Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Wedding Pictures: The Guys

What a sharp-looking group of guys!

Of course, boys will have some fun!

John and Suri!

John and Ben - a good friend from college.


John and Odell - good friend from South Carolina. The fifth time John and I spent time together, we went to Odell's wedding in SC so it was special to have Odell and his family here for our wedding.
John and his brother Suri, his best man!

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Wedding Pictures: The Girls

Nicely framed by the candles!

Miriam and the girls #1

Miriam and the girls #2

Miriam and the girls #3

John and all the girls!

All of us girls!

Lydia, my sister and maid-of-honor. She's two days less than five years younger than I. When I was a child, I always wished I had a twin - I guess Lydia was my twin five years later as several people have mistaken us for twins! She is in her junior year at Toccoa Falls College.

My bridesmaid Tamra, one of my best friends. We met in Calculus and Chemistry class in college and then became room-mates and suite-mates for several years. She majored in Pre-med so we had only a few classes together, but we were able to spend a lot of our "free time" and meals sharing a lot of fun. Now she's a doctor (married to another doctor!) and has two precious little boys!
My bridesmaid Ivory, another one of my best friends. We were two of the three female engineering majors in our graduating class at PCC. Unfortunately the third girl (Julie) wasn't able to come to my wedding. We got to have almost every class together which made college a lot of fun. It's great to have wonderful friends with you who share your struggles and made college work a lot more fun.
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Wedding Pictures: The Wedding Party


We had a great looking group (if I do say so myself!). My sister Anna made all the bridesmaid and flower girls dresses as well as adding sleeves to my dress. She did an absolutely wonderful job!


Wonderful background - all the decorating was done by Natalie and Susie - two wonderful ladies from my church!



Keep Smiling!

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Monday, September 29, 2008

Wedding Pictures: John and Miriam


Admiring my flowers :)


Watching for John!

What a long train!


Miriam and John
These pictures were some of the first ones we took.

I like this picture - it seems to illustrate the start of our life journey together (wasn't that romantic!)

The pictures outside behind the church turned out really nice.


Thanks to Trisha for arranging our poses and all the people.


This is one of my favorites! Thank you Kevin and Karen for taken our pictures!


It was a beautiful day!

The new deck was perfect for pictures.

Family Wedding Pictures Part 2

Our Parents

Many relatives from John's mother's side came to celebrate the day with us!


Many of my mom's relatives were able to come! They came from Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. It was great to have so many come!


My mom and her sisters.


My cousin Sarah represented relatives on my dad's side. It was so nice to have Sarah share this even with us!
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The Heavenly Man - God is at Work in China

I just finished reading The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun It is indeed a remarkable story of a living Christian Pastor and his life of persecution and witness in China. This story describes the incredible persecution that Brother Yun and many others in China still suffer because of their belief in the Jesus Christ of the Bible. It details the growth of the home churches in China and their impact on the lives of those who come to Christ.

I was amazed to read of the many miracles that Jesus did to show his power in Brother Yun's life. Just because we here in America don't see miracles doesn't mean that they are not occurring around the world. Jesus is the same (Heb 13:8) and is all powerful. He delights to answer prayer and through that answer to bring glory to himself.

I was also convicted to read how Brother Yun describes his experience in prison and how we should pray for persecuted Christians.

"The first time I went to prison I struggled, wondering why God had allowed it. Slowly I began to understand he had a deeper purpose for me than just working for him. He wanted to know me, and I to know him, deeply and intimately. He knew the best way to get my attention for a while was to give me rest behind bars.

Whenever I hear a house church Christian has been imprisoned for Christ in China I don't advise people to pray for his or her release unless the Lord clearly reveals we should pray this way. . . .

There is always a purpose behind why God allows his children to go to prison. Perhaps it's so they can witness to the other prisoners, or perhaps God wants to develop more character in their lives. But if we use our own efforts to get them out of prison earlier than God intended we can thwart his plans, and the believers may come out not as fully formed as God wanted them to be.

I'm often asked about the rights of pastors in China. A pastor has no rights, except the rights of a slave! Everyone in this world is a slave. They're either slaves to sin, or slaves of Christ. Our "rights" are in the hands of Jesus. We must fall on our knees in complete dependence on him...

The World can do nothing to a Christian who has no fear of man."

This book is very interesting and well worth the read. Get The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun today and enjoy!

Family Wedding Pictures Part 1

John and I were so thankful to have our families at our wedding!

John and I with our parents and siblings.

With parents, siblings and niblings (4 nieces and 4 nephews)


John's Family


Miriam's Family #1



Miriam's Family #2

Miriam's Family #3

Somehow taking a picture of 20 people and having everyone look perfect is quite difficult. I couldn't decide which of these three family pictures was best. What do you think?

Friday, September 26, 2008

Wedding Pictures Part 1 - Bridal Pictures at Millbrook Park

This is the first of many posts that will include wedding pictures. For those of you who are already tired of pictures of our wedding and honeymoon, I'm sure I'll run out sometime soon and move on to different posts :)

But as I've never had wedding pictures to post before, I want to post them on here in order to share my favorite pictures with each of you.

On the Tuesday before the wedding, I went to Montgomery where Tammy practiced doing my makeup. I don't typically wear any makeup and was very thankful that Tammy so graciously volunteered to do my makeup. She did a great job and put on what seemed to me to be the perfect amount without doing too much!

I met my friend Karen (who was also one of our wedding photographers!) at the park in Millbrook, Alabama in order to take bridal pictures. I arrived a little before Karen did and at first felt incredibly strange and conspicuous sitting in my car at the park. I don't like to be "out of place" and certainly did at that point in time as I watch people walking on the 1/4 mile trail near my car. Soon I decided that I would simply have fun with this and got over my self-consciousness - not everyone can go to a park in a wedding dress!


When Karen arrived, we quickly got to work and took some awesome pictures!


Karen had great ideas for many different poses! Millbrook Park seems to be a perfect place to take these kind of posed pictures.


We realized only after looking over the pictures after returning home that I had forgotten to take off my watch :) Oh well, it definitely looks more like me to have a watch. (By the way, I haven't seen my watch since my wedding. I wonder if I've lost it for good?)

Overall it was a fun time and I think Karen took some awesome pictures! They look very professional to me. When I got one printed at Walmart, they asked for a copyright! I guess the lady there finally believed me that a friend had taken it with her awesome camera.

Thanks Karen for taking such awesome pictures!