Baby Shower for Nathan, Natalie and Baby Girl James.

The hostesses with Natalie.

Saturday evening our church had a baby shower for one of our pastors and his wife who are having a baby girl next month.  (The baby doesn't have a name yet, so we all refer to her as "baby girl" for now.) This is the first baby in our church, so everyone is really excited.  We grilled burgers and hot dogs and watched them open lots of cute little girl gear.

I got to help host the shower along with several other women from our church at Grant and Kim Harrison's home.  Several of the girls helping are really creative, so the shower was super cute.  I thought I would post a few pictures for anyone who might be looking for baby shower ideas. Enjoy!

Operation Christmas Child.

Tonight in our church small group we made a trip to the store to buy items to put in our shoe box gifts for Samaritan's Purse: Operation Christmas Child.  Gary and I bought school supplies, coloring books, candy, toothbrushes, soap, stickers, small toys, socks, etc. and filled 1 box for a 5-9 year old boy and one for a 5-9 year old girl. Epoch Church will be collecting them on Sunday and will drop them off to be shipped to children around the world for Christmas.  Watch this video, it brought tears to my eyes to see how much joy such a small gift  brought to these children.  Boxes are due by the 22nd, so it's not too late to make a box if you want to send some Christmas cheer to a child less fortunate than we are here in the US.

Tonight I'm thankful for our church.  The people there are such an encouragement to us.  They inspire us to strive to be more like Christ.  We're looking forward to a time of fellowship with them this weekend during a church wide retreat at Camp Peron.