:Check this out:

Check out our Pastor's blog from today.
Its so exciting that we are being sent from such a great church. We have been so privileged to be up under the Gospel teaching of JD each week. What a blessing!

.caged animal.

I guess since she had just been to the zoo and saw animals in the cage she thought this would be fun! The girl is so good at imaginative play! After she got finished pretending she was an animal, she put the basket on the ground and was hitting her golf balls into it...never a dull moment that is for sure.

.the before and after.

Before the hike:

After the hike:

Mercy Hill Vision Day Video

Mercy Hill Church Vision Day from Josh Sliffe on Vimeo.

:Mercy Hill Retreat part3:

Here is the group...well minus about 3 people! These are the people who have signed the Launch Team Covenant and are committed to taking the Gospel to Greensboro! There are quite a few more that we are talking with that are interested in going with us as well. We are SO BLESSED!
*HJ and Norah spent the weekend with their grandparents is why they are not in the pictures-It was HJ's first spend the night away and she did great!!*

:Mercy Hill Retreat part2:

Julianne and I trying to keep our footing because the wind was blowing something fierce on Saturday!

Dinner time! We divided into groups to prepare the meals for everyone.
"Dirty D" and Mark grilling some burgers for lunch:

Game time:

The ladies relaxing and enjoying the scenery!

This picture cracks me up! Just before this one of some of the guys we took a girl picture where we were all squeezed in close, then you move to take a picture of the guys and they act scared of each other!

:Mercy Hill Retreat:

It was AMAZING! I think we all walked away from the weekend saying it couldn't have gone any better. What a blessing! I am amazed at the team that the Lord has already put together. I feel so overwhelmed at times just thinking of all that the Lord has in store for us! It is crazy to think that 5 years ago we had someone in SC telling us that we should visit the Summit when we moved to seminary, now we have been here and are being sent out by them to take the Gospel to Greensboro. What a joy!
So we spent the weekend walking through the statement for our church, "the Gospel changes EVERYTHING." I feel like that statement has truly rocked me lately.
We had 4 sessions where Andrew taught through what these 4 statements mean for Mercy Hill Church: The Gospel saves, the Gospel sanctifies, the Gospel gathers, and the Gospel sends. It was awesome! You check out the website for more on those 4 statements as well. www.mercyhillgso.com. On Sunday morning Andrew laid out goals for the next 5 years for our church and then we prayed through each goal. It's so neat to think how apart from Christ we are nothing and can do nothing, but in Christ we have EVERYTHING that we need to do all that he has called us to do and so we pray expecting great things for Greensboro. We pray that the Lord will, even now as we prepare to go, break our hearts for the people of that city.

On Saturday we had just a day of doing whatever, except we weren't allowed to nap; Bobby declared him and Andrew the "no sleep police." The weather was gorgeous! So we all just hung around playing games, hiking, chatting, playing football(a2hour game that had all the boys walking funny on Sunday!), volleyball, and some KanJam. Here are some pictures from our time.

Here was our view from one of the porches of the house we stayed in:**More to come tomorrow!**