Celebration Northeast (Newfrontiers Family Weekend)

We're back--and thanks to all of you who prayed for us to have a safe trip. It was safe and uneventful apart from some traffic and rain. We didn't arrive until about midnight on Friday night and didn't have a key to our room so a few friendly people lent us a room, a mattress, bedding ect,... between them and we settled in around 1:30 a.m. Eva, our 5 year old daughter, thought this was quite an adventure but was not so easy to wake up the next morning for breakfast.

We ate in the cafeteria, dropped Eva off for her children's program and headed off to our first session, which was really the second session. Worship was great, much more alive than I've been used to of late. Then Terry preached from John 14 on the presence of Jesus with us through his Holy Spirit. It was very very good. Aaron leaned over to me at one point and whispered, "I think we're in the right place". And that would pretty well describe the overall tone of the weekend.

We headed over for lunch and spent the afternoon with our good friends Chris and Rachel Mclean. I say good friends meaning we had met Chris once before and just met his wife and 3 of his daughters this weekend for the first time. But it feels like they're family already, maybe because they have such a heart for Canada too. We also got to spend a bit of time (not nearly enough!) with Joe and Angela (from Fredericton) and Trevor and met some other great people too.

I have to admit I had a brief emotional break-down late Saturday night after we got back to our room. The Saturday night session was excellent in every way but I left disappointed not to hear any major prophetic words (particularly I wanted to hear Terry prophecy) and there was no ministry time. Frankly, I was a little frustrated with God because I wanted so much more and didn't get it. My husband was not exactly telling me anything I wanted to hear, but God spoke to me within just a few minutes and suddenly I was at peace and just sure of his love and I was fine. He reassured me that it's ok to want to experience his presence, that he promised it and he will do it. In fact, he did do it pretty much immediately after I got upset, showing me grace as usual in spite of my childish attitude of 'give it to me now!'

The next morning, the last session, we helped out with the 4-6 year olds and had a surprisingly great time. We were disappointed to find out that we missed Terry
speaking again, but God knows what he's doing. We met some more great people during this time and Eva made some good friends.

All in all, we had a great time. I'll be posting more specifically about a couple of sermons and other things God did in the services (healings...) but I wanted to give a quick overview for all of you people who just can't stand the suspense any longer.