First EPC W.O.W. - women of the word - retreat/conference. We rented a cabin near Pidgeon Forge and had a couple of speakers come to talk to us about walking out biblical womanhood. Shannon, would have been in heaven as the decorations were all shoes. :) Learning a lot from these women as far as putting things together go.
I met up with Kimberly Bynoe, Allison Duncanson and Ruth Fowler at 6:30 AM to drive up before the rest of the women to decorate the cabin, grocery shop and cook. We decided next time we need to come up the night before... we were exhausted by the end of the day. It was all worth it, but I definitely was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. We had two very FULL cars by the time we reached the cabin - we stopped at a SAMs in Knoxville for a little shopping. We definitely were not short on food that weekend.
The boxes contained hand printed t-shirts (thanks to Ruth Fowler who makes all our t-shirts) and a piece of jewelry that was picked out for the personality of each women. The jewelry all had some sort of verse on it. Mine was perfect for me.) The bags contained a small notebook, pen and the next book we'll be studying together at our monthly Saturday brunch.
The little note tags all have different verses about walking...
They brought devotional books geared towards women... for our free time.
I bet Shannon LOVES this one. :)
Something was said that made the 1st speaker (3rd from left) that Jamila was pregnant. It just cracked these lovely ladies up. These are the elder wives (including my pastor's wife). They planned out the whole retreat. Wanted to surprise us all. It was quite lovely.
Can you see the shirt design at all? Nice thing about having it hand printed (other than I also like the look of the hand screened print) is that every woman gets to pick out the type of shirt she wants.
During the free time Tabatha and Ori and I took a drive through Smokey Mtns Park... with stops along the way. Was a nice drive with great conversation. I hopped from rock to rock to get the shot above...
Don't know why, but I just loved the twisting roots of this tree.
Self Portrait of course...
Ruth Fowler of course - or Designs - as EPC'ers have nicknamed her. Talented lady.
Speaker #2... Her awesome shoes are a photo or two below this one. She's 51.
A trivia question on the last day asked who was the youngest woman there. Alexis was sure it was me - 21... a month short of taking a decade off my life. Pretty much having a third taken off is remaining a consistent theme.
