Jessica's Baptism

Recently I found myself telling one of my friends that I didn't have anything new to share on my blog in response to her saying that I had not updated it recently. I was very wrong!

In October I had the honor of being present when my first small group member, Jessica Norman, was baptized at Forest Pointe. Little did she know that I would secretly invite all of our group!

Jessica has been such an example to me of the reason we have small groups at FPC. When Jessica started attending our group her marriage was struggling, new to FPC (driving nearly an hour from Hickory each weekend!), and not connected at FPC. Now her marriage is much stronger and she is expecting her first baby in April. After our group volunteered one Sunday she became a weekly leader in our Kidzpointe area. This semester I asked if she would consider helping me lead our group some weeks and she took that on as she nicely told me that I had "a way of pushing her out of her comfort zone". Then this fall she told me she was scheduled to be baptized by submersion at the largest baptismal in Gaston County (the YMCA Pool!) This brought tears to my eyes because you see this is like a wedding ring, it shows publicly that you have chosen to accept Christ and plan to follow Him. This day was a special day for Jessica but also for her leader as well. I couldn't think of a better time than Christmas to share this story because you see the gift of Christ is a free one for us to accept, but that cost our God tremendously.