Greater Impact a Joyous Ouch.

Greater Impact is the name of the GCC building campaign. Last night we had a commitment dinner. The food was great. :) But that's not what it was all about. The past couple of sermon series, have really been speaking to us. I think the best place to start would be the sermon on living with less. There are so many things we have that we don't need and could defiantly live without. Some of those things are debts that we don't need and if we got rid of them we could put that money to better use. I have always wanted to be able to bless people in different ways but have always felt held back because of budget reasons. So Jake and I have really been trying to get rid of the unnecessary things. We are right now in the process of getting rid of our van, oh how I hate to say that. I love our van, it is sooooo perfect for us. But you know it is an unnecessary debt. That we could live without. The money that we pay each month to out van note could go to a much better use.
Then we move on to the Greater Impact. Were we have been asked to make a 3 year commitment to give to the building fund. We have been challenged to pray and ask God what he would have us give. Big or small. I think the best way I have heard it put was from the speaker last night. He was talking about a campaign that they were asked to do for there church and how there were talking about there giving being a sacrifice. So said he was asking his 2 sons what the word sacrifice means to them in one word. His oldest, type "A" son he called him, said "Ouch". His youngest, type "Z", said "Joy". When he asked his type "Z" son why he said Joy he said because the sacrifice would be for Jesus and it would bring Joy to him. So he said they came to the conclusion that sacrifice was a Joyous Ouch. Which is so right. Giving the amount we would like to give or that God is telling us to give would defiantly stretch us and make us fully trust in god to provide for us. There is no way we could do it without putting our faith in him to provide. 3 years is a long time to make a financial commitment when you don't even know what the future is going to bring. But all we need to do is trust God that he knows what he is doing and that he will not let us go hungry or homeless.
I feel like I have done a bit or rambling, and it may not all make since to some of you. But then again I really hope it does and that it speaks to you.

A Greater Impact from Grace Capital Church on Vimeo.

GCC Staff Shoot

These are a few of Jakes photos from his GCC Staff photo shoot. All of the pics came out great. they were taken by Hinkley Photo, they are a married couple that go to our church. They jsut took these pics in downtown Concord. Their lighting and color of there pics are just amazing. Check out their website. They ROCK!!
http://www.hinkleyphoto.com/

A fresh start!!

Oh I forgot to mention the worst and well best thing that just recently happen, within the month. Well lets start with the good news. As of August 1st Jake is now officially full-time(part-time) at our church. He is technically part-time(4 days a week) but does not have any other job so I call it full-time. We are very excited. I joke and say that now he gets paid to play his guitar. :) lol well on Sundays he does. :) We will be starting very soon his licensing process with Foursquare. So then he will have the pastor title. :)

So along with that. He got a new Mac Book Pro ( I think, something big that he can do music stuff on) So he transfered all of his setting off of our computer on to his new one. So now I get ours all to myself. After he did that it mine was running kinda slow so he shut it down....... and well it never turned back on again. Lukily we have AppleCare so he called them they couldn't get it to work so they sent up a box. I was so praying that it would be an easy fix and we would get it back and ALL of my stuff would still be there. WELLLLL....... we go it back on tuesday and I turned it on and what did I hear. The new start up programming music!! I could have thrown it out the window. They replaced the entire hard drive. I lost EVERYTHING!!!! All of my settings, the pics ( that I hadn't put on the internet or backed up to our other hard drive.), my bookmarks, files, address book.....ect...... Like I said EVERYTHING!!!! Its realy frustrating having to start from scratch. I almost didn't even feel like doing it.

But I am slowly, slowly, :) getting it back. You know its rough when you can't even remember what you had and were to find it. Cause you are so use to just clicking a button. Oh well. I guess a fresh start is good sometimes. But it won't happen again. I am now backing everything up with out external hard drive useing time machine. So if it every happens again all I have to do it plug it in and it will bring up EVERYTHING!! All I have to say it Thanks God for AppleCare cause we didn't have to pay anything. Okay there was my crisis for the month, I HOPE!!!!

Easter Sunday!!