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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

oh me? I live in Charleston.


Today, the Influence Network is hosting a link up for network members to share where all they live. This is perfect little prompt for me since where I live (read: just moved) is about all that's on my mind. 

We officially moved to Charleston, SC a week ago. Our main purpose in moving is to plant a church - Gospel Community Church - in the downtown area. You might be like "oh duh..." about this, but I'm realizing a lot of my blog readers haven't connected all the dots - which I totally understand because, for real, there are a lot of dots. 

Here are the highlights of the story of us moving to Charleston. 
- Nick and I grew up in Charlotte, NC. 
- My senior year of highschool, my family moved to Mt. Pleasant, SC (a huge suburb/city outside of Charleston). I stayed in Charlotte to finish highschoool. 
- Nick and I went to college in Columbia, SC and fell in love with Charleston/Mt. Pleasant and visited a lot.
- In 2005, after we got married, we moved with a huge group of people from Mt. Pleasant to start a church in Charlotte, NC (where we grew up). 
- Then we moved to Seattle where God called Nick to start a church (Gospel Community). 
- Then we decided to move to Boston to plant that church, but we never made it because of family complications (read: I struggled severely with depression and was a hot mess). 
- We moved back to Columbia, SC for a building + repairing season. 
- A pastor in Indiana wanted to buy "gospelcommunity.com" from us, we didn't want to sell it, we became friends with the pastor and decided to combine our churches. in 2012, we moved to Indiana. 
- After a year and a half of solidifying the mission and vision of Gospel Community, we decided to plant the next on in downtown Charleston. 
- We moved here last week. 

So we're here. Right now, realistically, "planting the church" looks like unpacking our home and hosting guests. There are over 30 people (including kids) praying about moving here to help plant the church and we've been hosting some of them. We are honestly so very excited about what the Lord is going to do and so very overwhelmed by the task at hand. Our neighborhood is perfect and it's been such a blessing to begin to meet the people living around us, and I can't say what a breath of fresh air it's been to have family and other community in the same city. Since having kids, I've never lived in the same city as my mom and sister. It's blowing my mind that they can babysit my kids or I can meet them for coffee. 

It hasn't totally hit that we live here yet, but when I start to wrap my brain around it -- I'm overwhelmed beyond overwhelmed. I love this place so much. The beach. The friendly people. The culture. Our neighborhood is this super interesting mix of young middle class families and older lower income families as well. There are shacks right next door to beautifully newly remodeled homes. On my morning run, I pass million dollar Charleston style plantation homes and I also run through a housing project. And it's our job, our honor, to get to share Jesus with all of them.

So that's where I'm at. 
Here, in the midst of the boxes in Charleston. 
Trying to figure out life here and so grateful. 
Want to hear more about our church? Check out my husband's blog

I'm so pumped to check out the blog and see where the rest of y'all are from!

So many things to catch up/blog about and MamaShred is one of those! I need to give a big update but first I wanted to share that we are opening spots for Round 2! Don't miss out, the spots have been going super quick! 

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