50 and Counting...

This past Friday night we had our third Vision Night. Vision Night is a party/reception type deal where we have invited people who we think might be interested or have shown interest in learning more about DC Metro Church. Our first Vision Night was back in July - we had a fabulous turn out and practically doubled the number of people on our launch team. Our second vision night was on August 3rd with our third following this past Friday night. We are now up to 60 people on our launch team...we are quickly arriving to the "100 people" we have been praying for...

Our last few weeks have been very busy and packed with lots of excitement. On August 1st we began a 21 day fast. Now, this looks different to many people on our launch team...some (mostly the guys) are doing a full fast where they are only drinking fluids, others are doing fruit/veggies/juices (like me) and others are fasting from sweets or one meal a day. It has been very exciting to see how God is moving due to our sacrifices of our physical need for food...but it's also been very draining. It is highly recommended that when you are fasting (especially for a long period of time) that you limit your physical activities...duh, because you are not taking in a normal amount of food...you don't have a "normal" amount of energy. Well...let's just say I think our amount of physical activities may have increased for the first week of our fast instead of decreased...

Let me see if I can put this into perspective...

• August 1st (first day of fast)...not so bad, typical day working in the "office" (which right now is whatever coffee shop has free internet); ended the day with a prayer meeting
• August 2nd (Thursday)...First Thursday on the Avenue (The street Ray & I live on is perpendicular to a street called Mt. Vernon Avenue. The area we are in has this "small town" sort of feel...on Mt. Vernon there are a bunch of small shops, businesses, restaurants, ect...it's the ideal description of a small town "main street".) Anyways...all of the businesses join together on the first thursday of the month (throughout the summer) and have a street party. We (DC Metro Church) have joined with this group of businesses and we were able to set up a table on the Avenue and participate in First Thursday. We did our ever famous FREE water bottle hand-out. We also gave away glow bracelets & lolipops to the kids and dog biscuts to the dogs (and some people who asked) because EVERYONE and their mom up here owns a dog...
• August 3rd (Friday)...2nd Vision Night (this required the entire day to prepare for...preparing food (which is the WORST thing in the world to have to do when you are fasting), baking cookies, setting up tables, cleaning the house...all to get ready to love on people for about 4 hours in the evening and then cleaning up and breaking everything day afterwards (last person left after 11pm that night).
• August 4th (Saturday) - 5:00am...time for me (Summer) & friend Angie to wake up and go reserve our spot at the Annual Friendship Firehouse Festival in Old Town. We set up a tent, table, chairs, coolers and face painting stations. We again passed out FREE water bottles (we handed out OVER 1,100 in 4 hours), gave our dog biscuits and painted hundreds of awesome little faces with flowers, butterflies, two-headed snakes, lizards and even dalmatian puppies (go Angie!).
• August 4th (Saturday evening)...we moved our lovely friend Julie Reams in to her new apartment...
• August 5th (Sunday)...rest...finally!
• August 6th & 7th...catch up days in the office at St. Elmo's Coffee Shop
• August 8th & 9th (Wednesday & Thursday)...Ray and I took 1.5 days off to drive 3 hours to Ocean City, MD to visit with his mom, grandma and aunt. We had a great time, but had to turn around and come back on Thursday to make it to Worship Band Practice that evening.
• August 10th (Friday)...Vision Night prep...shopping, set-up, same as before...
• August 11th (Saturday)...rest in the morning...visit to the Potomac Yards Regal Cinema (this is where we will be having services) for a walk through (oh yea...we did watch a movie there somewhere in the 5 hours we spent at the theatre)...
• August 12th (Sunday)...move, move, move...yep, it's becoming a weekly occurance, but we moved another couple in to their new place in Fairfax today...

Wow, that's exhausting to look back at the past two weeks. I don't feel like we have stopped yet since we got here...it's been truly great though...we might be tired (and hungry), but we wouldn't trade it for anything...well, I might trade it for a coke, friend chicken and some chocolate chip cookies right now...

Just some cool things...

• We (DC Metro) made the Alexandria Gazette. I have a copy of it in which I need to scan because it's just a local newspaper that doesn't get put on the internet. Once I scan it I will post it. It's not anything huge, but it's a one page spread about the Friendship Firehouse Festival we attended...Pastor David had his picture taken as he passed out some water bottles and we got a little bleep in the article about who we are and about our upcoming launch in September!
• Celebration Church (our sister church back in Jacksonville, FL) was featured on the Channel 4 news in Jax. It was really a great segment about Celebration. Click here to watch the story.
• Pastor David and Taryn found out that they are having a...
  
  Well, that's all for now...I still can't find the cable for my camera, but I do have some pictures from our last few events that a great friend sent so I can post some pics...