OUR WEEKEND + FIVE THINGS I LOVE

It’s another weekend update, and it was a fun one!

Friday:: Ben’s best friend, Austin, came to visit for the weekend and flew in on Friday evening. We spent the evening with him and Ben’s brother and family at their home having dinner and conversation and catching up.

Saturday:: We had breakfast at home and then spent the rest of the morning doing chores around the house before taking Austin out for lunch to The Pharmacy. I don’t know what it is about those Pharmacy burgers that just pull you in, but we are hooked! I switched it up and ordered the falafel burger this time and it was so super delicious. If you’re ever in the area and feel like having one of the tastiest burgers, you know where to find it! And of course we had to watch the Clemson game in the afternoon since we are ranked NUMBER ONE and all right now. We won so that was cool. I also had one of my uncles from South Carolina stop in for a little visit in the afternoon on his way home from Kentucky, so that was a neat surprise. The guys went out to town for the evening, so Ayla and I had a quiet night at home. She went down to bed a little earlier than normal and I did some cooking for Sunday and tried to bake a batch of English muffins that were a huge fail and ended the day with Food Network and popcorn.

Sunday:: A few weeks after we moved, Ben and I were having breakfast on a Sunday morning in the city and couldn’t help but notice that there were so many homeless people walking around the streets of Nashville. It tugged on our hearts so much and I remember trying to fathom what it feels like to not have a place to call home…I literally don’t think I can even fully imagine what that’s like. It’s such a sad reality! We decided that sometime we wanted to pack up some breakfast sandwiches and bring them into the city on a weekend morning to hand out to the homeless people and engage them and pray with them. And we just never got around to it until this weekend! We got up early on Sunday morning, ate a quick breakfast, filled up a dozen paper sack bags with breakfast sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, and bananas, and headed out for downtown. We really didn’t know what we were doing or where to even really go to find the people we were looking for, and we spent the first forty-five minutes aimlessly driving around trying to find people who looked homeless. After a while, we decided to park along a street and take our basket of paper sack bags with us to walk around looking for people who needed a meal. We ended up walking by a church that was actually serving a breakfast meal for the homeless and ran into the pastor standing outside the door. We told him what we were trying to do and asked him where we could go to find people who needed some food, and he immediately took us over to a group of men (who were homeless) and had them tell us the best place(s) to go. We only had to walk about a block down from the church to a small plaza with park benches and sitting areas to find about twenty people milling around, and it didn’t take us long to empty out our small basket of food. I walked up to a woman sitting on a bench with a toddler in a stroller in front of her and two young girls beside her and asked if they had a place to call home…and it broke my heart to realize that the only place they had as a home was a homeless shelter. One of the girls asked me if I knew where they were serving food today…and I told her about the church down the street, but also that we were there with some breakfast meals for them. We talked for a while and prayed for them before we left…and I walked away feeling so haunted to be honest. Looking in the faces of these little girls and this woman and knowing they didn’t have a place of their own to go to…it was heartbreaking. It was really fulfilling and fun to be out giving and praying with these people, but it was absolutely heartbreaking at the same time. We headed back home to get lunch ready after giving out all the breakfast meals and Ben’s brother’s family came over to eat with us. Funny thing:: I had experimented with making this raw pumpkin pie thing for dessert and while I didn’t think it was the best thing ever, I also didn’t think it was too bad so I went ahead and served it at lunch. I gave a big disclaimer to everyone as they were ready to dig in and wasn’t going to be offended by anyone who didn’t want to eat it if they didn’t think it was good. Ben’s two nephews had come running back to the table when they saw dessert come out but only lasted for about a bite each before wrinkling up their little noses and leaving the table again, hehe. Kids don’t lie, right?! We went to church in the afternoon and then the guys went out for supper afterwards while I brought Ayla back home for bed since she was once again having her famous Sunday evening melt-down. She did great during worship and napped during most of the message, but the last twenty minutes of the service were just a little rough. It’s getting better every week, so we’ll take it!

Here are five things I love:
– this is so good
– this song
– this is so funny
– this pretty sweater
– this simple recipe

Have a great week, dears!