Rome Weekend Recap...

I'm a couple days behind on this post but I still wanted to take a minute to share about my fun weekend! On Friday night after work, I traveled to Rome to spend the weekend w/ my old roommate and dear friend, Gina (aka Flossy G!). Gina's birthday was Saturday so I was glad that I was able to go and celebrate with her this weekend. When I got into town on Friday evening, we had a super fun dinner (LOTS of laughing!) at Longhorn's and thankfully, since it was Gina's birthday and all, I had an excellent excuse to order that Apple Goldrush dessert thing that I have been craving for FOREVER! Yummo! Thanks for having a birthday, G! :) On Saturday morning/afternoon, I had the chance to travel to Chattanooga to spend part of the day with my friend Kevin and again, we did some good eatin' at P.F. Chang's and then did a little shopping. Whoever knew that guys had a thing about buying darker colored jeans?!? I learned a lot that day. Then on Saturday evening once I got back to Rome, I was able to hang out w/ my sweet friends Pam and Cliff. We had lots of fun catching up and having dinner together. I stayed in town through church on Sunday morning and can I just say...WOW! God definitely showed up at church on Sunday at West Rome Baptist. I'm going to paste what Jarrod (interim pastor) wrote on his blog so you can catch a little glimpse of what we were blessed to experience on Sunday. God is so good and definitely spoke to me on Sunday about how my obedience certainly effects His blessings in my life. After church, I had a great lunch at Olive Garden with my friends Gina, Luda, Cliff and Pam Tappan, and Hector and Christy Cervantes. I love and miss these people so much! It was a super weekend and I'm so thankful that I got to experience it! Jarrod's thoughts from Sunday: So, this past Sunday I was able to experience something that I have never been a part of. I have been going to church for 39 (almost 40) years now, and I have never seen God do this. As you all know, I am the Interim Pastor of West Rome Baptist Church and I also lead XL. Well, this past Sunday morning, God showed up at West Rome in an unbelievable way. Check this out… when I got up to preach everyone was standing up from the worship time we had been having. We had already had a number of people at the alter praying and seeking God during the worship throug music time, even without any type of alter call. Then, when I got up everyone started to sit down like they always do. I told them to keep standing up because God was not done. I told them that, where I went to school, you didn’t sit down until the game was over, and I didn’t think it was over. They obviously agreed and the vast majority of our congregation stood for the entire rest of the service. I did the first two points of the message God had given me and then had a time for people to come to the alter. The alter was filled with people praying and seeking God in every way possible. It was amazing. Then, I stepped up and did my third point from my message. After that we took up the offering and people started to sit down for this time. As people started to recognize what was happening they began to stand back up. Josh, one of our “front row guys” never sat down. Then all over the room people started to stand back up and were cheering and clapping for God’s presence in the room. We closed it out with a song called “Something Happens” and it’s about all the great things that can happen when we mention the name of Jesus. At the end of that song it was completely quiet in the room of over 800 and no one moved. I literally had to tell them to go home!!! WOW!!! I’ve never seen anything like it, but I do plan to see it again.