Another Honeymoon

Several months ago we discovered that Sovereign Grace Ministries was going to have a couples retreat in Williamsburg, VA. The theme was going to be based off of Dave Harvey's book "When Sinners Say I Do". Since we were in the process of reading this book, we thought it would be a great idea to go to the conference. A couple weeks before the conference we decided it was time to fill out the registration form (that's what you call procrastination). We had told our parents about it, but they were unable to go. As we were looking at the schedule, we saw that there was going to be girl/guy split sessions - which means that we would be seperated for a couple hours, knowing nobody. We didn't really like that idea, as neither one of us are really outgoing. So we decided that instead of rushing to VA after we get off work on Friday, we would just travel down early Saturday morning and stay the night in a water front hotel. We were going to do our own "Tony & Shayna Retreat". :)


So Saturday morning we woke up pretty early, ate a nice hearty breakfast of organic maple spice oatmeal, and left the house around 9:30am. After a few months without him, we were able to get Tom Tom back - so he led the way. :) Yay! We stopped by Ronny & Diana's real quick to drop of the paintball gun and Mr. Ron's work shoes. Then we just took our time getting to West Virginia. Our retreat was even complete with guest speakers - Mark Driscoll, Paul Washer, and Josh Harris. Haha. We listened to Driscoll's sermons titled "Unlimited Limited Atonement" and "Jesus Paid Our Debt"; Josh Harris' "Purity - part 1 & 2"; and we re-listened to "Destroying the Pop-Christian Views of Marital Bliss" by Paul Washer.

We ate lunch at Boston Market - it only cost us about $8.83. Then we walked off everything we ate at Mount Trashmore. :) From there we checked into our water front hotel room with a jacuzzi. We were a little disappointed with the hotel because they were currently undergoing a several million dollar upgrade and much of the hotel was "torn apart" - but it served it's purpose. We walked Atlantic Avenue and the boardwalk for a while... it was very cold and windy. We went back into our hotel room (#207) and warmed up.

That evening we went to Red Lobster and had a 45 minute wait, so we decided to walk around Lynnhaven Mall. We looked at the store directory and saw that Barnes & Noble was at the opposite end of the mall. We decided that we wouldn't have enough time to go there before, but we planned on going after dinner. We came across a kiosk set up selling watches - we stopped to see if they had any MP3 watches for sale. They didn't have one, but Jim (the employee) was excited to hear that such a watch exists. He was very polite and a delight to talk with. We gave him a Ron Paul million. He said that someone gave him a million dollar bill a while ago - he proceeded to describe it to us. It ended up being the Living Water's gospel tract. He has it hanging in his bedroom, with the words facing him. So that was an open door - he told us his testimony. He was homeless for 2 years in Michigan; moved to NC to get away from it, only to find himself homeless again. His mom knew the owner of the watch kiosk and was able to get Jim a job there. He has a great landlord that is helping him get on his feet and build up his credit. He knows that all of his life is by the grace of God. He said "I don't deserve to stand before God". He has visted several churches, but does not attend regularly. He did not own a Bible - so guess what we did? We practically "ran" to the other end of the store and bought Jim the "Reformation Study Bible" (the last one on the shelf) at Barnes & Nobles. :) We "ran" back to his kiosk, dropped the Bible off (as he was with customers) and we hurried back to Red Lobster. We sat down on the bench outside of the restaurant, contemplating whether or not we should go "make sure" they didn't page us already (we had left the pager in the car while we went in the mall). About 1 minute later we were paged and brought to our table. God's perfect timing.... and we were doubting. HE is so awesome! We very much enjoyed our first time visit to Red Lobster! When we recieved our entrees, Tony asked for more biscutes because they were so good. About 20 minutes later they were brought to us fresh from the oven. Mmmm. We each ate one more, then Tony began to wrap the remaining two in napkins to take with us. Our waitress came over to check on us and saw the wrapped biscuits... she playfully said "would you like me to bring you a little box for those buscuits, or do you want to smuggle them out in your pocket?" Tony promptly replied "Well, we could smuggle them out in her purse, or you could bring us a box - that would be great." Haha. It was so funny!! She actually brought us a little box for the two and a few minutes later a paper bag with five more biscuits to "smuggle out". Haha.

We were anticipating watching the sun rise over the ocean Sunday morning, so we looked online and it said it would rise around 5:45am. I set my alarm for 5:15am and when it went off, this is the view we saw out our window. Tony said "Oh no, we missed it!" But in reality, the little "sun" in this picture is only one of the lamp posts on the boardwalk. Haha. We had such a glorious time together!!!
As a side note, on our journey to and from VA Beach we saw only five presidential campaign signs and all of them were for Ron Paul. Yay! This one was the best as it clearly states that Ron Paul is the only way!! :)