Of a Knight and Fair Maidens 3: December 2011

Thursday, December 29, 2011

NCFIC Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church Part 2!

Friday Morning...

Doug Philips

'How Father's Qualify Suitors and Receive Daughters'

“There are many things you are going to do with your life, but the single most precious gift you will ever give away is your daughter.”

Lilya

2,200 people attended the conference this year!

Kevin Swanson

'Courtship Catastrophe Mitigation'

Let me tell you this: if we’re going to make it through some of these difficult challenges ahead, it has to be because there are men who are willing to lay their lives down for the kingdom of God.”

~Kevin Swanson

Back for the evenings main session...

It was so cold, we were really glad the nice warm shuttle bus came by at just the right moment!

Paul Washer

'The Center of all Things; The Gospel'

“When we say that Christ died for God and when we say that Christ died for His own glory, that does not extinguish His real love for His redeemed. This is amazing! He loved His people! And He loved them when they were vile and hated Him. He loved them when His holiness would not even allow him to look upon them. He loved them! He really, really loves you. This is amazing. This is not some God coldly manipulating things in order to show how great He is. This is not God just coldly wanting to show something to creation about who He truly is. He loves you! This is the thing that is the most amazing to me. He loves me.”

Friday night singing hymns around the piano

Praise is the rehearsal of our eternal song. By grace we learn to sing, and in glory we continue to sing. What will some of you do when you get to heaven, if you go on grumbling all the way? Do not hope to get to heaven in that style. But now begin to bless the name of the Lord.

~C.H. Spurgeon

Alina and Malena

While some wisely cosied themselves up and fell asleep others...

Not so much...
HAHAHAHAAAAaaa!

This is what happens when you have 10 girls in the room and someone takes too long
in the shower at 1am...

Saturday...

I won't mention any names, but some people stayed up VERY late and had to take a nap...so they went to our room and somehow these pictures mysteriously appeared on our camera ;)

Micaiah

Matthew

Sunday...

Abigail

Stephanie made her flower :)

Isn't she just a doll!?!

One of our favorite and most adorable families we know :)

Lance, Hannah and Abigail

After the conference ended on Saturday, the Arnette's, Fournier's, Kaiser's, Payne's, Eckersons, (and if I forgot someone I'm really sorry) all gathered in our room for a smorgasbord dinner, had some great conversations about raising boys. Mom was asking Mrs. Arnette an experienced veteran in the area, some questions which led to a great and beneficial conversation! The interns came later and though they were only able to stay for a short time we enjoyed having them and getting to meet Nic and Joel!

Time for some kiddos to go to bed...

while the adults gathered to watch IndoctriNation. We highly recommend this documentary on "public schools and the decline of Christianity in America" . Click on this link to purchase it for yourself or watch the trailer:

http://affiliates.visionforum.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=209&url=http://www.visionforum.com/browse/product/indoctrination-public-schools-and-the-decline/?search=IndoctriNation&sortby=0

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

NCFIC Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church Part 1!

Our dear faithful followers,

we are very sorry for such a long delay in our posting, but after fixing a problem with blogger and a few issues with our computers we are finally able to post again.

Enjoy following us to the NCFIC's Marriage conference!
Our most sincere apologies for the lack of pictures in this post, I wish we had taken more pictures of so many people but our camera's auto focus broke so I was only able to snap a few pictures here and there, hope you enjoy the pictures we did take though! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were very blessed this year to be able to attend the National Center for Family Integrated Church's third annual conference, Gospel Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church!

We are so thankful that the Lord opened the doors for us to come this year,

and for our church family who the Lord used as a means of allowing us to come.

And for the wonderful Kaiser family, for letting us follow you all the way to North Carolina and being so patient with us and our ever-falling muffler.

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ..."
Philippians 1:3-6

The road trip begins!

Taking a break from the driving somewhere in Virginia and letting the kids get rid of some of all that energy that's been building up all day in the van!

Over the bridge and through the woods....

Collecting leaves

We were so glad to see so much beautiful color on the trees, since around here they seemed to go straight from green to brown this year.

"The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend"

We stopped at Chick-Fil-A for dinner :)

Smile girls!

Tabitha's turn

Mom, Grandma, and Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser

Next Morning...

During lunch time we were surprised by our fun and awesome friends!
The mundane activity of talking becomes an exciting and entertaining experience when Mom and the Denny's are involved!

♥ Shay, Katie and Amanda ♥

It was awesome to see our dear friends from Maine once again!

Shay noticed Hannah out on the porch pulling rocks out of her boots and said, "You should take a picture of that" so I did! :)

Lunch...

We had the privilege of having Melanie and the Maira's stay with us for a few nights!

Actually, we had 12 females staying in our room, which made for some great conversations and VERY late and fun nights :)

I just LOVE these brother/sister shots...

Your both so cute!
We love you guys!

Back at the conference center, we enjoyed talking with these ladies!

Mrs. Fournier, Jillian, Mom, Mrs. Miller and Beth

Look who caught a ride on the golf cart!

The weather in North Carolina was beautiful, even warm, the first two days...then it got pretty cold, but not as cold as last year.

Joel Beeke speaking on

'Learning about Marriage from our Spiritual Fathers'

“We ought to be able to say with Thomas Gataker, ‘There is no society more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual, than the society of man and wife, the main root, the main source, the main original of all other righteous societies in this world’. And yet, keeping an eye on eternity more than anything else, the Puritan’s shared Gataker’s longing that though we live together for a time as co-partners in grace here, may we reign together forever as co-heirs in glory hereafter.” ~ Dr. Joel Beeke