My time with the ladies of Blessed Hope Chapel was one of the highlights of 2007 for a number of different reasons! For starters, Donnie and I flew into Santa Barbara, CA, one of the most beautiful coastal cities California has to offer. Then we were off to Oxnard, CA (another beautiful coastal city) to the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Resort. What a wonderful venue for a ladies retreat!
As I think back on this retreat there are so many memories and memorable people! Like Brenda…I loved how she laid her life right out there for Jesus to mend her heart and help her to “Choose Not to be Offended!” How faithful she is to email me and let me know how she is doing and speak words of encouragement over me.
And the 16 year olds…the Youngens, as Donnie and I endearingly refer to them! What I found absolutely wonderful is that these girls literally count the years, months and days until they are old enough to attend this retreat! They were so excited to be there and were just as excited to learn what God wanted to teach them as they were to stay up all night playing spoons! Now that shows some sound, Godly parenting to me! Those girls seemed to hang on my every word and after each session they approached me with questions they had written down on there notepads!
One thing they were particularly interested in was my word studies. They went to my table and asked Donnie all about those word studies and wanted to know where they could get the Webster’s Dictionary to which I often referred. So impressed by these Youngens and their hunger for understanding God’s Word, Donnie asked our 2 new friends/hostesses to take us to a bookstore during the Saturday afternoon free time to buy these girls a Webster’s Dictionary of their own.
Now this is where this memoir could get lengthy, so to avoid that, I will refer you to this link www.bonniefloyd.com/noahwebster and there you’ll find the amazing story behind how these precious Godly Youngens led Donnie and I to the second most important book in our lives which I now sell at my table and on my estore! With this kind of love for the Lord at age 16, I can only imagine how mightily God will use them to impact others for His Kingdom!
Lastly, is my new found friendship with one amazing lady. She’s not one for the limelight, and prefers no one make a fuss over her, out of respect, I won’t name her by name, but I simply cannot write about my time with Blessed Hope and not mention one of the greatest blessings God has brought into our lives! I’ll close this memoir by quoting what my Pastor said about people like her after I shared with him all she has meant to us, “It is a great day, when the Lord brings to a ministry one who is truly Kingdom minded.”
Click here to see photos of our time together!