Church Shopping and God's Answers

God is funny. Or rather, He's funny and He sure has impeccable timing. My prayer since before I knew where i was going to be moving and working was that He would lead me to a family of believers and a strong community. After moving and not really finding that community in the first 3 churches I went to I was getting discouraged.

I was discouraged because I was so hungry for a faithful community. I know that it takes time to find these things, that it took me over 2 years to find one back at UD, but my soul needed nourishment. So yesterday, as I was sad because none of my friends were available to play or hangout, God and I had a big talk. And God told me to use the internet.

What? Yes, yes He did tell me to use technology. What I had been doing was asking anyone for recommendations on churches. Usually, if people's personal experiences are good, I'll check out the church. I never even thought about googling churches in these towns since I thought it would be so easy to portray a church looking 'nice' on a website versus hearing past experiences. Therefore, I hadn't just searched for churches.

But God told me to so I did. And I found a Vineyard church in Chester Springs which is 20 mins from Phoenixville (where I'm trying to find an apt) and Downingtown (where I am currently based)!! (Don't ask why I hadn't instinctively thought to look up Vineyard churches, I just flat out didn't think of it.) And usually I would wait until I can sweet-talk a friend into coming with me because I am very shy and I dislike going to new places by myself for the first time. I like to have some backup. So I was going to wait until next week when hopefully Patty could come.

But then God and I talked again. He told me to go today. I told God that I'd love it if this church actually made me feel welcome because I'm tired of not feeling welcome or not feeling at home. I also told God that I knew I was not being fed spiritually from the churches I had been to recently so I requested that from Him. (Let's be honest though, He knew that too and why would He argue with that request? Isn't that request a good thing?)

This morning rolls around and I got up and went to a new church today. But I got there 15 minutes early and there were only about 8 cars in the parking lot so I sat in my car 'til 2 minutes of. I'm pretty sure that it's a trend in Vineyard churches to have people flock in like 5 minutes after the service starts. This lady sat next to me with her daughter. Everything felt right, which I usually don't like trusting those instincts or saying that, but it's true.

After the service, the lady turns to me and says, 'I don't think I've met you. Have you been coming here long?' and of course I say, 'no i'm a first timer and I am trying to move to this area.' Of course she had heard of the Barn and loves it. As we were talking though I actually saw someone I knew!! Go figure, her daughter is best friends with the girl I'm living with currently who also goes to UD. And go figure that her daughter with her jaw-dropped comes over and is like, "HOW did you find this place?!"

While we were flabbergasted at this coincidence (I never knew this girl was a church goer and apparently she's looking for a church in Newark, hint, hint), another girl runs over and says, "HI I haven't seen you two here before but you are young and we have a young adults group and you should come... but we're not meeting in the summer, drat" or something very upbeat like that. I felt bad for that new girl because Rachel and I were still just in shock of seeing each other that I don't think we got as many details out of her as we should have.

But anyway, God was laughing at me because I was so nervous and worried the day before about finding a new church and telling Him what I desired and He just gave it to me the next day. I love Him. He's the best. This definitely made my week, if not month. Yay!

Tomorrow, Catherine is driving up and after work we're going to look at an apartment. I really hope this one works out because I really want to find something soon.

Thankful Tuesdays

I found that on someone's blog they do this thing called "Thankful Tuesdays" where they write down things that they are thankful each Tuesday. (duh.) I kinda think that is a neat idea and goes pretty well with my other New Year's traditions of Meatless Mondays and Fish Fridays. So.... I wanna try it. At least for now.

This week, I am thankful for...

• My real, legit brother because he's awesome and fixed my computer and saved all my files when my hard-drive decided to stop being recognizable as a hard-drive.
• Snow (bc it snowed on Monday night while I was with a bff eating onion rings)
• Church. I do love going to church. And by church not only do I mean the body of Christ but the actual institution. I didn't realize how much I loved going until my non-Christian friend told me she was sad for me that I didn't get to go on Christmas Eve because she knew how excited I get when I go. I missed going to church this week because I couldn't find a ride to mine and every time I don't get to go to church, I get a little sad. I live on campus in the dorm and this is the 4th year of me doing so. While I get plenty of fellowship with Christians, it's only really with college aged children or people who think they are college aged still. It's nice and refreshing to go to a church where there are older and younger people also worshiping the same God. It keeps everything in perspective.
• Family bonding. As much as I greatly despise and loathe all the problems that have been going on this past semester with my family, we are growing closer as a family. I never grew up with my sisters because they were already married when I was born so I never had those bonding moments. And my parents are so old I never thought of having a two-sided conversation with them instead of just revering whatever they say and keeping my thoughts to myself. But this winter we got to sit down and chat and have intelligent conversations on stuff such as food and human trafficking and diabetes and disease and work and school and anxiety. That was nice.

Yay! PS- Meatless Mondays is less fun when they serve the good meat on Mondays and terrible vegetarian foods. And they didn't have vegan sausage yesterday like they usually do. I actually really wanted vegan sausage too.