This past Sunday, Jess and I broke new ground. As some of you know, we have been in the process of finding a new church family. Our search lead us to some churches we were familiar with, others brought new experiences. It grew us as we never quite realized the diversity represented by so many denominations. We really wanted to find a place that we could find some community. And community we found, via Facebook of all places. While updating my work’s Facebook page I notice an ad for a church in the sidebar. Passing it off as just an ad, I finished my work and didn’t give it a second thought.
It was a Saturday night, Jess and I were lying awake in bed wondering where we were going to visit the following morning. We were so discouraged by our search so far. Most places we enterered, we were ignored, other places just weren’t the place for us. I had seen that facebook ad show up in the sidebar a few more time in the days prior and I finally had to know if this was for real. I clicked on the little green logo and was taken to the website for Venture Church. I read about what they believed in, watched a video message from the pastor and was interested in what Venture was all about. So back to that Saturday night. Beaten down with discouragement, we prayed together about it. At that point I knew where we needed to go. So we went, and are still going. We have enjoyed getting to know them, serve with them and have decided to make Venture our “home.”
Back to this past Sunday! It was baptism Sunday at Venture and Jess and I were dunked. We both had never been baptized and new that it was something we ought to do. We had actually decided we weren’t going to be baptized and as such didn’t bring baptism appropriate clothing or towels. We decided at the last minute we indeed needed to be baptized and shouldn’t wait any longer. Fortunately for us, Venture currently meets in a hotel, one with a heated pool! We strode into the water and I had the honor of baptizing Jess and she in return baptized me. It was great to finally take our relationship with the Lord one step further. After getting out of the pool, I quickly drove home to get a change of clothing for us and Jess waited, fully dressed, in the hot tub. We are so blessed to have our Venture family and look forward to serving and living life with them!