Author Archive

You might be a redneck

We had a fish fry at my mom and dad’s house last night. I just thought I’d share this heartwarming picture with you ladies.

If you serve your family ice cream with a garden spade because you couldn’t find the ice cream scoop – say it with me now – you might be a redneck! (Note from Beth: The weirdest part of this is that Keith wasn’t even trying to be funny. He was simply being practical. I saw his handiwork on the counter, motioned for AJ to look as fast as she could and she just happened to have her camera. I’m not sure he ever knew what the big deal was. Welcome to my home.)

Share

Sopapilla Cheesecake

I hope you girls feel loved because as soon as I post this, my secret is out! I teased my gourmet chef sister about this having all kinds of exotic ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce. Does “crescent” qualify as a hard-to-pronounce word? This is a really simple, yummy recipe that is more impressive than it should be. It’s a favorite fellowship dinner dessert from First Baptist Irving. Thanks, Janelle, for supplying me with the recipe! In fact, she may be making this tonight for her bunco group.

Sopapilla Cheesecake

Ingredients:
2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese
2 (8 oz) packages refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or almond extract
1/2 cup margarine or butter, melted
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar (combine about 1/2 cup sugar with 1 TBS cinnamon)

1) Using a 9×13 baking pan, unroll one package of refrigerated crescent rolls and line the bottom of the pan.
2) Flatten.
3) Mix together the cream cheese, sugar, and extract.
4) Spread over the crescent rolls.
5) Unroll the other can of crescent rolls and place on top of cream cheese mixture.
6) Pour one stick of melted butter or margarine over the top and sprinkle with about 1/2 cup of the cinnamon sugar mixture.
7) Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Makes 12-20 servings. My recipe provides the fat and calorie content, but I promise you don’t want to know! Enjoy, ladies!

Share

The Deeper Still Blog

Look! The Deeper Still Blog is back in action for the 2008 events! We would love for you to check it out and say hi to LifeWay’s Deeper Still blogger, Michelle Hicks. Here’s a little hint for you. The April 29th post contains some big news about one of the speakers. You won’t want to miss it.

Share

LPL – Colorado Springs

Share

Siesta Fiesta FAQ

Hi ladies! I just want to touch on a few things this morning since some very good questions have come up regarding the Siesta Fiesta. If you missed Wednesday’s announcement, check it out here.

-The registration for the actual Living Proof Live event is completely separate from the Siesta Fiesta registration. Anyone attending the Siesta Fiesta needs to register for both. (The Siesta Fiesta is free, by the way.) Please note that there were no problems with the LifeWay event registration and if you have already registered for the conference itself, you do not need to do it again. The only problem was with the contact info we had compiled from our bloggers for the Siesta Fiesta.

-If you are attending the conference with a group, it is totally up to you whether you sit with your group during the conference or whether you sit in the reserved Siesta section. Regardless of where you sit, if you have an arm band you are welcome to attend the reception after the conference.

-If you would like your mom or sister or best friend to sit with you in the reserved Siesta section and attend the reception, please make sure they register for the Siesta Fiesta so they can get an arm band. However, if you would like to register a group of additional people who aren’t familiar with the blog, please consider that we would like to keep the size of the reception manageable and the activities specific to our blog readers. That’s why we are not advertising the Siesta Fiesta to everyone at the event. Thank you in advance!

-There will be an hour break between the end of the conference and the start of the Siesta Fiesta reception. Beth will need that time to decompress and scarf down some lunch. Kim and Patty are looking into pre-ordering some box lunches for anyone interested. You would be able to pay for them online using PayPal. Aren’t those girls awesome? That is a good reason to stay tuned to their blog.

-For your convenience, I have provided a permanent link on our blog’s side bar to the Siesta Fiesta registration post and to Kim and Patty’s blog.

-The reserved seating section will have some wheelchair accessibility. If possible, please let me know of your need beforehand so that we can be sure to accommodate everyone.

-I’m so sorry for those of you who won’t be able to make it! Know that while we can’t do an official blog meetup at every event, you ladies can arrange your own meetups at any time. I know from just reading your comments that this has happened a number of times at different events. Would anyone like to share?

If you have any other questions, please send them to us at [email protected]. We are working on some answers to other questions we received and I will update on those as soon as I can. Thanks, ladies! We can’t wait!

Share

National Day of Prayer

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Today is the National Day of Prayer. My mom and dad are in Washington D.C. right now participating in the events. I would like to open up comments for anyone who feels led to post a brief prayer for our nation. Dr. Ravi Zacharias is this year’s Honorary Chairman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. You can read his prayer for our nation here.

Share

Siesta Fiesta Registration

Ladies, the Siesta Fiesta is less than four months away! We are getting super excited about it.

I need you to know that we had a little problem with our Siesta Fiesta registration. Remember how we had all of you who were going to attend send an email with your contact info to a certain address? Well, unfortunately, all of that information was swallowed up in a black hole. Let me put this in Jackson terms: Bye bye contact info. All gone. Yes, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. We are so sorry.

The good news is, there is plenty of time to start over. Between now and July 22 (one month before the conference), we desperately need all of our blog readers who are going to attend the Living Proof Live event in San Antonio, Texas, on August 22-23, 2008, to re-register for the Siesta Fiesta.

Here are some details for you.

WHO: LPM Blog readers + Beth, Amanda, and hopefully Melissa

WHAT: An LPM blog reader meet-up following the Living Proof Live event in San Antonio, Texas

WHEN: August 22-23, 2008

WHERE: The Alamodome

WHY: So that we can fellowship with our siestas in person!

HOW: Registration is now closed.

*In August, everyone who has registered for the Siesta Fiesta will receive an arm band that will get them into a reserved seating section. (This is in addition to the arm band you will receive when you register for the conference itself.) About an hour after the conference ends on Saturday, we will have a reception on-site at the Alamodome with all the Siestas. We absolutely cannot wait to meet everyone! We will be in touch with more details in early August.

*Two siestas, Patty and Kim, have created a blog to help the siestas communicate with each other about the weekend. Thanks, ladies! Patty and Kim are not employed by LPM or by LifeWay, but we do think they are amazing women. We’re grateful that they are helping everyone make the most of their opportunity to fellowship with each other during the big weekend. Visit www.thesiestafiestablog.blogspot.comto see what they have going on.

I think that’s about it for now! We can’t wait to meet you!

P.S. Leave us a comment after you’ve registered!

Share

S.O.S.

Y’all, I’m having serious blogger’s block. Someone help a sister out with a some good ideas. Otherwise I’m going to resort to posting random pictures of Jackson sleeping.

Share

A Stringy Blue Bracelet and the Old Rugged Cross

A move always unearths interesting things. Curtis and I have spent the last month getting settled in our new house and unpacking everything from junk to earthly treasures. I found numerous unopened bottles of baby shampoo and lotion I didn’t realize we had. I also found photo albums that I thought had been eaten up by a black hole. One of the albums is from my trip to Israel with my mom in 1997. I was very relieved to find that. I happily unpacked this beautiful Lladro’ figurine that my dear Mrs. Mary Helen gave me when Curt and I got engaged. I’ve never had the proper place to display it (fearing destruction by a naughty cat or by a curious toddler), so I have been saving it for the right time. I finally have the perfect spot for it in my new house. One thing I was hoping to find but that hasn’t turned up yet is my Aggie Ring – a prized possession for any graduate of Texas A&M University. It went missing two moves ago when I was great with child and wasn’t wearing it on a regular basis. Only the Lord knows where that thing is.

Your Living Proof sisters are still in an unpacking frenzy. I went to work in the new office for the first time yesterday and things were in high gear. There was a large team of volunteers helping get the resource area in order. LPM has about thirteen paid staff members, but we have many, many more people than that who are critical to the operation of this ministry. That includes each and every one of you who prays for us, even though we don’t have the honor of seeing your sweet faces each week!

While I was at the office, I found some garments of praise (outfits for praise dancing) that someone had sent to us. Someone else found a box filled with hundreds of blue yarn Believing God bracelets. We did Believing God in the fall of 2002, so those babies are more than five years old. We wore the bracelets during the Bible study to remind us to believe God. My mom got the idea from Numbers 15:37-41. (The blue yarn frays at the ends and makes tassels.) The original bracelets we wore have long since fallen off, but when we need to focus intensely in prayer on a particular matter, we don’t hesitate to tie new ones on our wrists.

Curtis must have uncovered some bracelets during the packing phase because I noticed he had one on his wrist one day after work. “Yes,” I thought, “he is one of us now!” Over the weekend we both noticed that the bracelet had fallen off. Sometimes the yarn stretches out. You really have to tie it on tight if you want it to make the distance.

Last weekend the weather was incredibly beautiful and we felt inspired to go to the Texas Bluebonnet Festival in a tiny country town called Chappell Hill. The bluebonnet is state flower of Texas, in case anyone wanted to know. I bought a really neat, rather large wooden cross at the festival and Curtis and I took turns carrying it around.

Fast forward a couple of days. I hadn’t hung the cross on a wall yet and I picked it up to move it to a different spot. Something dark and stringy fell from it and imagine my surprise to find that it was Curtis’ Believing God bracelet! It was attached to the cross the entire time…just where it should have been. If our faith isn’t attached to the Cross of Christ, we’re hanging on by a thread.

Share

LPM’s New Home

Ladies, this is what I was talking about back in November when I asked you to pray for something cool going on at LPM. We are so excited to finally share this with you! Interestingly, when I wrote that original post, Twinkle left a comment saying “Ok, I’m just guessing but I think this teaser might have something to do with couples or men.” At that time we did not know what God had up His sleeve for Curtis. Twinkle, you were really in the Spirit that day! God began opening up that door just a few days later. I have thought about it many times since. But that’s not the point of this post. I just wanted you girls to see what you were praying for and rejoice with us in God’s sweet provision! Thank You, Lord! We are filled with joy!

Share