How Cool is THAT?

After 2 months of visiting and praying, Steven and I joined a church this weekend! We decided to become members of FUMC Allen, which is about 15 minutes from our apartment and in the area we see ourselves eventually settling down. It's actually the first church we checked out! We decided to give it a shot because one of the pastors from the church I attended as a child is the Senior Pastor of this church. That was what got us in the door, but we decided to stay because everyone is so friendly and genuine. People are welcoming, encouraging, and we love looking forward to going to church on Sunday! Steven is not a Methodist (I am), but he has been so great and open to learning and accepting a different theology from what he was raised with. To comprimise, we go to the contemporary worship service, because that's the type of worship that he really connects with. I love traditional hymns, but it feels good to know that we can find a church where we can both feel comfortable. We have found another couple to visit Sunday School classes with, so that's next on the agenda - find a small group! Our church (isn't it great to be able to say that?) believes in "worship +2" which means going to worship on Sunday, finding a small group (1) , and serving the church (2). Once we find our small group, we're going to move on to finding a group to serve. I'm always drawn to children, and I feel like I could serve any age group. I'm inclined to volunteer for the Youth Group (duh!), but we'll see how it shakes out.

So, the subject line of this post is "How Cool is THAT?" and all this is building up to something really cool. We took a new members class before joining the church. It was 4 weeks long and there were about 6-7 couples who took the class with us. We all decided to join the church (yay!) and wanted to join together with the other class members who went to our service. We joined with another couple in their 70s-80s. This is the cool part. In our class, there was a lot of discussion about Baptism, especially because Steven and several other class members were raised Baptist. Right after we became members of the church, the pastor said that there was going to be a Baptism as well. I looked around to see what child was there to be baptized, and I realized that the husband of the other couple was the one being baptized! He is over 80 years old and just this Sunday was Baptized for the first time! I was amazed and so grateful. From talking to them through the course of our class, I know that God has used this church to work in their lives and has spoken to them through several sermons. It is so easy to go through life puttimg things off to the point that they disappear, but this Sunday I really felt God saying "it is never too late to receive my love and grace." How cool is THAT?!