the best weekend of my life. seriously.

i cant even type right now. im shaking. just totally excited, on a high from this weekend. i cant even describe it. i cant put it in words. just incredible. amazing. so lovely. where to start?

woke up on saturday and took a train to pisa with ashley to prepare for our flight to birmingham, uk for the jesus culture concert. we got to the airport rather early...actually like 3 hours early. but it was great because we didnt want to

risk missing our flight! while we were standing in line waiting to board, we met a guy who was one of eight on johnny deeps 150 ft yacht. he was the engineer. we talked to him for a long time about johnny and life on the boat-it was so cool hearing about his job and such. plus his brittish accent was bonus ;)

we finally got on our flight, which was 40 minutes late. we were pretty worried tha

t we would miss the train that we booked from the birmingham airport to harrogate later on that night. we prayed and prayed for our flight, by some miracle, make it on time so we wouldnt have to spend another 50 pounds to get to harrogate. our flight ended up being early-we had plenty of time in birmingham...we had so much time that we got to leave the train station to go get SUBWAY! i wish you could have seen

me running down the street to the subway-i was so excited that people were looking at me like i was crazy!

after grabbing subway, we got on our train to harrogate...it was a long train ride of about 2.5 hours. when we sat on the train, we sat across from a family of four (mom, dad, and two daughters). after listening in on their conversation for awhile, and admiring their brittish accents which are lovely, we put in our ipods and relaxed. with about 1 hour left in the train ride, i looked over at the little girls who were making braclets. i started talking to the one about how pretty her braclet was and we ended up talking for awhile before her mom and dad jumped into the conversation. they happened to be from south africa and had moved to york, uk two years prior to plant a church. they were the cutest, sweetest couple i have ever met. after a long conversation, we figured out they were also going to the Jesus Culture concert the next night! we spent the rest of the train ride talking with them, getting to know them, making braclets with the little girls (the one girl made me one :) )...by the end of the ride, the couple asked us if we wanted to stay with

them for the night and go to their church with them in the morning...sadly, we had to turn it down because we had already booked a night in harrogate. the little girls were only about 4 and 5ish, but they were ON FIRE for god. it was incredible. i cant even describe it to you. i pray that one day i have children that catch the fire like that. it was just totally cool-ashley told rachel (the oldest girl) that she wished she had her cute accent, and the little girl looked at her and said, "god made you the way you are for a reason." it was precious. my heart melted to them. when we got off the train and hugged bye, the little girls ran after u

s in the train station holding our legs because they didnt want to say bye. it was awesome.

we finally made it to harrogate around 9m and were not tired at all. we spent about 2 hours walking around the town-it was BEAUTIFUL. i fell in love...it is my favorite place on earth. i cant wait to share it one day with my husband! wooo!! the weather was gorgous too-pretty cold-i was wearing a scarf and gloves. we made it back to the hotel pretty late and we discovered we had booked a SINGLE room-so we had to cram into a twin bed. that was an experience...ashley is a bed and cover hog. haha.

the next morning we woke up and went to church where the concert was going to be that night. after arriving, we realized that Jesus Culture was leading worship that morning too! So, here we were, in a christian church, for the first time since being in america-this band that we flew a thousand miles to see was not only going to be in concert that night, but also led worship for about 100 people that morning. it was incredible. god's presence in that place was indescribable. the people of england have such a longing heart for god. the message was given by banning-a guy who travels with Jesus Culture and just gives the messages. he was so funny and really hit home with his message. i loved it. at the end of the service, banning had all the younger generation pray for the older generation (his m

essage was about aligning the generations for a revival). ashley and i began praying for an older couple-after prayer, we got to talking with them. their names were david and margret, and they were a phenomenal couple. after talking for some time, they invited us to be their guests to the church lunch (they only have it 4 times a year and one of the times was this pas

t sunday!!!). of course we went with them...only to find out that Jesus Culture was there too. so, we ate with this sweet old couple, and JESUS CULTURE! it was awesome. we talked for some time with kim walker, the lead singer of the band...she was incredible.

after lunch, linda and sarah ( a mother and daughter who we also met at lunch ) walked us to the local supermarket, ASDA. it was owned by walmart, and it was HUGE. in italy, the supermarkets are so small, so we were pretty much in heaven. it was great. we walked around for forever and stocked up on peanut butter and orbit gum. crazy story-when i was in 5th grade, i used to trade this kid in my class (chris) my snacks from lunch for these candies that his grandma, who lived in england, would send him. they were called magic stars. I FOUND MAGIC STARS in england!!! wooooooo! so of course, i stocked up on some of those too.

after the market, we walked back to the hotel to nap before going to the concert that night. at the morning service, the lady who was in charge of the concert told us that they were way more crammed than they thought so we would probably have to sit in the overflow room. we spent the afternoon praying that we would get in the main concert hall...when we got to the concert, not only did we get in the main room, we also got two seats on the front row. we were in the front row, for the most incredible worship service i have ever seen. it was LIFE CHANGING. every hand in the room was raised, ever heart open to recieve the fire that night. we kept singing over and over, "fire fall down." it was amazing-i cant even describe that night to anyone. so many things that i had been praying about for a long time were confronted...and so many thoughts and burdens were raised. it was incredible. banning gave the message again-he is great-you should google him. after the concert, the lady who was in charge of the venue gave us band tshirts too.

when we were talking to her after the concert about

a place to eat, a sweet young couple volunteered to drive us into town to get dinner. the people in this place were incredible. their kindness was beyond words-and i loved being called LOVE by everyone :) we ended up getting dinner at the rice bowl-for the second night in a row-and we joked about how we came to england to eat chinese food. but it was good.

sleep came sooner than we thought-we were exhausted from a long day. david and margret found us at the concert to give us their address and phone number-and to invite us to come stay with them another weekend before we came back to the states. seriously? could we have been any more blessed? i dont think so.

we woke up yesterday morning and spent the afternoon exploring harrogate. the town was wonderful. my favorite. i even cried when we had to leave. we found a starbucks in town, and of course enjoyed coffee on a cool day. we went shopping at TK MAXX ( yes, you heard right, not TJ, but TK MAXX). i finally found jeans that i had been searching for for a month now. they were originally 93 pounds, but i only paid 30. another blessing. we walked past a Thornton's chocolate in town, and ashley about had a heartattack because that is her last name. so of course, we took 36172537128 pictures in front of the sign. hahaa. we ended up having to leave harrogate around 4pm for a train to birmingham...we were sad about leaving.

we arrived in birmingham around 7:30pm-and it was a pretty drastic transition from the high we had been on for the past few days. the town was huge, gloomy, scary, and eery. from the second we got off the train, it was just blah. we were not excited. rather than hiring a sketchy taxi to get us to the hotel, we decided to conquir our fears and walk to the hotel. bad idea. MOM, THIS IS A WARNING-if you dont want to be worried, dont read any more.

we walked down the scariest street i have ever been on. old buildings closed down, prostitues walking around, and we even encountered a man so drunk that he was squating to number 2 on the sidewalk. it was terrifying. i think what was even more scary was the fact that you could FEEL the devils presence. it was almost as if he was trying to push us off this pedistle that we had been put on. it was crazy. we made it to our hotel and discovered why we only paid 25 pounds for the room. it was a nice hotel, but it was going under construction on the rooms, so we got the room that was not yet renivated. it was gross. so we complained to the hotel staff and they gave us a room that cost 150 pounds a night, but we didnt pay a cent more :) yay! we even had a flat screen tv. after feeling much better about our room, we went and found dinner at a greasy old diner like place. i asked the guy if they had french fries and he told me no...so i ordered a burger and "chips." turns out that in england, "chips" are fries. and they were darn good. we spent the night in the room, catching up on american tv and watching wife swap...it was great, and so relaxing.

this morning we woke up for a full day of travel again...went shopping around town for a few hours. they had the best shopping i have seen yet. there was just so much to do in the town...we got on our flight home and just got home a little bit ago...

i know this post is so long, so thanks for hanging on and reading.

so since i have been home, i have just thought about how blessed this trip was. every SINGLE event was blessed. everything. isnt that crazy how god works? i mean, seriously. every person we encountered was a true blessing of the time, but they walked out of our lives after god used them IN our lives. crazy huh? there is this new peace to my spirit that i have been praying for...i have no idea what i am doing tomorrow, or in two years, but for once i dont care! i dont care at all. when we were in worship, i got this vision of me standing in the middle of a city with everything wisking by me at a speed where it was just blurry. god was just telling me how crazy and wrapped up in life i am, that i forget that i am here for his purpose. why have i missed this these past few years? why have i forgotten that he has control and a hand in everything that i do?

i have been praying about my summer. i have nothing holding me back. the sky is the limit. and i want to follow him...i have been praying about summer project, but i dont know where yet. i have been praying about my double major, but dont have an answer yet. but yet i am reminded that he HAS my answer and my plan: psalm 16:11. go read up!

if you have spent the time reading this, spend time googling this band. please. their cd: your love never fails is the best cd...but just listen to a few songs in particular...

-your love never fails

-i exalt thee

-happy day

-beautiful

-you wont relent

and if you feel inclinded to do so, go grab their cd. its amazing. and if you like it enough, come with me in june to see them in atlanta for an east coast tour-it will change your life.

i am so thankful for this weekend. nothing can describe it. it was awesome. he is awesome.