Nashville Rising

After a few days in Memphis that were too hot to do anything but stay inside and be lazy, I left (again...this time solo) for Nashville. The original purpose of the trip was to go to the Nashville Rising concert with Michelle...however, I was able to go up early on Sunday. Because Sunday was Father's Day, I took my daddy-o on a date to Mafiaoza's...just me and him. We had a wonderful time! There for a second it felt like I was still the little girl that always rode next to him in his truck and would fall asleep as soon as the hot sun hit me. My dad has taught me so much about everything from the Bible to proper running form to art to asking Christ to come into my heart. So much of who I am today is because of him, and I couldn't ask for a better earthly father.

The next day was an extremely successful day. I met a dear old friend, Whitney, for breakfast at one of my favorites, Fidos in Hillsboro Village. After talking for two hours and catching up on everything, I went to visit Lise, my old boss and friend, at All Fired Up. After that, lunch with Carlye and Rachel, two of my friends from college. After that, work out session at FRA with my dad (I benched 60 lbs. woop woop!). Finally, dinner at SATCO with the Brentwood Hills/Lipscomb gang as a sortof early birthday celebration for Allie. I told you I accomplished a lot! (but only managed to take one picture)
On Tuesday, I met up with Ashley to go on a walk...Ashley and I went to school together for 15 years. 15! Then it was time for the Nashville Rising concert. Michelle and I ate at Jackson's beforehand and after finally finding a place to park, enjoyed a ridiculously good concert that raised money for the flood victims of the horrible flood back in May. Opening the concert was a word from Faith and Tim, the mayor, the governor, Vince Young (and 2 other players I don't remember) and Jeff Fisher. I knew it was going to be big with that kind of an introduction. I've been to many concerts in my day, but none where I have seen this many artists..it was insane. Here they are........Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton, Leann Rimes, Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Lynard Skynard, ZZ Top, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Miranda Lambert, Julie Roberts, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus, Montgomery Gentry, Toby Keith, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, and Time McGraw (oh, and a surprise appearance of Sandra Bullock who was as cute and funny as ever). Everyone played two songs a piece and it was wonderful! Carrie Underwood did "How Great Thou Art" which gave me chills, Miranda Lambert's "House that Built Me" was absolutely beautiful, and ZZ Top's performance was like nothing I've ever seen before, but yet I surprisingly enjoyed it much. Thanks, Michelle, for such an awesome night!

Taylor Swift..."You Belong With Me"

Sandra Bullock acted like she was going to sing, but just introduced Faith Hill.

Wednesday was spent having coffee in the a.m. with Kelsa, fabric shopping for drapes, enjoying a whole day by the pool with Michelle, and eating an early dinner with my parents before going home to Randy. It happened to also be Max and Rosie's first birthday, so after fish tacos we let them outside (they are indoor cats usually) until Max got stung by a bee. They received treats and ice cream....a little spoiled, perhaps? I think we told stories of spoiled pets at SATCO, too bad this happened afterwards or I would have had a good story to tell. Anyways, since Randy and I were the ones who picked out little Max and Rosie, my parents thought it was fitting that I was there to celebrate! (and I got cake and ice cream, too!)

My dad with the most spoiled cats in the world!

Road Trip: 7 Stops in 9 Days

It's true...although we are tired from living out of a suitcase and a different bed each night, we feel very successful in our trip to visit family. We left from Memphis to travel to Nashville and eat a delicious meal with my parents and leave little Jack to have the time of his life. The next morning we drove to our first pit stop: Mamaw! Our time there was extra special because Phyllis and D were there as well! We spent the day eating Mamaw's cookies, talking, and playing outside. That night we enjoyed a home cooked meal with Uncle Phil (Mire) and Aunt Debbie, Rose, Curry, Uncle Phil (Menard), and Aunt Peggy. After dinner we got to meet Curry's girlfriend Kate and hear his many stories of being a policeman in Dayton.

Mamaw's backyard.

The next day we went to Tipp City, which was an adorable little town that had cute little antique stores and several impressive art galleries. Mamaw treated us (while D worked) to a yummy lunch at a restaurant in an old bank, and we ate inside the vault!

Pharoah! Pharoah!

Coldwater Cafe...in the vault.

Randy loving on his Mamaw.

Next we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. They, too, live in Dayton. Whenever we visit Gr'ma and Gr'pa we MUST play Euchre. (Randy would be so proud I spelled that correctly!) We played this for hours while eating about three different desserts! The best part of visiting many people on a trip is that they all want to have good food for you, so you get tons of it...and all for free! Gr'ma is infamous (to Randy and I) for her fruit pizza, and we enjoyed it! They also treated us to Donatos...notice how everything we do is centered around food? Most importantly, we got to catch up on so many things and simply enjoy each others company.

Before we left to go to the Reds game.

Stop #3 was the longest stop...in Cincinnati. We got to Jodi and Matthews and ate some Skyline Chili before going to the Reds vs. San Francisco Giants game. It was the first time going to a game with "locals" and we had so much fun! Our seats were excellent and the weather was just about perfect....oh, and it was a pretty high scoring game (which meant lots of fireworks) and the Reds won in the end! About halfway in, everyone started cheering about a man's face being on the jumbotron. Randy informs me that the man is Pete Rose and he is sitting about a hundred yards away from us in the ballpark. Then comes another big Reds hall of famer, Joe Morgan. Pretty cool.

Joey Votto.

Love you, Joda.

My brother-in-law bought me a foam finger. Ha!

Go REDS!

There he is...Pete Rose.

Oh, how I love you, Great American Ballpark.

The following day was probably the most picture worthy, yet I have no pictures. We went to King's Island while Jodi and Matthew worked. We got there early enough to ride all of the roller coasters before lunch. We then grabbed some lunch and our swimming suits and went to the waterpark for the rest of the day. The reason for no pictures is that I ran around without my purse, camera, nothing...literally. It is such a strange feeling to be running around a waterpark with nothing on but a bathing suit (not even shoes) and realizing that everyone else is half-naked too. By the end of that day, we were pooped! Good thing Jodi and Matthew prepared a yummy meal on their new grill and then we all watched a movie together.

Stop #4...pit stop in Louisville to see our adorable nephew, Luke, and his mom and dad. Danny is in his worst month ever of residency, but had the day off and was a trooper despite how tired he must have been. I won't say too much about Luke, because the pictures show you just how cute and precious he is!

Luke got to see some animals at a farm and mimicked all of their sounds..so cute!

At the park.

He loved the baseball with Uncle Randy...and loves playing and poking Aunt Lynsi.

Stop #5...after a night of rest in Nashville. We went over to visit our oldest nephew, Grayden, and his mom and dad in LaVergne. Grayden is 100% boy, a ball of energy and the best entertainment there is. He is in love with all things sports, and he is shown mimicking all the moves from a football video game below.

And you have to love his precious batting position.

Randy reading Curious George to Grayden before his nap. Look at that adorable face!

Next we loaded up a bunch of food and hitched up the Tucker boat for a fun-filled two days at the lake. We got to Center Hill just fine but then had a typical Tucker day...

First it rained on us while we were anchored and eating our lunch. Seriously, it looked as though the cloud was ONLY over us. Oh well, what harm does a little rain do when you're already on the lake?

There's my daddy...the brave driver.

This is when we discovered the boat was taking on a lot of water. A whole lot. Most of you know Randy is not the biggest guy, and the boat had trouble pulling him. Uh oh.

Then the boat decided to turn off, but don't worry it does this a lot. That's why we have an oar.

This, however, proved to be the end of our lake trip. If you notice the water coming out in the picture above, imagine it pouring out for several minutes. Not good. At least we got one good day out of it.

That night we spent time with Pa at his new home. We had a really good time just sitting and enjoying time with him. The following morning, after a donut run, we went to Burgess Falls. This park is only about 15 minutes outside of Cookeville and is absolutely beautiful!! Too bad the weather was hot and muggy, but we still had a great time!

East Tennessee is so much prettier than Memphis.

The brave hikers.

Mom and Pa.

Admiring the beauty of the falls.

The end. The only part of the trip left was to pry Jack away from his best friends and set off home to hot, sweaty Memphis.

CTT

The past three days, Randy and I have attended Community Transformation Training. For those of you that think we are crazy for moving into the hood of Memphis, at least we have now had training! The lecture/discussion/training was led by a man named Chuck who spends his entire life (with his wife and two kids) going to the most unreached people groups in the world. He sees the most dangerous places on earth, and it is all because of the Great Commission where we are commanded to go, preach, and heal. To give you an idea of how much of the world still remains without hearing the gospel, here is a map showing the progress. Green is where there are growing churches, yellow is where there is formative or nominal church, and RED is unreached. Some people call this the 10/40 window because they mostly sit along the 10/40 longitude, latitude location on the world map.

85% of the world's poorest people are in these red, unreached areas, and they only receive .5% (that is POINT 5) of "missionary" money!

(This image is from www.joshuaproject.net which is a great website to learn about these unreached areas.)

So although we were getting our training from someone who deals with places like North Africa and Afghanistan (and you wouldn't believe all the stories he shared...absolutely incredible stuff), we learned so many practical ways to spread the gospel to the urban areas of Memphis. Here is the basic CTT Strategy that seems most effective (the ABC's)

-A: Access the community (You can imagine this is much harder to do in remote Afghanistan than it is in Binghampton, Memphis. But this is definitely the first step.)

-B: get Behind closed doors

-C: Care for the Needy (we brainstormed many, many ways we can do this in our new neighborhood)

-D: Make Disciples

-E: Empower the church (church is simply a group of disciples, not a big fancy building, so this is where encouragement and strengthening takes place, and then leave to let that group of disciples grow while more can be reached)

Another thing we talked about that I want to mention very briefly is an authentic disciple. First of all, disciple is used 295 times in the New Testament, while the term Christian is only used 3 times. So why do we label ourselves Christians and not disciples? Probably because the word disciple means something so much stronger. The bottom line is this: You have to BE a disciple to MAKE a disciple, and being a disciple means readily giving up everything you have to follow Jesus.

I wish I could share the six pages of notes I took from the past three days, but I won't. We learned many practical ways of talking about the gospel with those who either do not know it, or do not want to hear it (those who are burned from it). I now have nine lessons in my bag of tricks for spreading the word of God.

The encouragement we received in short was this: It is always right to share the gospel.

"For the harvest is plenty but the workers are few...therefore, I am sending you out as lambs among wolves..."

May Days

I've been a little behind in blogging, and all I can say for that is that I have been enjoying some summer time...which means I have been doing absolutely nothing! Anyways, here is a recap of May.

First, school closed up and with it we had to say goodbye to the principal of AMS, Mrs. Patricia Prescott. Having only taught at the school for two years, I can't say I know her as well as others, but the moment I interviewed with her I knew she was going to be a wonderful person to work for. Rarely can you find someone so loving, yet stern enough, to create an excellent middle school environment. I mean, let's be honest, middle school years are the worst...but somehow she made them shine. She will be missed so much as she retires to spend time with her grandchildren. She brought so much to everyone at AMS.

The drama teacher, Mrs. P, and me!

Mrs. P and my fellow art teacher, Mrs. Sledge.

Next up was a Saturday that my parents and sister drove all the way to Memphis to see our new house. Pictures will come of that soon, but since we can't move until August, I didn't want to be too premature. My aunt Sandi came too and we had a wonderful day. They got to see the house and eat at Caritas Village, a community center slash restaurant slash soup kitchen slash art slash yoga slash..you get the picture. The lunch was delicious and I found out a little more about ways I might be able to help out in the Binghamton neighborhood. Caritas means "love for all" in Spanish and the woman who opened this place has done a great job living out that message. It was great for our family to see the place and get a feel for the neighborhood.

After lunch, we dropped the boys off at the apartment to do this...

And us girls did this...

Other happenings in May have included the Binghamton baseball games. The Brewster Navigators are part of a little league and they have been having a good year. Coach Randy has had a great time getting to know and coach these little guys. I have enjoyed seeing the team improve, and since Randy and I always drive a crew to the game, there are some pretty funny conversations.

I play with the siblings of the little Navigators, and we have a pretty good time too.

This past weekend I got a free trip to Nashville..woohoo! Randy had a Christian Medical/Dental Health conference at Belmont University and I hitched a ride with all the medical folk to spend a few days at my old stomping grounds with Kelsa at the cabin. I even got to sleep in my old bed and walk around the West End area and eat at Rumba with Kelsa and Jessilou who I haven't seen in ages! We had so much fun sitting out by West End Avenue and just catching up on everything. The second night Kelsa and I cooked salmon, garlic green beans, and quinoa with spinach and feta. Boy was it yummy...I LOVE quinoa! You should go buy some..it's pretty delicious. I also got to meet up with my mom for lunch at Bread & Company which I miss greatly. And, oh, I got to visit with Peanut too, of course! Before meeting up with Randy and the medical gang to leave on Saturday, we had a Tucker Pancake Breakfast at my parents and Kelsa's dad came over to enjoy the morning. All in all, a perfect three days. You know your having a good time when you sit at the kitchen table talking for two hours after eating your meal...and that is what we did each time!

I had to share this. After the flood in Nashville, the news stations all asked that Nashvillians conserve water. Kelsa might get the award for best conserver, because look at her bill! $1.50!

Last day of May, Memorial Day! Coming back from Nashville, I felt really sick for a day or two, but made it to our Memorial Day cookout at our friend's house. We had tons of people from the neighborhood (well, what will be our neighborhood). Nothing like celebrating the first of summer with friends, burgers, watermelon, and smores...yummmm!

The end. Happy June everyone!