Late Tuesday afternoon we took a trolley tour of the entire island.  I was so excited when we finally got to Christ Episcopal Church.  I took this picture as we were driving by – the Wesley Oak, the very tree John and Charles Wesley stood under to preach.  As a lifelong Methodist, ground doesn’t get much holier than this.

My buddy and roommate Evelyn and I, standing in front of Christ Episcopal. It was just a beautiful place, with so much history.

We spent some time going through the Arthur J Moore Museum there at Epworth by the Sea.  Lots of John and Charles Wesley memorabilia, Francis Asbury, George Whitfield.  One of my favorite displays was this set of paintings of the apostles.  The paintings were beautiful, and so were the stories of how the artist found his models.  Wow.

After lunch our program was Where the Wild Things Are, where a girl from the 100 Miles organization and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island came to talk to us about sea turtles and other animals found along the Georgia coast, which is 100 miles long, hence the name. She brought along lots of turtle shells and skeletons, along with this one live sample – she said he was about fifteen years old.

Tuesday morning after breakfast I had a little bit of time to wander the grounds before Bible School started, and I didn’t get tired of doing that the entire time we were there.  This is the motel where we were staying – Evie and I were in about the furthest room to the left on the bottom floor that you can see in this picture.  The gardens and garden walls all over the grounds were just lovely.

Lovely Lane Chapel. This church was originally St. James Union Chapel, but was renamed after the Methodists bought the site to create Epworth by the Sea. Lovely Lane was the name of the church in Baltimore where Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke were named as the first bishops of the Methodist Church in the United States. It’s also the oldest church building on St Simons Island.

Monday I headed down with my buddies Pam, Evelyn, & Sherry to join other older adults from our church congregation to spend a few days participating in an Adult Bible School at Epworth-by-the-Sea.  I have truly wanted to visit there my entire life, and it was as moving and uplifting and holy as I always knew it would be.  As soon as we arrived we dumped our suitcases in our room and spent some time walking around the grounds.  The gazebo on the Frederica River was just beautiful – and so peaceful.

We ate supper, and then went over to attend our first session of Adult Bible School – SO much fun. There were coloring pages and colored pencils waiting for us on the tables when we got there.

Yesterday we left straight from church – we’d all brought bag lunches – and the BIG & Tweens headed out to Kings Mountain National Battlefield for our end of the year outing.  It was a small but fun group.  Here they are as we were getting ready to head into the museum.

After checking out the museum and watching the movie, we headed out to walk the trail. Of course when we got to the mountain on the top of the trail the boys had to get up close and personal with it 🙂

Today was our actual annual Festival of Tables celebration at church. Again, I cannot believe how creative people are, and how many different ways these tables can be decorated. I loved this one my friend Linda Abernathy did to celebrate our Clover churches. So beautiful

And “Hats Off to Southern Ladies” was one of my favorites. I just loved it.

Tomorrow is our annual Festival of Tables at church.  I am not talented enough to decorate a table – my job every year is making all the jello (this year it was nine pans), but I do love and appreciate how beautiful other people are able to make them.  Today after I picked Clara and Mallory up from school we went back & looked at the ones that were already decorated.  As always, they are just gorgeous.  Both of them said this table – Sunny Day Blues – was their favorite.

The lady who decorated this table always does such an amazing job.  Just the work and details that go into these tables blow me away.  More pix tomorrow, for sure.

Thursday afternoon I was back out with Mallory and Clara.  Usually Clara and I have some sort of activity going on in the afternoon, but she was busy reading all afternoon, trying to get her word count up enough to meet her goal, so she could get to go to the Wet and Wild Water Fun incentive.  And she did!

So Mallory was the one who ended up helping me cook – big pots of crock pot sloppy joes for their house and for ours, to cook over the upcoming busy weekends.

Today when June and Mason got here after school we tried a new recipe for squash dressing. Supper was at church tonight, so we’ll give it a try tomorrow night. At BIG this evening at church, we studied the story of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments. Here are the Israelites waiting for Moses to come back down Mt Sinai 🙂