I'm Back...

As promised, I am back now and ready to report all about my exciting, adventurous weekend...although I'm quite sure it won't be as exciting to anyone else as it was to me.

My husband & I were invited to come to a Prophetic Conference
for our Every Nation denomination. It was in Chantilly, VA at Grace Covenant Church.


You can also read about this on my friend Beth's blog at I'm Heading Towards My Destiny because she traveled with my husband & I.

First of all, I must tell you that the conference was awesome. I learned so much and God really stretched my faith this weekend. We were blessed with incredible teaching, we had wonderful praise & worship, and the people were so hungry for God and full of His love. I was honored to get to go and truly blessed by the entire experience.

I might as well go ahead and tell on myself. While the Bible says that "signs & wonders will follow the believer", I might also add that embarrassing moments seem to follow ME! There were so many of them that I couldn't possibly list them all, and some of them wouldn't translate that well because it was one of those "guess you had to be there" moments.


I will share some of our "crazy" stories:

We used the "Garmin" for driving directions and it was driving all right, driving us crazy! I missed several turns because it told me to turn left (only to find out that there was a ramp you were so supposed to exit on the right that would take you to the left).

We were following the Garmin to find an Applebees restaurant.
Upon arrival at our "destination" all we saw was a Hooters restaurant. We didn't think that was appropriate while attending a church function.

We ended up at Red Robin (yummm) where I completely wasn't thinking straight when I ordered a salad with Poppy Seed dressing. You know what's coming don't you? Of course I had poppy seeds stuck in my teeth! I was picking them out all the way back to the conference. The Garmin actually told us a different way to get back to the church and we ignored it and went with our "gut" on where we thought this road (that we had never been on before) would end up. It didn't end up where I thought, but it actually turned out even better and we were able to get to the church faster than we would have if we'd followed the Garmin's instructions!

I was trying to switch lanes ahead of the guy next to me in order to make my turn. I stomped on the gas and peeled out in my minivan with tires screeching. My hubby sarcastically yells out "get out of our way, we're going to CHURCH!"

We begin the afternoon session on Saturday with one of the Pastors who will really tell you like it is. Seriously, we were all afraid not to be in our seats and ready to go at exactly 2:00 as he had directed. In my haste to get back to the conference, I forgot to turn off my cell phone.
You guessed it...right smack in the middle of his message, my phone starts ringing. It would have been okay if I were sitting way in the back, but NO...I had to be on the 4th row! I grabbed my entire purse and threw it on my husbands lap so he would have to deal with it. I don't know what I was thinking??? I guess I wanted everyone to think it was his phone, but then, they would have to believe that it was his purse! He frantically tried to find my phone in this HUMONGOUS purse. He finally got the phone to stop ringing, and mercifully the Pastor kept on going without any response.

But the most embarrassing thing happened on the drive home. I won't go into all the details (in order to save myself even a shred of dignity). Let's just say that we were stuck on I-95, in the middle lane, surrounded by bumper to bumper traffic because of a wreck several miles up the road and I had to go to the bathroom so bad it hurt!

You can imagine that I got several different suggestions as to what I should do, none of which sounded good or would allow me to escape without total humiliation. It's only by the grace of God that I was able to hold on until we were allowed to exit the highway. We found the nastiest Hardees ever! But I was completely desperate...so I made it work (no explanation needed).

The worst part is that I saw a McDonald's about 5 exits before I realized how bad I had to go to the restroom and I didn't stop, thinking that I would be okay until we could reach a better place. That would be the vision (of those golden arches) that would haunt me as I held my stomach and begged God for mercy while Beth & my hubby went between praying for me & laughing hysterically - LOL!

Lesson learned: Listen to that still small voice! He's better than the Garmin for directions, He'll keep you from eating Poppy seed dressing in public, remind you to turn off your cell phone in church, and take the right exit when you have to go to the bathroom because He knows there's a wreck up ahead!