What To Wear Wednesdays

Hello all! It's Sunday afternoon and I'm home with my family enjoying this beautiful Carolina afternoon. After church we had lunch out and oh my goodness I had the best taco salad EVER! If you've never eaten at Tiajuana Flats, try it...it's yummy!

I have had a heck of a last 2 weeks. Besides being on 6 different airplanes, I've stayed in 3 host homes, spoken at 7 different speaking events and met some amazing, amazing people! My family knows that April and May are extremely busy for me and they are so very supportive, but oh how I miss them when I'm gone! It is fun to be back for a few days, catch up on laundry (because my son can't seem to wear the same pair of shorts more than once, which he just walked up, read this and said, "that's a good thing, Mom"....and so, with more laundry, I figured I better get caught up on my blog before I read my gazillion e-mails! I'm so glad you're here!

I know I typically blog about fashion, but I must tell you about last week.

Monmouth, Illinois was such a treat! I was at Maple City Baptist Church and I have to tell you that I was most impressed with their women's leadership team in charge of this event AND their pastor. Pastor Mike prayed the most amazing prayer before the first of our two events for the weekend and it is the first prayer that has brought me to tears. Real tears. This guy is amazing and with his heart for God and the people of that church and their city, he is gonna knock down barriers that most people are so afraid of. Most events I speak at I never even get to meet the pastor and he was there the entire time....and he had just returned from 2 mission trips! He was tired, exhausted, and probably spiritually spent, but you would have never known it. Jen and Carla (aka Cheryl!) led their team of women in such a beautiful way. My events are often used as outreach events due to the theme being around fashion and modesty, but the people of Maple City Baptist took it to a whole new level. Every one who attended the event who was from their home church was there in event t-shirts (cause they were on the volunteer team) and EVERYONE else was there because of their amazing outreach efforts. Women drove from 3 hours away to the event....they did radio interviews, window displays in their town, letters out to neighboring schools and towns and the hearts of these women and men blew my mind. I was actually sad to leave them. Hi Maple City Baptist! Funny, funny thing, too....the night of the fashion show rehearsal we had to go to the basement due to a tornado warning! The next morning I woke up at my beautiful host home, Jan's house to the sound of cows mooing outside my window and then dressed in my clothes for the event only to find it snowing outside and of course I brought no coat or socks!

Next I went to St. Pete/Tampa, Florida. I got to visit with my dear, dear friend Mary Brandes who has become more like family to me. She was my host home (I didn't even ask her, I just let her know I was coming!) and I did 2 speaking engagments at Northside Christian School in St. Pete. The highlight (well, actually there were 2!) was that I taped a new documentary/ video broadcast for my teen events on modesty and purity. I asked the middle and high school girls to write on an index card one question they have always wanted to ask a guy....and not sign their name to it. Then I got the MS and HS boys together seperately and asked them the questions in a group format. At the end of the day, I pulled together 5 senior boys into Mary's office and interviewed them. These guys were the star athletes, very very handsome, and true believers. Their answers were mind blowing. I believe this new video/documentary will change girls in a VERY powerful way. It is being edited now and will be ready for use by Fall. I cannot tell you how amazing it was. Wow!

The second highlight was speaking at WTBN Tampa Bay's Christian Radio Station's Pastors Wives Appreciation Tea! It was so fun to encourage women who are always in the spotlight and to give them some new ideas on how to dress with confidence. We laughed and laughed so hard I thought they were going to kick us out of the St. Pete Yacht Club! Can you imagine asking Pastor's Wives to "keep it down!" ? They really didn't but we thought they might...we were sooooo loud! I think the bra part was about the funniest ever!

And then home for 36 hours before heading to Apex Baptist Church near Raleigh, NC. They truly had the best decorated Modest is Hottest Stage I've ever seen....wow!!!!!! It was awesome! Their tech guy Adam was a genius and so on top of things. Dawn Ward (who's coming to She Speaks!) took over training the models on thursday night for rehearsal so I could get an extra day at home with my family (BLESS you, Dawn!) and did a superb job! The models were amazing and had the sweetest hearts. Their women's event on Saturday was set up at round tables and lunch was served in the same room. I believe lives were changed that day. And some came to know Christ in a whole new way.....how exciting to be doing this for God.....I'm humbled.

All in all, I am a very blessed woman. I love that God has invited me to use my passions to talk about what He has done in my life and that women get to walk out with a new confidence and renewed relationship with Jesus.

On a slightly different note, my new Style Guide called "If Clothes Could Talk"....is a Christian Woman's handbook to revealing your inner beauty on the outside....is READY!!! I actually took the first printing with me to Florida and Apex. Women were so excited to be able to take home a resource to learn from. It is 88 pages long and includes a multitude of information! We are ready to go to a second printing (we had 200 printed to begin with!) because so many women purchased a copy this past week....one week!!!!!!! Thank you to all of you for your amazing support! The Style Guide is available for $15 or as an e-book form for $12 at this link.

I know this was long...thank you for reading it. I will announce the winner of the E-book tomorrow (from the comments last week) after I read them...I may have a friend pick the winner! Thank you for being faithful readers! Love you! Shari