Seriously, it felt like this day would never come. I know we still have a long way to go (15 states) but 15/48 isn't bad at all!
So let me tell you about South Carolina! A good portion of the time was dedicated to taking care of business. Monday we blogged & worked on videos in the morning/afternoon. It was pretty cold outside so we wanted to be indoors but still have opportunity to meet people so we headed over to the mall. We walked around a bit and talked to one girl who ended up being a believer and then we remembered all of the other business we had to take care of-applying at the DMV for a change of address, finding cheap car insurance, transferring everything over to a new address, figuring out how to smog our van outside of Cali, and pay our registration before it's due. Of course, we didn't remember any of this that morning when we were already taking care of business, so we headed to the food court where we sat for the next hour figuring it out. Luckily for us, they have wifi! So we took care of an ok amount. I got Marc's address changed through the DMV but then the login system went down and I couldn't do mine. Marc got us some cheap insurance! We paid $218 for a 6 month term. Sweet! I love being older with better insurance rates and having almost nothing negative on both of our driving records! And I found the paper that we needed to print and send in that exempted us from getting a smog check, so we didn't quite get everything taken care of, but we got a great start. That took up a nice chunk of the rest of the day, but we got to walk around the mall for just a little bit before leaving.
Tuesday morning we got up and had our studies. Because we still had to work a little bit more on the previous day's business and because it was still really cold out, we went to Starbucks to settle in. When we were there, Marc started talking to this really nice guy who was sitting a couple of seats over. He, too, was from California, but in the process of moving out to SC. We got to talk with him a little bit-he shared about his bad church experiences and what brought him back. It was a great conversation!
Later into it, we were discussing different types of churches and how sometimes, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Jokingly Marc said, "oh what, what's all this masonry business?" only to find out that this guy is a mason! How ironic that Marc would joke about that exact thing. So they talked for a while about common misconceptions. Not being too sure of the real truth behind Masonry, Marc made sure to clarify the importance of Jesus and Him being the only way and the only one we worship. We were finished with everything that we could do up to that point, so we exchanged numbers and headed to FedEx to print our smog paper & send it into the DMV. When we were finally done, we headed back and walked around downtown. There was a pretty sweet store called Mast General Store that had everything from camping supplies to touristy things and a nice sized candy store in the back. It was pretty sweet! We weren't walking around for very long by the time we got a text message from a friend. She had paid us to make 80 pendants for Mother's Day and we were about halfway done. Then we found out she didn't need them for Mother's Day, but the women's retreat, which was a whole month earlier! Oh no! Not only that, but she needed 23 more than originally planned. So we turned turbo on, went back to Starbucks, and spent the next 4 hours making pendants. Normally it takes Marc about 25 minutes to make one from beginning to end, but I was able to start them for him and cut that time by a lot. In those 4(ish) hours, we were able to make 19 of them!
The next morning, our day was once again filled with pendants! We worked on them for about 5 hours until we ran out of supplies, then it was off to take care of more business! We had to print our tax forms, sign them, and fax them back to our tax guy. Which, let me tell you, is an amazing story! So, we both only worked for 1 month last year and we also got a 1099 from a church that donated to the cause. I've been avoiding wanting to do my taxes for quite some time because I hate the thought of owing and I was a tad nervous to see how much we would owe. Looking back, I realize how foolish that is because this whole time I've relied on God to take care of us, so why wouldn't I now? Silly me. Needless to say, we don't owe money. Not only do we not owe, but we're getting back more money than we paid! Isn't that fantastic?! God is good! Especially for giving us a great tax guy! :)
So we got some more supplies and made pendants for a little while longer, then headed out to church for midweek service. They had a guest speaker talking about his mission work in Guatemala. It wasn't the most interesting message I've ever heard and we both kinda wondered why God had us be there. A lot of people greeted us and the usher made us feel very welcome, but it seemed like we were missing something. As we walked to the van, I got in and Marc said, "I'll be right back". He walked away and was talking to this girl in the parking lot who had been sitting next to him. She seemed to not really care too much about church so they talked about that. She shared with Marc that she didn't really like church people because they made her feel judged so Marc shared with her the love of Christ and how to get to heaven. Afterwards, she seemed so relieved and even told Marc, "Thanks, I really needed that". And all of a sudden, the world made sense again!
Thursday morning was more of the same. We just had about 15 more pendants that we needed to make, so we did our best to knock them out. Afterwards we were back to FedEx for the 3rd time that week, this time to ship them off. Done and done! Then it was back to downtown to walk around the local park. As we pulled into the parking spot, there was a street kid sitting right out front. I was making us sandwiches anyways, so I told Marc to go ask her if she wanted one. One tuna and 2 PB & J's later, we were eating our deliciousness and just hanging out & talking. We spent probably close to two hours walking around the park and downtown before going our separate ways. We talked a lot about traveling, exchanging stories and just sharing things. It was a really cool time. We were able to share the gospel in a not so "interrogation" kind of way, but more conversationally. It was sweet. Then we went our separate ways!
That just about did it for South Carolina. It wasn't very exciting-like I said, much more business than anything but everyday it seemed like God brought us the one He had for us to talk to that day. You can't ask for much more than that! Friday morning we got up and left for North Carolina. We were going to wait until Saturday, but we felt a bit of an urgency to go to Good Friday service and since South Carolina didn't have one, the option we liked better anyways was North Carolina!
So here we are in state #34, North Carolina, hanging out with Joe & Ashlee Ziemann.
But more on that in the next blog. :)
the business side of the park
sweeeeet candy shop!
making pendants
we made 68 of these!
there is good environment.
ReplyDeletethis is for good.
Estetik