End of our 3rd year

A Barbie cake $10A few more snacks $20

The group of women at Club Mom and Girlfriends $$PRICELESS$$

We took our flowers off the wall tonight...the flowers that we worked on the first week of Club Mom and Girlfriends! We each had 6 petals and on each petal, we wrote down what we wanted to work on throughout the year. The 6 petals were: YOURSELF, EXTENDED FAMILY, CHILDREN, YOUR MARRIAGE, YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST, and FRIENDSHIPS.

Some of us looked back on what we wrote and were surprised that we actually did work on what we had written down. Others saw that they still needed to work on these petals of our lives. We learned a lot this year, we laughed, we cried and most of all, we grew closer in our relationship to our Lord and Savior and to each other.

I thank God for each and every woman who stepped foot in the door of Club Mom and Girlfriends and I pray we touched their life in a way they will never forget.

We look forward to seeing you all back next year!

Friendships of Women

Tonight our speaker was Heather Vanderlaan! She gave a great talk on how important friendships are.

Friends can be helpers, protectors, and an emotional support. Heather told us it's normal to have friends that are annual friends and friends that are perrenial friends. Annual friends are ones that are in your life for a season and you may help them or they may help you and then they are gone from your life and that's O.K. Perrenial friends are friends that will always be there for you. You may not see them everyday but you know they will always be there for you when you need them.


Heather told us "Relationships are more important then accomplishments."

She told us the story in Mark 4 about the paralytic man whose friends brought him to Jesus and when they saw the crowd and saw that there was no way to get through the crowd, they went through the roof instead! What incredible friend and what incredible faith they had, so much faith that Jesus told the man that his sins were forgiven and he was healed because of the faith of his friends.

From this story, we learned the we should persue friends like the paralytic man's friends persued him. We learned that we should serve one another, being the hands and feet of Jesus-like the man's friends were his hands and feet that got him to Jesus. We learned that we should believe for each other, Jesus healed the man because of the faith of his friends.

Thank you Heather for reminding us that we need to make friendships a priority.

See you next week for our end of the year celebration.

Nurturing Your Friendships-a little late

I'm so sorry, I forgot to blog last weeks lesson so here it is a week late!

Pastor Rich talked to us about Nurturing Your Friendships and told us that strong friendships require nurturing and protection.

He said that building friendships can be just as complicated as maintaining friendships. A friendship starts with self-disclosure, then requires taking risks, opening doors and taking down walls. It requires active listening and time.

For a friendship to remain strong and healthy we need to do some work! Friendships are often sacraficed to the business of life-job and family. But friendships can help you get through life by being a support system, an escape from stress and an avenue to express a part of you that you may not be able to express in other avenues of life.

He asked us to take a friendship test:
1) Make a quick list of all your "good friends"
2) Now, write the date when you last communicated with them in any way
3) When was the last time you tried to find out about the struggles in their life?
4) What is the ratio of your telling them your problems and your asking them about theirs

It was good to review how much we need our friends and how much they need us! I found a study that stated that when women are able to connect with women on various emotional levels it can assist in lowering blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol. So, what that says to me is that you should go have coffee, dinner, desserts or just water with your friends, explaining that it's all for our health!

So, enjoy your friends and spend time with them!