The last of my Michigan trip

It’s time to finish up the pictures and posts about my trip to Michigan. I’ve been home for a week and a half and it’s time! I didn’t take as many pictures during the days of training…we were just a little busy! But there’s a few…

Our condo at Gull Lake Conference Center. Right on the lake. So beautiful. Each floor had a kitchen and living room area, plus about 4 or 5 bedrooms, each with a bathroom. If not for the lack of sleep and the insane amount of  information to take in, it would have been a “retreat!”

The walk up to the entrance to the Tabernacle. So pretty.

Such girly balloons we GEMS have!

These are the women who introduced the amazing Faith Girlz events that are going to be happening around the country in 2010-2011, as a cooperative effort from ZonderKids and GEMS. I am sooooo excited! I mean, it was pretty exciting when Logos partnered up with Zondervan, but now GEMS? Pretty soon, I bet Logos and GEMS will find reason to partner up and then my ministry world will collide with Ed’s work world and that’ll be pretty crazy!

We “assembled” these cookbooks for the Zambian GEMS Counselors. We all had to contribute recipes and then somehow, magically, these little packets appeared on our tables. (Actually, I know how. Those awesome guys working in the basement of the Service Center printed them off). We had to put the brads in to hook them together. I thought, huh, that’s it? That’s not a real active part of this service project. But no, that wasn’t it. We had the opportunity to write a note in the cookbook to the counselor in Zambia who would be receiving this book! Such a blessing to share the ministry and love of God with these women halfway around the world. And there’s a team in Zambia RIGHT NOW, so they could be reading them RIGHT NOW. God knows. God knows. Wow.

Okay, this here made me laugh. How do you remove the wings of a termite, anyway?

The gang, learning from Jan, Exec. Dir. of GEMS girls clubs. My other pictures of Jan didn’t turn out, unfortunately. :( Watch out, though! I’ll get one at conference in July! The funniest thing Jan taught us about presenting our own fall workshops is to “avoid looking dead.” Maybe we were all falling asleep on her by that point and she wanted to get our attention. LOL!

The gang on the other side of the room.

And that’s it. Now I will have to dig out the camera and see what else is on there that’s non-GEMS related to blog about.

FYI: I’m starting two new blogs. One is for our local GEMS club and it’s bethelgems.blogspot.com and the other is for Area 3 (Washington state, but also Idaho, Nevada and Oregon, which is actually Area 4, but they only have one club, so they’re invited to Area 3) and it’s actsarea3.blogspot.com. Any future GEMS postings will probably end up on one of those sites. These blogs are still under construction. But I hope to have them current within the next few weeks.