Slidell (Road Trip #9) !!!

This weekend was awesome!!! We went to Slidell & New Orleans :) I'll write about New Orleans later, but right now, I'm writing about our awesome trip to Slidell. We went to grad school in New Orleans and lived there for the first year, but then moved to Slidell after that for the next couple of years as we finished school. We love our church family out there!!!

First stop were our old jobs! First we went to my old job at Crossgates Athletic Club - they have re-modeled in the last 3 years, so it was cool to see all of the changes and see some fun people I used to work with. Next, we went to the Wal-Mart Pharmacy where Adam used to work. It was really great getting to see everyone there. It rocked!

On Friday night a bunch of people from our church (Northshore) all got together and we ate and hung out :) It rocked! Here is my friend Alicia. She lived in Slidell pre-Katrina and now lives in Texas, but drove in with her awesome kids for the weekend :) It was great seeing them :) This was way past Aashini's bedtime - can you tell by her look in this picture! haha! She's not happy!
Here is her youngest daughter, Emma, with Aashini. They're about a month apart in age :)

In the pic below is Aashini with Emma and Isabella (my awesome friend Misty 's daughter. They came in town for the party too!!! It was awesome seeing them!!!)

Aashini got lots of attention and loved it :) These are Bronie, Alicia & Misty 's kids (and my buddies :)). It was so fun!

More fun friends!

Here we are with our friend Travis :)

Here's my buddy Michelle! She lives in Baton Rouge and came in town too!!! How cool :)

It was a really amazing weekend! It was sooo good to see so many awesome people!! The city has definitely changed a lot since Hurrican Katrina, but our friends are just as cool as ever! We got to go to our awesome church in Slidell - Northshore Church!! We started going there at the beginning of it's church planting days and we really got to grow with them while we were there and it was awesome! The last time we were there was 3 weeks before Hurricane Katrina (and 2 weeks before we moved to South Asia). The church building was destroyed and since then they have met in a lot of different places -- including Crazy Carl's Fireworks! (although they had to get out around the 4th of July) :) Right now they're meeting in Slidell Athletic Club. They just added a 3rd service to accommodate the people :) It's so cool to see the church really being the people and not having anything to do with the building.

This is a really bad picture (below) - but you can see everyone helping to move out all the chairs and things after the last service was over.

During the praise & worship time, we sang the song by Christ Tomlin that says:

"Greater things are yet to come

and greater things are still to be done in this city"

It was so cool to see everyone singing this with such hope. Katrina caused so many bad things to happen in this area, but it was amazing to see everyone so hopeful and excited to see what is going to happen next. Greater things are yet to come!!!!

Thanks guys for making it such an awesome weekend! We love you guys!