What an incredible four weeks it has been - it’s hard to believe everything we’ve been doing over the last four weeks. Two weekends ago our team went to Scottsdale, Arizona for a Women With Vision conference and I taught four different workshops: The Devotional Life Of A Leader, Using The Computer In Ministry, A Heart For Revival, and Romancing The Word. Oh, what a joy it was to be in Arizona and in my home town where I grew up. These workshops were a thrill for me to share and I had the opportunity to connect with a lot of women who just love the Lord. I challenged these women to set aside the “many things” for the “one thing” and live a life that is sold out for Jesus Christ. And that, of course is the passion of my heart. You can see some of my team here in this picture. To the left of me is Kayla, my assistant. When you call our office, she is the one you will talk with and she is the one who manages everything there at our training center. I love it when she is able to travel with me because she is such an incredible detail person and she just loves the Lord! Then you can see to my right Myra Murphy and Cindy Clark. Myra is the Coordinator of our Women of Revival conferences. What a joy to serve the Lord with Myra. Then to my far right is Cindy who often travels with me all over the United States. Cindy is just so brilliant and handles a thousand details at once. No matter what happens, Cindy believes the Lord for big things - I love that!! We had a wonderful weekend. And the icing on the cake is that my brother, mother, and niece were with us while I spoke.
The week before Scottsdale we were all in San Juan Capistrano at the Rancho Capistrano Retreat Center for a women’s retreat entitled “Grow Deep In The Garden Of His Grace”. I just loved writing this series of messages all about spiritual growth. I learned so much as I studied the words of Peter, the first pastor of the early church, in 2 Peter 3:18. These words would make such a great life verse. My four messages included Your Life In the Garden, Your Growth In the Garden, Your View In the Garden, and Your Purpose In the Garden. I love writing a new message series and often those messages lead to a book as I continue to develop those thoughts and insights from the Word of God. I love what I learned about spiritual growth. The bottom line is that we need to always be growing and becoming more than we are right now and knowing more than we know right now.
Four weeks ago I was in Minneapolis and actually I showed pictures of the snow previously up here on my blog. Wow - it was amazing to be in snow. I spoke at Arrowwood Resort located by a huge lake that was half frozen over. It was amazing to come to this cold weather in Minnesota after leaving 100 degree weather here in the desert where I live. But it was a lot of fun. It was totally beautiful. I must be made for all this travel because I do enjoy going to new places. I was making everyone stop the car all along the way so I could get pictures of the snow. And when we got to the lake that was frozen over I took pictures from every angle - I just never saw anything like that before. Can you tell I grew up in the desert? 
I loved being with the women of Westwood Community Church from Minneapolis. They just love the Lord. And it was such a joy to be with them. Our theme for this retreat was A Heart that Dances. I shared from the life of David and we talked together about what it means to be intimate with Lord. I shared all about how to have a quiet time. And then I shared about the great value and importance of the Word of God in our lives. The retreat went from Friday evening to Saturday late afternoon. We drove back to Minneapolis that night and then flew out the next day.
These are two wonderful women - Kim and Deborah - both in charge of organizing the retreat. So much goes into the organization of a retreat including setting up the schedule, making a contract with the location, making sure the food is organized, putting together handouts and other items to give to each woman and making sure that everyone has an encouraging experience at the retreat. They work so hard for a year in preparation and it is hard to believe when the retreat is over - it seems to go so quickly!! I speak from personal experience - I plan so much to be there and then I give my messages, connect with all the women and now here I am four weeks later. Such is the nature of the brevity of life - time goes FAST!
This is the worship team and in one word, they are AMAZING. The girl on the far left in the brown jacket is Sara Renner and oh, what a voice she has. She rocks - in fact, this whole group rocks. Their music was like a concert every time they got up to lead us and to sing. Wow. But Sara Renner especially is one incredible voice - she sounds kind of like Anita Baker only a lot better. I’ve been singing to one of her albums in my car and I almost sound like her if I turn her music up really loud (SMILE - just kidding - you have to turn her music up REAL LOUD!!) Anyhow, it was just a joy to serve together with this worship team at our retreat in Minnesota.
Well, that’s my four weeks. Can you believe it. And now, here I am this weekend writing messages that we will film in a couple of weeks up in Idyllwild, California. I am busily working getting ready for the ICRS convention in Atlanta, Georgia where I will sign my new book which will be released July 15, Walking With The God Who Cares - Finding Hope When You Need It Most. More on that later. In the meantime, God bless you!!