Thank You God For Friends

Yesterday at lunch I was blessed to meet Mr. Ira Hays for the first time. His parents, Joe & Laura and their daughter Sophia, were ministers at Fortress about 4 or so years ago when Jason and I were there. Now they are church planters in Brooklyn, NY and are on their first road trip since Ira was born 2 years ago. We were so blessed that they fit their old Fortress crew in their busy schedule, and were so glad to get to see them again and the famous Ira! If you don't know the wonderful story of Ira, please check out Joe's blog, which is also on my sidebar. I'll also reference my friend Stacy's blog, because she is such a great writer and gives a beautiful story of meeting Ira yesterday. Stacy wasn't at Fortress when the Hays were there but has been following their blog since before Ira was born. It was a sweet, sweet meeting, and she has much better pictures than mine along with a good group picture of all of us at the bottom of her post. Thank you Joe & Laura for taking the time on your busy trip to eat lunch with us - it meant so much to all of us to see with our own eyes the miracle of God that is Ira!






From this past week: Elijah playing with his cousins, Kristopher and Jonathan - my sister's two youngest boys.








Today, Elijah had a great time playing with his good buddy, Ellie (and her baby brother, Deacon). Ellie is my sweet friend, Abbie's, daughter and her and Elijah have been buddies since they were tiny babies. Abbie only lives maybe a mile from our house so we are able to see them fairly regularly. They had a great time eating ice cream and playing in the sprinkler (Elijah in his undies - ha!). Such sweet friends and we are so thankful for them. Thank you God for friends - present, past and future. They make life so much sweeter!