Dedication

 Our little Lucia Gloria was dedicated to God at our church on October 14, 2012

We promised as Lucia's parents to show her God's love, demonstrating what it means to trust and follow Jesus and with the help of our family, friends, church community and God's grace, we will try our best to do so. Our hope is that she will someday understand Jesus' love for her and she will decide to be baptized as a symbol of new life and her decision to follow Him. Hopefully it'll go something like this...

"Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. " Ephesians 3:17-18

And, you know, this part will take awhile to really grasp, like, the whole rest of her life. But we'll be there to help however we can (and maybe she will even help us grasp it as well).

 Here she was when we were waiting to go up in front

 The Johnson family. And, incidentally, this is also an accidental picture of four generations of women on my side (my grandma to my left, me, Lucia and my mom on the right). Too bad everyone wasn't looking.

 She did great up front and entertained the crowd.

 Then things went a little downhill when she wanted to grab everything in her sight so Pete asked me to hold the book while he tried to keep her away from his mic.

 Presenting Lucia to the congregation. One of my favorite moments (not pictured) was when our family came up to lay hands on us and Lucia, covering her in prayer.

It was a special day. It made me think about my own baptism, done in that very same spot when I was a baby by Pastor Art Nelson, who happened to be preaching the Sunday Lucia was dedicated. And a very good sermon it was. The text and sermon focused on the rich, young ruler who was unable to cast off everything and follow Jesus. I pray that we parent Lucia in a way that she has the least possible to cast off when the time comes for her to decide to follow Jesus; that we will be a help and not a hindrance to her loving Jesus. But we know that we will fail in one way or another since we are human so I also pray that God will help us out on that end too (you know, being able to apologize when we're wrong and admitting to our own faults).

 And to make it even more special, grandma Debbie was in town to celebrate with us. Somehow this is the only picture I took from the whole week but it was a great week having her here.

Now she's got to get busy writing some thank you notes!

Thanks for taking the pics, Greta!