Under Threat of "Man Up"

Yesterday, Sunday, was somewhat of a stressful day for Abby. I had decided that if I had to give a testimony/word of encouragement at church that I would write it out in advance, have Mikki edit it and then do it in French. Didn't sound scary when I decided it was a good idea. But then as Sunday rolled around and the reality that I had to read what I had written out loud, in French, hit and it wasn't such a happy idea after all lol! But I had earlier in the week told my brother that I was planning on doing this and he said "You better! If you don't I'm going to make you go on a Man Up Adventure and learn about facing your fears!!" So under threat of having to hang out with a bunch of stinky guys for 5 days and eat gross food like brats (not that they would actually probably let me come on a trip....) I decided to face my fear and do it. It was a little awkward since I had to just read it off of my iPad so I couldn't really make eye contact with people and since I was nervous I was somewhat speed reading....buuutttt I survived and now that I made it past that milestone hopefully next time won't be as bad and then eventually, someday I won't even need the iPad. I sang and played "Because of Who You Are" in French as well (it was the only song that I could remember ALL of the lyrics to in French off the top of my head). Singing and playing isn't that scary for me...I would MUCH rather do that any day than speak. So not only was it scary that I was speaking in front of people, it was scary because it was in French and I am extremely self conscious about my "American" accent when speaking French. I have struggled with comparing myself to others my whole life and feeling incompetent and thought I had gotten over most of that but on Sunday it definitely reared it's ugly head. I always second guess myself. Me and Jesus had a little talk about it and by the time church started I was feeling a little bit better... it was like the closer it got, the less stressed I got. Regardless I survived, even after Mikki so kindly told me right before church that she was going to video it on her phone lol :P (I haven't seen the video and don't know if I want to....) I did say that I would do whatever was asked of me, whether that meant speaking, singing, etc sooooo I guess God's already putting that to the test lol! He thinks He's funny..... We had church at the house because there was going to be a party afterwards, so here's a couple pics from Sunday! It was great because even though it was a HOT day and we were having church in a house one of the visitors had tears running down her face as we sang "Your Presence Is Heaven To Me"!

After church there was a joint birthday party for Mikki and one of the guys in the church so while everything was getting set up the guys started up a round of karaoke...they finally convinced me to do it, but I made Mikki join with me. We sang "He Wants It All" by Forever Jones. It was my first karaoke experience lol! Look at me just breaking out of my shell/comfort zone...first I spoke in French, then I sang karaoke...what is this world coming to?!

Saturday Toky and Mikki took me into Toulouse to see a few of the sights and walk around. We started the day out at the market and I wandered around there for a while and Toky bought some delicious, fresh cherries that we ate in the car. From there we grabbed lunch at a Chinese buffet and then headed to the city center!

Toulouse is a very pretty city! They call it The Pink City because of the reddish/pink bricks that they used to build with. It was a really hot day (I mean it's Southern France after all....I'm not far from Spain so summer = HOT here!) so we didn't wander far from the center of the city. We stopped into a couple of souvenir stores so I could pick some stuff up and then headed back home.

The update on the World Cup is that we now have our nightly tradition of turning the 6pm (our time) game on via Internet and having that on while we get dinner ready. That game ends right around 8 pm, which is perfect because that is Zoe's bedtime, so she gets put to bed, we grab a snack, get changed, etc and then are ready for the 9 pm game...which is usually the game that we actually care about lol! We happily and loudly (although not TOO loudly since Zoe was sleeping) cheered France on to another victory!!!! I stayed up last night to watch the USA vs Portugal game, which started at midnight here. That was a pretty intense game. Sadly it ended tied 2 - 2, since Portugal got a freak goal with 30 seconds left in the game. Disappointing I must say, but that's ok, we're still in it and next we play Germany...that's gonna be a tough game! And that is the latest and greatest news in the life of Abby! Nothing TOO crazy, but that's probably a good thing...lol!