September 2015

        September brought less rhythms than we had anticipated. We realized we might be in a longer period of rest than we had thought. The rhythms that have stuck so far have been really great. 

We have continued to do family dinners every other Sunday. The attendance at the dinners has been much like it was a year ago at this time; we have a few regulars and many people coming through for a visit. 

There were three "Irby family" rhythms that we tried to keep up. In order of least successful to most successful:

1. We made dinners for the week on Saturday. Jarred and I kept up with that and one time we had an apartment full of people join us. It was tons of fun and everyone who came was super grateful for the meals. We will still try inviting people in October. 

2. Our "Fear the Walking Dead" nights were pretty regularly attended but not by the same people. With the end of the season approaching, we will decide if it is a rhythm to keep up for "The Walking Dead". 

3. Every morning Jarred and I eat breakfast together. We realized that we eat breakfast at around the same time Courtney gets off work. Since she's near by, we invited her to come over when she gets off and eat with us. It has been a great time of connecting and fellowshipping.

Full freezer after a Saturday of cooking with friends. 

       We had another 3DM pilgrimage.  The day before was a TOM dinner. It was awesome to connect with people of the TOM family and break bread with them. Several people we had met before and many we had met through covenant huddles or Facebook so it was nice to finally see them face to face. The 3DM pilgrimage was almost an extension of that. There were about 50 people, many of whom were in TOM and the covenant relationship was definitely forefront. 

Our Residency+ class started. We got off to a slow sort which caused us to do a little cramming. The dynamics of the group are not what we would have expected. Jarred and I are the only two that are church planting and Jarred is the only male. We are excited to see what God will be teaching us through this process. 

In the later part of the month, my class assignment got changed from first grade to forth grade.  It did not start right away because my principal was trying to prevent the change from needing to happen.  The assignment starts the first Monday of October. 

As we look forward to October, the new group of kids is only the tip of the iceberg for what we are excited about. We are hoping to begin forming the team we want to launch our church plant with.   We are exited to continue in the Residency. And we are hoping to watch the Cubbies win the World Series.