Nashville Academy of Martial Arts

I'm on a roll today. I just remembered all this stuff I have to write about.

Things have been moving, slowly but surely, with Allen's martial arts stuff. We have been working with a church here in Nashville to start classes, hopefully in March.

Around 2 weeks ago, Allen started back taking classes in Greenville at Charles June Karate Institute. He wanted to get back into classes himself to get refreshed on things but to also move forward with advancing in his belt ranks. He is currently a black belt. In order to give others black belts, I believe you have to be a second degree black belt. So Allen will have until next April to work towards that goal. Even if he started his own classes now, it would be years before a student is ready for a black belt so his timing will be perfect.

I have loved to see how happy getting back into martial arts has made him. It is something he truly loved and I hate that he stopped doing it. I'm not even sure why he stopped. I've been able to go with him to 2 classes and though he's not been to a class in like 12 years, you cannot tell. He can keep up with the best of them.

Allen has to go before the church board on Sunday evening to discuss his plans. A final vote should be taken then so hopefully we'll know what's going on and can move forward. If they approve it, we start classes after Upward Basketball, which should be in March. If they don't approve it, well I guess we have to start over in looking for locations.

Each week, Allen meets with the preacher of the church to do prayer meetings and to discuss things. I think it has helped him having support and prayers from others. This thing is not something we have a lot of support for. It's something that is certainly risky but it's something we both believe in. My job is to support my husband. That's what I am doing. I feel that God is leading him to the path He wants him to take. This is where that path has led and so this is what we are doing. If we fail, then we can say we tried. If we never try, we will never know.

I, too, have concerns. We have and will invest a lot of money, and time, into this business venture. If it fails, it will break both of our hearts but it will truly devastate Allen.

There's a lot that goes into a business. There's the name, the logo, the business plan. We've done all that, though we still are working towards registering the name. But then there's the other "stuff," the businessy stuff, like taxes and legal mess.

Allen did a great job with his logo. It's something he designed and got done on his own. I think he has a pretty good business plan too. That's something that was all his ideas but that I put together in a manageable, understandable format. So, basically I wrote the plan based on Allen's thoughts and ideas. I think we did a good job for our first one.

I pray that this business will succeed and be everything Allen wants it to be. I hope that it will give him the life he's always wanted. But more importantly, I hope this business is everything God wants it to be, so that we may lives the way He wants us to.