Race at Kenly, NC

We had a race last week, but I don't want to talk about it. (This was NOT a picture of it)

Happy Birthday, Maddie!

Happy Birthday to my sweet niece, Maddie!

She is so adorable (but she is stuck on Julio)!

To see more pictures of her modeling for the store she works for in Wrightsville Beach, NC, go to www.shophallelu.com

Gatlinburg, Tennessee! (oh boy!)

Well....I didn't get any pictures of the Timothy+Barnabas conference in Gatlinburg, but I did get a picture of my wonderful assistant, Sarah, at her first geocache! During the free afternoon at T+B I couldn't find anything better to do than go find a cache and one was a block from our condo. I don't know that Sarah is 'hooked' on geocaching after just one hunt, but she definitely got a good taste of the 'thrill of the hunt'! Thanks, Gulfwind!

Can you believe so many senior adults in one building! This is only the first of two Jubilee Conferences for this week. The first conference sold out quickly with 6,000 registrants so they had to add a second one for the same week. Wow! Jake does such a great job planning and seeing that everyone is taken care of and having a good time. Best of all, I get to spend time with Katie and Carson. Watching them 'work at the conference' and being excited about the opportunity is a great thing. Last night they were walking back to their room from our room with Millie and Scott as their escorts and in just a minute they were banging at our door to get back in. A bear had crossed their path in the parking lot! They were all scared to death! We got in the car and went on a 'bear hunt' riding up and down the parking lot looking for the bear. We couldn't find it then, but later spotted it in the small woods down the hill from the condo. Tonight I heard a lot of banging and realized it may be the bear in our trash can outside and sure enough...there he was, right outside my door! I ran and got Johnny out of bed, sound asleep, to see the bear and by the time he got there, he was gone! Johnny went back to bed, not caring as much about the bear as I did, but caring about me waking him up from his sleep to see a bear that wasn't there! Well...I looked out the front into the parking lot and there he was....again!!! I had to call somebody, so I called Lindsey who is in the next building and finally, she saw the bear!!!! There really are bears in Gatlinburg! (at least one)

Fun Time!

We had two great Timothy+Barnabas Conferences in Atlanta and Gatlinburg this year and I didn't get a single picture that was clear enough to post on my blog! So sad! In between the two conferences during the fall school break for Katie and Carson, I made a quick visit to Disney and Universal Studios with them. We had a great time and wonderful weather. (We managed to be away during all the flooding) While we were there we celebrated Lindsey's birthday. I finally found out that she is good at something....she won the hoola-hoop contest for the adults at the Hard Rock Hotel Pool! If you go to Universal, watch out for the Jimmy Neutron ride! It's a killer!

Congratulations!

Congratulations, Sabrina and Christian! Our 'foster' daughter, Sabrina Williams Dubyak was recently married to a great guy, Christian Pinion. It was a beautiful wedding and of course, she was a beautiful bride. Johnny and I were the 'honorary parents' and it was a pleasure to be the stand in parents for a lovely couple. May God richly bless their marriage!

Home visit with Dr. Billy Graham

We had the incredible privilege of spending time with Dr. Billy Graham at his home recently. It was certainly a day neither Johnny or I will ever forget. He is doing well and was in a great frame of mind, speaking very clearly and was soooo very gracious to us both. We are so very thankful to have been able to sit with such a godly man and certainly one of the greatest preachers of all time.

Hog Heaven!

Atlanta Motor Speedway.....Yeah Baby! I was in hog heaven getting to meet all my favorite drivers at the Labor Day race after getting to meet Joe Gibbs who preached all three of our services on that Sunday morning before the race that evening. He did a fabulous job and is quite a communicator of the gospel. Joe Gibbs is definitely a man who is truly concerned about where people will spend eternity and how they live their life before eternity. It was such a pleasure to get to know this great guy. His new book "Game Plan for Life" is a great book to read. Great Race Day!

Finally Catching Up!

Catching up on all that we have been doing lately is tough. There is always something exciting going on so I'll have to go back to August when we had our staff retreat. As usual, the girls had a great time being together, laughing, talking and just being girls. We usually try to do something different and fun so this year I insisted that we take part in my favorite hobby (other than racing) which you know is....geocaching! We had two teams and several caches to find. The first team to find all the caches and get back to the hotel first won! Of course, my team won and my fellow geocachers are pictured above. The other team, Millie, Kathy, Nancy and Linda did a great job finding the caches but were not quite fast enough.

Then there was Israel! We had a quick but wonderful trip to the Land of our Lord. Our dear friends, Mike and Ann White went with us and it was fast and furious! Much different from our previous trips as we had to move very quickly to see it all and still didn't quite make all the sites we would like to have seen. Of course, while there I just had to do it....I had to find a geocache. There was one at the airstrip at Massada so I dropped off a travel bug that I picked up in Argentina that was traveling the world. How fun!!