Lovely Blessings

I hope you all had a fabulous week and weekend, my friends! I've been slacking on posting my 5 lovely blessings each week. :( I let myself get too bogged down with school and life that I haven't been devoting enough time to expressing my thankfulness for all the awesome blessings in my life. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks, I can slow down enough to post them.  Here are my 5 lovely blessings of the week: :) _____________________ I'm thankful for... 1. Lafitte Baptist Church. I absolutely love my home church! I love gathering together with family and friends to worship the one true God. God is doing some awesome, awesome things at Lafitte. People are accepting Jesus almost every week, and this year alone, more people have accepted Christ and been baptized than any other year at Lafitte. Such a blessing! Our youth group is continuing to grow, and a few weeks ago, we had 165 students from around our area for a night of worship and fun at a lock-in. I am so e...

We had a powerful  worship service at PUR tonight, you guys. Chains were broken, hearts were mended, and lives were changed. The Spirit of the Lord was moving in so many lives; my heart was so overwhelmed with the mercy and goodness of our Savior that I could not hold back the tears. I'm telling y'all, it was a powerful, powerful night in the House of the Lord. Tonight, Cole (our awesome college pastor) started a new sermon series entitled "Gravity." It was about how our God is a gravity-defying God. What exactly does that mean? (I'm so happy you asked, hehe.) Let me start from the beginning... (P.S. If you are an 18 to 20-something-year-old and are looking to be encouraged, please join us at PUR on Tuesday nights at Forest Hill at 7:00. The "Gravity" series will last 4 more weeks, and it is going to be awesome, I just know it.) But anyway... In this world, we will have pressure. (I know what you're thinking... DUH, Claire, that's obvious....

I had the honor and privilege of writing a blog post for our college Bible study, PUR. I was so excited when they asked me to write a post for September, and I'm so thankful they allowed me to write. I wanted to have it here on my blog as well, so here is the post. (I added a few pictures as well.) Hope you enjoy, my friends. :) _________________________________________ What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word  trust ? Is it faith? Hope? Dependence? Reliability? For me,  trust means placing my full confidence in something or someone else.  For example, I  trust  that my car will start when I turn the key. I  trust  my best friend when I tell her something personal.  I  trust  my parents when they give me advice. If we are able to so easily place our trust in these earthly things, why do we so often struggle with placing our trust in God? He is the One who created us, right? I think we struggle with ...

Last weekend, I went on a wonderful trip to Atlanta with three of my favorite guys: Chad, Cason, and Cole (two of my awesome cousins)! We had tickets to the Alabama/Virginia Tech football game in the Georgia Dome, so Friday afternoon, we all met at my house and began our trip to Atlanta. Join me on our journey. :)   We stopped at Chili's in Montgomery to eat dinner. I tried one of their salads... so yummy with mandarin oranges, cranberries, and pineapple! Always good laughs with these guys! We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn which was like .2 miles from the Georgia Dome, so it was awesome! I bunked on an air mattress at our hotel (which wasn't bad at all because my mattress was actually more comfy than the boys' beds, haha). I'm not naming any names (cough.boys.cough), but I may or may not  have suffered through some snoring during the night... LOL.  We had to be checked out of the hotel by 12:00 Saturday, so after packing and loading ...