My SS Family

Jeremy and I have been blessed beyond measure with our Sunday School class. We all feel like we are "family". When Jeremy and I first joined our church almost 8 years ago, there was only one young married class to go to. We didn't exactly feel like we fit in at first. We couldn't find anyone else that we "clicked" with. But we joined the church anyways because we loved the pastor and we felt that was where God wanted us to be.
A few years went by and some changes were being made in our age groups SS classes and the church was growing especially in our age group. A few of us from our class split off to start a new class. We stayed small for a while but eventually we grew. Then about 5 years ago our church decided to do, The Purpose Driven Life, through out every SS class. They asked for people to step up out of each class to help lead a smaller group with in your class through the whole book. We ended up in a group that eventually branched off into our own class because of the growth in our department again.
This time we found lots of couples that we "clicked" with. We became a very social class spending time with one another outside of church. I think that's when our love and respect for one another started growing. We have been through some struggling times together, not only personal struggles but struggling together not glorifying the Lord. ( mostly the men lol) (and nothing that bad really, just not focusing on God) The women decided that since the men did so much socializing outside of church then we should have our ladies nights once a week. We did that for a while and then decided we needed to get into the word more, so we started doing bible study every other week and ladies night every other week. That's when I feel the Lord really started working in our class. He allowed us time to grow relationships with each other before his real work began.
With in the last year we have become even closer. The men started realizing they weren't honoring God in their social activities and made some changes. What's exciting is once we all got our priorities straight our class has grown quite a bit just with in the last 6 months. Our class had pretty much stayed the same size for about 4 years, and now we are growing! And every new couple that has joined has fit right into our "family". I truly feel like the ladies in our class are my "sisters". We learn so much from one another and have fun together. We pray for one another and minister to one another. If a family welcomes a new member, has a major illness or a family crisis we bring them meals, collect money for them or even at times have taken in their children for a few days to help them out. We love and support each other no matter what.
We are definitely a laid back group. We understand that no one is perfect, everyone is a sinner that's just how God made us, so we don't condemn one another for our faults. Instead we encourage one another, pray for one another and if it needs to happen, we will call one another out when we aren't honoring God.
I definitely know that God had a plan for us. He knew that eventually we would find just what we were looking for in our church. He knew that we would make lifetime friends in a SS class that just wasn't there yet when we first joined. We love our class so much, we don't want to miss church, we look forward to going to sunday school. We want to join in on all of our social activities because we know we will always have a good time. It is a good feeling knowing God wanted us to be part of such a special group of people. Yep, Jeremy and I are definitely blessed to be able to call these people our "family".