Writing Contests and Retreat stories

Hello, everyone. I've had an interesting evening. While I was reading the cherished novel To Kill A Mocking Bird, I heard my parents say the words "Lauren" and "community college" in the same sentence. Now to a junior in high school, that can only mean one thing: that the community college sent me an application form. In fact, I had been planning to go to the community college for two years and then to another college for two or more years. So I promptly went down the stairs to see what was going on. However, instead of an application form, I got a letter that stated that I had won a writing contest!

A long time ago, I had sent in one of my short stories for a short story contest. The contest was being held by a local publishing company. One of the lucky winners would get a chance to read an excerpt from their story at a book fair. Their story would also be published along with other stories in a book! And I was one of the proud winners of this contest! I was doing wiggles of joy and my mom promptly had my dad order Chinese take-out! Yum! Nothing like food to go with good news! This is the first time any of my stories is going to be published (I like to write stories). But for the grace of God, I would not have been able to do this! God be glorified!

All right, now that I've done my little victory dance, I want to tell you the other retreat story.

I met C.J. Mahaney!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I know those of you from Covenant Life (who have no doubt been raised there) are going to laugh and say, "Lauren, you're so silly! C.J.'s just another human being. He's no celebrity!" I agree that I have learned from being in a church full of people who are well known, that famous people are normal too.

But this was C.J. Mahaney!

Our conversation was very brief. In fact, it wasn't a conversation at all. I was at the "ministry night" on the retreat. C.J. had brought his son Chad for the first time, because Chad was a ninth-grader. So there I was, just standing around, when all of a sudden, C.J., who was a few feet away from me, suddenly looked at me and the following dialogue ensued:

C.J.: (walks up to me and shakes my hand) Hello.

Me: Hello.

(C.J. walks away.)

I'll admit, it was brief, but it was so cool! But I must be ever mindful that to shake the hand of God is worth more than an eternity of shaking the hands of famous Christians, and to hear Christ's voice is worth more than a thousand sermons by the best preachers