Fastening our seatbelts

When we lived in Massachusetts, we were so connected with our church family through 15 years of fellowship at Beacon Community Church, in Natick, MA and through 1 year at Elevation Chapel, in Newton, MA.  We were so blessed to have those two communities of Christians in our lives.  We have grown so much in our faith and were able to serve and be served like nothing we've ever experienced before.  What a amazing gift! It made leaving Massachusetts really difficult, but we are confident that those friendships will last a lifetime and beyond; and that God will provide for us in Florida just as he did in Massachusetts.

 During our first couple of weeks in Florida, I said it felt like I was driving around in my car without my seatbelt fastened!  I felt so vulnerable without the support and love of our church community.  We prayed that we would find a new church community.  Within one month, we found Harborside Christian Church, in Safety Harbor, Fl.  It's a mega-church to us with almost 2,000 people who attend on Sunday!  Wow!  It took a bit of adjusting on our part to get used to so many people (we were definitely used to a small, intimate setting where everyone knew our names).  What we have quickly discovered is that the people and heart of those that attend, serve, and lead at Harborside are genuine, knowledgeable, and have a true love for Jesus and living our His Word.   We are so thankful that we have been blessed by Harborside and continue to grow daily in our faith journey. 

A couple of weeks ago, Melissa attended her first MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting at Harborside.  It was a great time to connect with other moms.  It's sure to provide some great friendships and opportunities to be involved in various service projects.

Speaking of service projects,  our family was able to volunteer our time on Saturday morning to help pack meals for Meals of Hope, a local nonprofit organization that provides food packages; which are distributed through Feeding America network of Food Banks.  Our church packaged 50,000 meals within two 2-hour shifts!  It was fun and pretty incredible to be able to provide so much to the local Tampa Bay area in such little time.

Getting ready!  Raina was deciding whether or not she would wear the hair net.

Raina was awesome at stamping the expiration date stickers on the meal bags and then passed them on to mommy for final inspection and boxing.  It was so cool to have a service project that allowed a 3 year to help!  She loved it!  And so did we!