Last Sunday

I don't have many pictures of our last Sunday at Mount Olive, and the ones I do have include other people's kids. I generally don't post pictures of other people's kids, so I'll have to leave those out. But our last day at Mount Olive was hard . . . really hard.

Ironically, my friend, Julie moved one day before we did. She left that Sunday and in the craziness of all our packing, we didn't get a chance to say goodbye until the morning before church, so Julie and Lorraine (who was making the trip with her) stopped by before church to say goodbye. That's when I knew it would be a hard day . . .

We absolutely knew that accepting the call to New York was the right thing to do and we were excited about it, but that doesn't mean that we didn't grieve the loss of a great congregation and many people whom we loved. It was hard to watch our kids say goodbye to their friends and not fully understand what was going on. After church, there was a nice luncheon for us and people had a chance to tell funny stories or share some thoughts . . . it was awesome and we were overwhelmed by people of Mount Olive. Below is a picture of a formal "sending off" prayer. Our family was somewhere in the middle of all those people and everyone was connected in some way, praying for us as we finished our time at Mount Olive.

Overall, it was a very good day, but a difficult one. We are just thankful to have had such a great first congregation and know that God has wonderful things in store for the people of Mount Olive.