The Rich Ruleth Over the Poor

"The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." This is in the NKJV. King James Version says "The rich ruleth over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender." (Essentially the same, except I believe in reading from the KJV and as a matter of principle felt it necessary to write out the version I use!)

The weekend of March 13th was CHOCK FULL of fun for the Allens!! Thomas and I left Friday at noon with our friends, Melissa and Kurt Cockrell to go see DAVE RAMSEY LIVE!!! YEAH BABY!

Back up - Thomas and I have been working for the last year to pay off our debts that we've incurred. Stupid Tax, if you will! We have succeeded EXPONENTIALLY and REALLY seen some AWESOME progress. Our credit cards are gone except for a couple. Granted, with all of our medical challenges lately, our snowball has been put on pause. However, we're fired up and ready to start again! And, 10 minutes ago, I was able to take a phone call from BSA (our local hospital) and tell them that, No, I do NOT need to know your payment options, we received your bill and will be mailing you a check next week!!! Do you KNOW how good it feels to be able to just pay those bills and not go in debt? If you don't, ask me, and I'll tell you!!

So, although we've worked hard over the last year, we've still got a ways to go. Our friends are just beginning to get their snowball rolling and it's SO exciting to be there and be reminded of how FAR we've come in the last year and to encourage them about their new life!! In January, when we all found out that Dave was coming to Dallas, we KNEW we had to jump on it! We booked our hotel room (shared with them...hey, it's Dave Ramsey) and jumped in their car Friday afternoon!

In the Back Seat - Stopped in Childress!!

We pulled into Dallas around 8, but it took us another hour to find our hotel because it was NOWHERE NEAR where the maps OR GPS said it was going to be. By the time we unloaded the car, we just wanted to eat somewhere close. So, Outback it was!

No, it's not a good picture of us - We'd been in a car for 7 hours!

Saturday morning was leisurely and fun. We got up and got ready slowly, just chilling out! We left our hotel in plenty of time to get there and, when we did, we couldn't BELIEVE how huge the Potter's House was! We saw it off the highway and figured it was a movie theatre or something. Nope, that's a CHURCH my friends!!!

Just SOME of the 8,000 people that became our friends for the next 5 hours!

Once we got inside, we realized how WELL our $40.00 tickets were going to work for us!! We had AWESOME seats. I would venture to say that they were better than some of the VIP seating that cost WAY more than that!

Look how CLOSE we were!!!

There were cameras EVERYWHERE because it was being simulcast to 250+ locations and, you could text in your comments pre-show and during the break! Here's one we thought that was interesting. Unfortunately, it took Melissa and I a while to figure out who else from Canyon could "Luv" Melissa...DUH, it was from her husband!! haha - SO sweet

After tons of pre-show games with the audience, it was time for Dave to come out and it was SO exciting!!! I swear, it was like being at a concert!

If you've listened to Dave AT ALL, you know about his famous SCISSORS!! Those suckers are HUGE! Anyway, when he performed that plasectomy, we went nuts!! I know, it sounds silly to cheer for a man cutting up credit cards, but, it's SO symbolic for the life changes you make!!! Plus, his energy is just contagious!

He used TONS of powerpoint examples to get you focused on what he was trying to say!! The first one here is a picture of a pack of gazelles. I've always heard to get "Gazelle intense" but never knew what it meant. Well, we figured it out! He explained that he was reading his Bible one night and read Proverbs 6:5 which states "Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler." (In Dave's Bible it said deliver yourself as a "gazelle" from the hand of the hunter) After asking God why he was using animal metaphors, Dave turned on the TV that night only to see, on the discovery channel, a group of gazelles running from their predator, a cheetah. He said he laughed because he then understood why God chose to show him that particular verse. Cheetahs can get from 0-60 mph in only 4 leaps. Cheetahs are a gazelle's most ardent predator. Only, gazelles can leap pretty quickly themselves and often outrun their predator because they have STAMINA!! The whole point was to RUN THE RACE AWAY FROM DEBT, just like a gazelle runs to get away from it's predator. You are in a race for your life. WIN THE RACE!!!


Stay tuned for the conclusion of our trip!! I'll give you a bit of a break since I have learned that if my blogs are too long, you won't read the whole thing before tuning out and I want you to get this!! It's LIFE CHANGING STUFF, I TELL YA!!!