Happy Monday, friends!
Have you recovered from your food coma yet? We don’t know about you, but we’re still basking in the idea of eating mashed potatoes with every meal for the rest of our lives! Oh, and pie. Decadent pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream. Mmmm, yes! We could live off that stuff! This weekend was heaven! Delicious food aside, though, we were so thankful for so much this Thanksgiving. We soaked in every minute of precious time we could with both of our families, from movies to meals, from games to good conversation, this weekend was such a blessing in so many ways.
Earlier last week, we announced that we were launching our very first full two-day, in-person workshop for photographers, and then we almost died of happiness at the pure thought of it. Education is a deep-rooted passion of ours, and we’ve been dreaming of making a workshop like this a reality for quite some time. We wanted a way to dive deep, open our playbook, and help catapult photographers’ businesses from all over the country in a relevant, valuable way so that they can leave with the momentum to get from where they are to where they want to be. It was a big, scary dream. And last week, we finally got to announce that we were doing it! That it was really happening!
We opened the seats on Friday, not knowing what to expect, and we. were. blown. away. Our workshop sold out in seconds, the amount of traffic caused technical glitches that we STILL can’t figure out and our website temporarily crashed! Ah! We were scrambling trying to figure everything out, but when we sifted through it all, what we realized is… you know that dream? That dream of launching a workshop and helping other photographers grow? God took that dream, and He MULTIPLIED it. And we just stood in awe. He took our numbers, and doubled them, and soon, we had not one, but TWO, February workshops completely SOLD OUT before we could even catch our breath! We couldn’t be more humbled or thrilled to have 30 amazing photographers from all over North America: Florida, California, Illinois, South Carolina, Arkansas, Washington, Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, Virginia and even Canada, coming to Scottsdale in just a few months! We have so many exciting plans for these workshops, and we’re counting down the days until we get to meet each set of attendees.
One thing we learned this weekend, and that we’re continuing to learn, is that our lives don’t have to be all figured out before God can use us. He’s showed us that time and time again, in more ways than we’ll ever be able to recount. This can be especially hard to remember in December, the month of Martha Stewart homes and high expectations, but it’s on our hearts to say we all need to give ourselves permission to slow down long enough to find opportunities that God puts in our path on purpose. We want to encourage you this week, friends, to step out in faith and do something that you’ve been thinking about doing, talking about doing, but it felt too big or scary to do alone. Or if you’re not sure what that thing is yet, keep your heart and eyes open for something God is going to place in your path this week. Let’s do it together, friends, and commit to opening our clenched hands, and just let God use us. Use us right where we are.
Photo Credit: Annamarie Akins