A Weekend Away

This last weekend my friend Jen and I (yes, we have the same name :) ) took a road trip to Oakland, CA.

We headed up for the Freedom Summit, a conference about human trafficking and while we were there we stayed with my very dear friends Kurt, Karyn and Samuel Morrill.

The Conference: Jen and I have been serving in a street ministry to pimps and prostitutes (http://www.afterhoursministry.com/ ) for almost 3 years and we decided to attend this conference in the hopes of gaining some resources that might add to our ministry. There were some great speakers, who were very candid and challenging. One speaker closed by saying, "God bless you, God disturb you....in that disturbing may He break you". I love that, certainly God has disturbed me with the reality of what the women face that we meet each week, certainly those truths have broken my heart to the point that I cannot continue on with life without asking God to use me to bring healing and freedom to these women.  Most of the information was not new to us and that was a little frustrating because we were looking for new information that we might move forward. Overall we were glad we went, oh and Sara Groves led worship...she is amazing!

Visiting friends: Kurt and Karyn and I became friends when I was in college, we were on the first GCF team that went to Bosnia (they are still taking teams 10 years later!), we also lived in Europe at the same time and were able to visit one another in both France and Germany. Kurt and Karyn have an amazing ministry and are a constant encouragement to me, they are also really fun and we love to laugh together as well as share our hearts for the things of God.  We also saw another friend from college at church on Sunday morning, Angela (Mack) Hancock...what a sweet blessing!

Road Trip: Jen put up with my dancing and singing and crazy car games (Hey Cow!!!) for seven hours each way! She is awesome and we had a great time of fellowship together! Not to mention the drive was beautiful! I took tons of pictures like the one of the sunset posted above.

I am so thankful for the many blessings God gives us each day!