Joie De Vivre 2011

This past weekend we hosted our annual Joie De Vivre Women's Conference. Daphne Gaspard does a great job heading up our Women's Ministry and this annual conference is always one of the most highly anticipated events of the year here at Crossroads. This year the conference featured Meredith Andrews as our worship leader. Meredith has had some really great radio hits that we have covered in our services, but we were delighted to discover she is also the Worship Leader at her home church in Chicago. Her band included her husband Jacob on keyboards (he's originally from Alexandria!) and a group called Satellites and Sirens from Nashville. They did an incredible job leading our ladies in worship.




Nancy Alcorn was our featured speaker. Donna and I have known Nancy since the early 80's when we were all just getting started in ministry. Her outreach to young women with life-controlling problems is called Mercy Ministries. It it has grown to include several homes for girls in North America as well as Great Britain, New Zealand and Canada! Nancy shared a powerful message both at the conference and in our weekend services as well. It was so awesome to hear her stories of how God is transforming young women's lives! One of my favorite stories was about a young woman who was a 'cutter.' She came to Mercy with the word "Forgotten" literally carved into her arm. God set her free and several years after completing the program, Nancy ran into her at an event where she shared with her that God had not only healed her heart, He had healed her scars. She raised up her sleeve and showed her that the scars that once formed the word "forgotten" were gone!