Easter!

Matthew 28

The Resurrection

¹After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

²There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

⁵The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."

⁸So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

We serve a risen Savior! He has blessed us with his love, mercy, grace, and this adorable little man!

God is so good!

Way WAY Too Close!

I officially survived the scariest moment of my life! Here is the whole terrifying story.

We spent the morning running errands so we never listened to the weather reports coming in. We left WalMart and Gus decided that he needed to go out to the new church property to check on something. It is only about 1.5 miles from our house so headed down Hwy 96. As we approach the property I see a cloud that looks pretty dark and is really low to the ground. It is partially hidden behind a huge hill so I can't see the whole thing. I say to Gus, "That cloud looks really low. You should hurry up so we can get home. I don't like the way that looks." We get to the property and Gus spends about 4-5 minutes moving some things around. He jumps back in the car and we head home. As we get back on Hwy 96 to head home Gus looks in the rear view mirror and I see a funny look come over his face. He tells me, "Don't look back there". Of course I look back and then I see it. A swirling, twisting tornado is LITERALLY less than a mile behind us! I begin to panic and yell for him to hurry and get us home. We had to make a quick decision to pull over or keep going and get home. Gus decided to just go home since we were close and honestly I just wanted to get Elias inside. The whole way he kept checking behind us and telling me, "DON'T look back!" I actually had no desire whatsoever to look what was coming towards us, so I did not look. (He later told me it actually got even closer to us.) We made it home and rushed into our master bathroom (it has no windows or exterior walls) with our pillows and blankets (just in case we needed to cover our heads). Within minutes the power went out. We stayed there about 30 minutes until we were sure it had passed us. Thankfully our neighborhood did not get any damage. However only about 1 mile away houses were completely destroyed. Had the twister changed its course only SLIGHTLY we would have been directly in its path. Sadly over 100 houses were damaged in Murfreesboro today and many were people injured. It has been an incredibly terrifying day, but we are so thankful to all be safe. Gus has been at the church all afternoon helping to coordinate relief efforts and will be doing the same tomorrow. A neighborhood very near the church was completely wiped out. That is also where the 2 fatalities occurred.
I cannot believe that we came face to face with a tornado today!

Baby update!

I FINALLY had my first appointment today with my OB. It went even better than I ever expected. After checking me out she told me that I was either farther along than I thought or there was more than 1 baby in there! That meant that she got me in for an unexpected ultrasound. Thankfully the ultrasound tech quickly let me know that there was only 1 sweet baby in there. Whew! That was a huge relief! Of course the best news of all is that according to all they can see and measure Baby Garcia is perfect. However, I am a little farther along than previously thought. She moved my due date from Oct 10 to Sept 29. That means I just lost 1.5 weeks of my pregnancy and am already in the 2nd trimester. We also got to try to peek at the gender. The tech thinks it is a BOY! We did not get a great shot of those parts, but she thinks she saw something. We will go back in 4 weeks to confirm with another ultrasound. I love the thought of having another boy! I can't wait to get out all of Elias' old clothes and get them ready for his little brother. What an exciting day!