a makeover story

hello all!

a few weeks ago i joined a women's book/bible study on monday nights. my friend, contessa, has been going for awhile and invited me for the next lesson, Calm My Anxious Heart. like i said, this was a few weeks ago, when i was extremely nervous about teaching (which is going great :c), moving, working full time at deaconess, etc, etc.. so calming sounded like the perfect thing! i'm only on chapter 2 of the book, but it continually makes me concentrate on learning to be content and to trust the good Lord.

another great aspect of the study is the wonderful women that i'm surrounded by. they are great, godly mentors and friends. and if there is a need, they work to meet it.

now to the need. contessa in herself is one of the most amazing people i know. besides being a single mom of 4 of the cutest dang kids i know (one with cerebral palsy), she works 3 jobs, volunteers, attends 2 bible studies, feeds her sons & their friends, and has compassion like no other. her most recent undertaking (besides taking in a new little female boxer, which i hope to possibly be relieving her from ;c) is a job as a teacher for autistic children (oh yeah, and she just graduated college last year, while also doing the list above..).

her class consists of about 11 autistic children, from grades K-5. wow! she has a couple that cry all day, some that try to run away, a couple that are good at learning... all in this trailer outside of the school! she asked us for help to create a calm place for the children to have a better learning environment, so our life group gathered all the paint and utensils that we had at home and came together on a monday night to do just that. the color we ended up is called "God's color", a purple tone that was created from everyone's left over paint. thanks to all the women's help, the classroom is clean and organized (partly) with a fresh coat of paint. now if you'll just remember to keep tes and the students in your prayers, for these are still very needy children.

here's our work..

a mess to start with

"God's color"

my man titus, contessa's 3rd child.

the proud teacher in her new classroom!