Higher Grounds Ministries

Back in September, our Impact Ministries team at church combined efforts with another local ministry, Higher Grounds, and came together for two nights for a big youth rally hosted at our church. Our pastor Chad Nall spoke on Friday night, and Scott McInnis from Red Branch Baptist spoke on Saturday night. It was AWESOME!

 Got my "Staff" shirt from Higher Grounds - loving it!

Our pastor and his wife, hard at work as usual!

Dark shot of me and Stephen - a rare couples picture!

 Some of our beautiful youth members from church!

 Prescilla and Hannah... I gave Prescilla my camera and she ran with it!!

 Prescilla and Morgan

 Prescilla and Glennette

Prescilla and Joni

 Prescilla and Rebecca

Keith

 These next pictures were taken by my friend Jackie at church (I stole them from Facebook!!)

Stephen and Chrissy

 Allie, Meagan and Jesse at registration

 Michelle, Prescilla and myself

 Worship!

Jim and Jackie, the brains behind Higher Grounds

 Tommy and Hunter - not sure who is entertaining who!

 Pastor Chad and Stephen

 Donnie Gillis, pastor at Fairview, and Jim Babb

Absolutely amazing time - I have a skit from one night that I want to post on here soon, I just have to have the extra time! Thank you to all volunteers and the hard work everyone has put in to these youth nights.

October 27, this Saturday, is the next one. My awesome hubby is actually speaking at this one and I hear him speak quite frequently at church - he's good. :)  I also had the opportunity to work very closely with our pastor to pick out the worship music so I am really excited about that. Can't wait for this event! Spread the word!

Tractor Pull 2011

We spent Saturday at the Tractor Pull in Carthage. I had never been to a tractor pull, nor did I have any clue what it entailed. But Stephen had been a couple of years ago, and we had an "in" because his dad does the landscaping for this event! Even though it was a bit windy we wanted to chance it for the opportunity to have an outing with the kids, not to mention Grandpa Talbert, Lauren, Scott and Kaleb were all there too! We started off our day with some yummy bagged lunches. Hunter chowed down an entire BBQ sandwich! That's my boy!

Plenty of space to run around!

Not sure if you can see, this is a small train that rode all over the huge area out here. We didn't stand in line for it but maybe next year!

Tons of old cars were being displayed!

Including this one! 105 years old - you could ride in it for any amount donated to Multiple Sclerosis research! Let me tell you, this was a very cool car!!

A model railway set up near the tractors - the train actually ran and the model is of our surrounding counties! So cool! They even had the Harnett County Fair set up, ferris wheel and all! They also had a model train set up for sale and had a notice saying they would custom build for you. How cool is that!?

The Confederates took over part of the fields. They even had cornbread and sausage cooked for you to taste! They had a fire burning, tons of historical weaponry and "camping" supplies laid out for you to look at. So interesting! They were so willing to sit around and chat with us!

Biggest wheel ever?

Now allow me to get to the good stuff!! Tractors were lined up all over where the strip was.

Some were very modern and so cool.

Stephen said he heard people say there were tractors there that ranged from $2,000 to $50,000. And the ages of the drivers we saw were anywhere from 18 to in their 70's. And the coolest thing is they weren't even competing for money. They just do it for the love of it - and their trophy!

Mommy's happy little boy! He loved crawling around making new friends! He crawled right up to the man sitting near us and pulled right up on him. Fortunately the man kindly scooped him up in his lap and held him for a couple of tractor pulls! I'm so thankful for strangers who are kind to my attention-starved children!

Uh-oh... Daddy's sleepy little boy! A few hours after we got there Hunter passed out from exhaustion! Probably from all that crawling around!

Just in case you are like me and don't know anything about tractor pulling, these two videos should give you a good idea. They won't rumble your speakers like it did our eardrums but you'll still give you the gist of the event! It reminded me some of monster trucks, which we also love!

The first video (each are not long at all) will show you a larger, bulkier, slower type of tractor. The second video is much faster and you can see how it really tears up the ground - literally! The second kind of tractor is the kind that they told us to make sure to cover our children's ears - it was certainly ear-splitting, and with no barriers between us and the track we were just about 10-15 feet from the actual tractors.