And now for a more serious note...

One of our greatest desires for our children is to see them get saved at an early age and grow to love God with all their hearts and have a real, vital relationship with their heavenly Father. Daniel made a profession of faith a few summers ago, and there seems to be true evidences of his relationship with God as found in 1 John. We understand that our children's relationship with God is between them and God, and that we can never know for certain what is in their hearts....except when they tell us they're not saved...like Hannah's been doing for quite some time now. For about the past 6 months, she's shown a real interest in learning about salvation. We've done our best to point her to the Scripture each time she brought it up. About a week ago, she started getting really serious about it and was getting less and less distracted when we would open the Bible with her. It was probably last Saturday or Sunday that we really thought she would get saved, but when Brent asked her if she wanted to be save, much to our surprise she said no, that she'd do it another night...maybe tomorrow. We talked with about the imminency (sp?) of Christ's return and how our lives are but a vapor, but she just wasn't ready. Brent and I spent this last week really praying for her (and trying not to imagine all the what-if scenarios as I drove down the road--"What if we get in a car accident and she dies before she gets saved, or what if she chokes on that hot dog and dies, or what if"--and before you know it, I'm in tears thinking about her funeral--come on...most of you girls have done that before even if you won't admit it!) All week long she kept saying, "Maybe tomorrow night" or "Maybe tonight at family devotions" We wanted to be careful and make sure the Holy Spirit was the one working and not just 2 sincerely zealous parents so we tried to encourage her without pressuring her. But tonight, she came to us and asked if she could be saved. After lots of questions and making sure she understood and the Holy Spirit was indeed drawing her to Himself, we knelt beside the couch and Hannah asked the Lord to forgive her for sins and allow her to go to heaven. We rejoice in the Lord's goodness in helping our little girl see her need for a Saviour and the thought of spending eternity with her as our heavenly sister! God is so much better to us than we deserve! I took this picture of Brent and Hannah after she prayed...no need for a flash here, the beaming from my face was probably enough to light the entire room!