Pictures from Launch Sunday!

And the Baby Is Born!

Today we were blessed to be a part the birth of North Point's Warren Campus! Many of you know that 7 months ago, Mike, Sarai and I packed all our earthly belongings into a U-Haul truck and moved from Charlotte, NC to Gurnee, IL. We came because God has given us a desire to see new churches planted and hurting people transformed by His amazing love. And today was the beginning of what not only our family but many other families have been working towards and praying about for more than a year. We had our first official service as the Warren Campus of North Point Church! And I wish I could put into words all the emotions of the morning. We had been able to "practice" for the past three weeks so the set-up went rather smoothly and visitors began arriving around 9:40 a.m. I was busy helping parents get their children signed in and to their classes until well past 10 but I was able to sneek into service around 10:20 to see what was transpiring. The minute I walked into the theater and saw how full it was of faces I did not recognize, I began to cry. Not because I was sad, but because of the tangible realization of how greatly God is working through us and through all those on the Warren Campus team. God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

Mike also put a post up about this morning. If you would like to read his thoughts on the day, go to http://mikefoster.wordpress.com/

Celebrate Fall

Several weekends ago, we spent our Saturday afternoon and evening carving pumpkins and eating Chicago pizza with our good friends Tim, Mary Beth and Hannah. We had hoped Hannah and Sarai would want to be a little more involved in the process but they didn't want to have anything to do with the goo inside the pumpkins. They were just happy to sit back and watch the adults :-) But they enjoyed sitting next to their carved pumpkins and checking them out all lit up on the front porch!

Aren't their aprons cute! I found them at the Dollar Tree :-)

Mike making weird faces while carving our pumpkin.

Hannah and her daddy, Tim

Hannah and Sarai enjoying the fruits of their parent's labor :-)

Mary Beth carved a "W" in a pumpkin for Tim because he graduted from the University of Wisconsin

And of course, we celebrated Halloween on Friday of this past week. Sarai had asked to be a butterfly so we bought her a pair of wings and paired them up with a black gymsuit with butterflies on it that she already had in her dresser. It wasn't fancy but she loved it! She ran around the yard saying "flapping wings, flapping wings!" We actually had flurries earlier in the week and I was a little concerned it would be cold Halloween evening. But it turned out to be a beautiful day. We even went to the park that morning! Since it was so nice out, we set up our camp chairs on the driveway and passed out candy while enjoying our neighbors and the pleasant fall night.

Going "Trick or Treating" with daddy while mommy passed out candy

My little butterfly

Sarai walked all the way down our side of the street by herself and carried her own bucket but daddy had to carry the tired butterfly back home.

Examining all the goodies :-)