God works in mysterious ways...

Charlie is almost 3!  It's hard to believe, but he, at least, is more than ready...Jason and I on the other hand aren't so sure.

Unable to prevent the inevitable, though, we have realized that it's time to start preparing him for some changes.  The first of which will be the transition from the nursery to Sunday school at church.  We know Charlie is ready for the coloring sheets and fun lessons...but we're not so sure about the 30 or so minutes in actual "church" before they release the kids to Sunday school.  We tried once a couple months ago, but gave up after about 10 minutes, then Charlie notified us that he doesn't want to try again.

You see, while he isn't exactly "bad," we haven't done a good job of teaching Charlie to sit still, be quiet, etc...and we both absolutely hate having the disruptive kid, so it's time to practice.

Our plan was to gradually increase the amount of time he was in there with us over the next few weeks.  Yesterday was day one -- and absolutely everything went our way!

First off, Charlie's beloved Jennifer was playing the piano.  Then her dad, our pastor Darien, just so happened to incorporate Charlie's memory verse for this week, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and all your soul and all your mind," (Matthew 22:37) in the opening prayer, before leading us all in the Lord's Prayer, the first verse of which was Charlie's memory verse over Christmas.

Next, Jennifer's sister, Samantha, who also works in the nursery and is our favorite Chick-Fil-A employee, stood up to read a passage from the Bible.  And if that weren't enough, for the first time since we've been attending GCF, one of the opening songs was Jesus Loves Me, which the three of us sing every night before bed.

Finally, Mr. Terry, who kindly allows Charlie to play in the trailer, get in his way and pepper him with a barrage of questions every Sunday afternoon during tear-down, stood up to speak to Charlie's delight, then released the kids to Sunday school.

I can't imagine a more tailor-made introduction to "big church" for our little man.  Then to top it all off, Charlie arrived in the nursery just in time for snacks.  Maybe "mysterious" ways was a misnomer, God works in perfect ways...