First and foremost, THANK YOU to all of the wonderful people who attended my potluck fundraiser.  It was quite a success and encouragement, bringing in around $2,000 for my trip. Absolutely incredible. I still have a little bit to raise, but I am so close. So, if God is laying it on your heart to give or if you have extra money just laying around the house than I would like you to know that the opportunity to support me has not yet passed you by. Again, thank you all so much and I pray that God blesses you abundantly more than you have blessed me. I know that some of you have made sacrifices to see me go on this trip and walk in God's will, and I wish I knew a better way to express my appreciation, but I do not.

Today I went canoeing with a group of young people from my church. Ashley and I partnered up for the adventure. Near the end of our trip, we had a rather bad turn over and somehow our canoe landed on top of us while also catching on some rocks behind us. So, for one brief unpleasant moment we were being held under water by the canoe and being attacked by the rocky rapids we were stuck on. Neither of us could move or breathe until some random lady (possibly the designated driver for all of the intoxicated people) came over and removed the canoe with tremendous force because the canoe later had to be rescued as well with the rest of our belongings. Anyways, we were bruised and scraped, but nonetheless spared. As we both thanked the woman profusely and rearranged our slight bit of apparel, we climbed back into our canoe and left.

During the events of the afternoon I had a wow, we could have died, let's catch up to the group mindset.  Now that I have had time to process this is my conclusion: I have been involved in enough stupidity to know that I have been touched by guardian angels and the hands of God himself to still be alive. 

Ashley and I could have died today. We could die any day from anything, but we haven't because God isn't done with us yet. How utterly amazing is it to think that God has our lives in the palm of his hands? He controls our fate now and forever.

Disclaimer: This is not a revelation from our experience today; rather today was a reminder of something I needed reminded of.