Women of Joy Conference

Hello y'all!!  It's been forever since I updated my blog and what a busy couple of weeks I have had!
Last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Women of Joy conference in Branson, Missouri.  It was a wonderful time with my precious girlfriends from church but it also was a very very sad time.  My grandma had passed away the night before I left for my trip and when I was halfway to Branson, I received a unexpected phone call from my mother saying the funeral was going to be in 2 days.  I was devastated.  I thought her funeral was going to be at least in the week ahead, not in 3 days after her passing!  But because of some family members making some plane reservations ahead of her passing, they requested that the funeral be as soon as possible. 
Oh my, that made for an extremely emotional and very very sad beginning of what I thought was going to be a fun weekend.  But I didn't see how I could get back home, (although my friends did graciously tell me they would drive me home but that would have made their trip 4 hours longer and I couldn't do that to them!), pack my family up in a couple hours and leave for a 15 hour trip.  I was heartbroken to miss my precious grandmother's funeral.  Thankfully, I had talked to her just a few hours before she passed away and the two days before that I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me.  Also, she mentioned my name that afternoon before she passed away so I just tucked that in my heart and that got me through the weekend.  Oh she was so precious to me but I am soooo thankful I will see her again in heaven!!
So, for this post, I thought I would share a few memories that were created in Branson and I will have a post about my precious dear grandmother in a few days.
After a long drive, we arrived at our hotel, unpacked and were welcomed by our Women's Ministry.  Then we got back in the van and drove to the convention center for the conference.

 This was Lisa, Amanda and Debbie as we were taking a shortcut through the rocks to get to the conference!  Not an easy feat in our flip flops!

Debbie, Amanda, Lisa and Amy

We were waiting for the conference to start!  Charles Billingsly was going to lead the worship

time and Sheri Rose Shepherd was going to be the speaker.

That night the Women's Ministry had planned games for us all to play!

But my group of 5 missed most of the games because we went to Wendy's for

a late night burger run and we got lost on our way back!

  Here is Charles Billingsly leading worship saturday morning!

Liz Curtis Higgs was the speaker for the morning. 

She was AMAZING.  I needed to laugh after being soooo sad about missing my grandma and

her funeral and she was soooo funny!!  She is one amazing speaker!

Lisa and Debbie at Ruby Tuesdays for lunch

Amy and I at Ruby Tuesdays for lunch

We went out for Mexican for dinner and this Indian welcomed us in the lobby.

I thought he looked like he needed to loosen up a bit!  hee hee

And this was our waitress, Jamie.  She was a hoot!!!!

It was quite a quaint little place with delicious food!!

After dinner, we went back for the Casting Crowns concert.

Sorry for the bad pic, we were too far away to get a really good one.

Sunday morning we packed up, ate breakfast and went back for the final speaker-

Lisa Harper.  She is such a wonderful Bible teacher and I really enjoyed her!

We just finished up lunch and are getting ready for our drive home!

It was a emotion filled weekend with lots of fun thrown in there!

Thank you to our Women's Ministry for planning a wonderful weekend, thank

you to Amy for being our driver the whole weekend and a special thanks

to my wonderful husband who made it possible for me to go!