This morning I spoke to North Lanier Baptist Church and had to get up really early, having gotten back at midnight the night before. This morning I had to head up way North of Atlanta into the Cumming, Lake Lanier area to speak. It was a fantastic women’s event.
This church hadn’t really had a whole lot of women’s ministries going on officially for years. So the new Women’s Ministry Director, Debbie Licona and her husband, a newly-hired pastor, asked me to kick off the event to help them re-start the women’s ministry at the church. They made it into a big to-do; they led worship, had breakfast for about 100 women, and then I did my talk on understanding men. We had a fantastic question and answer time afterwards, and everybody was very intrigued with the idea that we are doing the book For Parents Only, which will be released in about a year.
We also had a lot of questions on how the principles of ‘For Women Only’ apply to our teenage girls. So that was kind of fun to be able to talk about that. Which of course led to the subject of ‘For Young Women Only,’ which just came out.
It was a very fun event, but I had to run out of there earlier than I normally do. Usually I 
can sit and sign books until the last book is signed, but unfortunately had to rush out because I had a book signing at a fabulous Christian store called “Bridging the Gap” in Duluth, which is in the North Eastern suburbs of Atlanta. Larry and Vickie Jones are the owners of ‘Bridging The Gap’ and its in a fantastic location right in the middle of everything in the suburbs, but nobody knows it’s there, because it’s hidden behind some other stores. It is right at the intersection of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Pleasant Hill - its a major intersection, but there are other stores in the way, so you can’t see that there is a fantastic Christian store there. So, my co-author on ‘For Young Women Only’ Lisa Rice and I decided we would do a book signing to celebrate the release of FYWO. I I rarely do official book signings for stores anymore - most people don’t know this, but book signings rarely draw in lots of people to the store unless you’re a really famous person. And, well, that’s not me! So since I’m traveling so much I rarely can justify the time that book signings take. But this time, we decided we would do one in order to help them get the word out that this great store is there. We don’t want this store to close and obviously people need to know that they are there in order for them to be able to be commercially viable!
The store actually put out tons of flyers and signs so a pretty decent number of people came. And my co-author Lisa actually told me a funny story about something that had happened the week before. She was driving to a meeting somewhere in the area a couple of days ago, on a major road, and suddenly sees this giant poster with her picture on it advertising the book signing. She was drinking a Diet Coke at the time and said that seeing her face up in this big picture was so unexpected, that she almost spilled her Diet Coke all over herself! I thought that was pretty funny.
It was primarily due to Lisa, actually, that quite a few people showed up at the signing. I joke that she knows everybody in Atlanta, so it was a good opportunity for her to use her extensive network to try to get the word out about this great Christian store.
Whew. Three events in two days and I am looking forward to a well-earned Sabbath tomorrow.