our meeting!

And, how much fun we're already having to plan for 300+ women from our area for April 17, 2010!

Women of all backgrounds, ages and stages!

I can't wait to see what God does with this effort!