Salt and Light

May was such a busy month for the Douglas family. Early in the month I had a fun maternity shoot with a first time mom who will be welcoming a sweet baby boy to her family soon.
In that same week we opened our house to a young newlywed couple from Lancaster Baptist Church. A tour group from West Coast Baptist College was performing at our church that Sunday and they needed a place to stay for 3 nights before heading off to Placerville. Joel volunteered to take them in knowing we have plenty of space in our house. With us being fairly new to church, we've never had house guests and  didn't know what to expect.
Fortunately, that Saturday we were able to spend some time with the whole tour group and get to know them during our church's teen formal. As part of our youth group, there's an annual teen formal to celebrate the seniors in the class who are soon to graduate high school. All the teens dress up and go to a fancy restaurant and have fellowship. Before dinner the WCBC group performed a funny skit, sang a few songs, and had a really great message for the teens about maintaining a pure, Godly life as they grow into young adulthood.

 I'm still amazed and kind of jealous I never even knew that there were groups out there like this until now. It's so fantastic that we have young Christians who spend their entire summer touring around the country to honor God and  develop relationships through fellowship. I am ecstatic that Cooper will be exposed to this kind of life and see how these groups of students, missionaries, and evangelists are willing to fully dedicate their lives to spreading the Word to others. The most amazing thing is that they do it selflessly and with so much joy and happiness.

As I'm typing I'm getting all worked up about how great of an experience we had! Anyway, following the performances we all headed into town to eat at this fancy restaurant that captured a Victorian style ambiance. It was very...pink. The walls were painted pink with paintings strategically placed throughout the room.

I sat next to the young woman who'd be staying with us and was able to get to know a little bit about her and her husband. She was a little gal from Tennessee with just a hint of a southern accent.
The night concluded with fro yo and pictures. Lots of pictures.

The next few nights we shared great fellowship and lovely dinners with other church members while the tour group was visiting. I can't even describe how much this experience affected me. I was very hesitant about the entire weekend at first. I didn't know what to expect and I was nervous that it would be super awkward having strangers stay with us. Our experience was polar opposite. Everyone was so kind and comforting like we've known them for years. It was a sense of family, which in reality it was. Even though we just met them for the first time, we are family and children of God. He will always tie us together as long as we all have the personal goal to live for, love, and honor God. It's such a wonderful thing.
Tuesday morning the group headed back out on the road to the next part of their journey. I was left a nice little care package including a CD of the WCBC tour group, some homemade blackberry jam from a lady at their church back in Lancaster, a book we discussed earlier in the visit Off Script by Cary Schmidt, and a nice thank you card from the couple. What a great group of people who genuinely know what love is and can share it with anyone who crosses their path. It was a wake up call for me to have that same kind of love and attitude towards others. After all we are the salt and light of the earth.
I just finished reading the book Off Script and would highly recommend it. It follows the journey of a man from Lancaster Baptist Church who was diagnosed with cancer and shows what his perspective was through all of it- good and bad. It's a great book in learning the ways to handle trials that you're hit with in life. Cary Schmidt is the author to several other books that I'm adding to my reading list. He also has a free book online called Done. You can get it HERE
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Our trip to the fair this year. Cooper had a BLAST!