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Sandi Carlson has been associated with churches all her life. She is the daughter of a minister, Dr. James Meadows, minister at the First Church of the Nazarene in East Brewton. She is also the wife of a minister, although he now has another job, and she is the bookkeeper/secretary at First United Methodist Church of Brewton.

Carlson was born in Pensacola, Fla., where her father was the minister of a church.

“Being the daughter of a minister, we moved around,” she said. “Although we didn’t move a lot, I lived in several places while I was growing up.”

She graduated from Pace High School in 1988 and instead of going to college, she got married.

She and her husband, Jeff, moved to Dothan after their marriage and they became the parents of three children while living there. He was the youth and music director for a church in Dothan for about six years. They then moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for about five years.

“After 11 years of being in the ministry, my husband decided to become an airline pilot,” Carlson said. “He still has his minister’s license, but he felt that God was opening the door to allow him to fly. He always loved the idea of flying. When he was a small boy, he would ride his bike over to the end of the runway where he lived in Florida and watch the planes take off. He dreamed of flying too.”

As he went off to flight school in Florida, the family moved in with her parents in East Brewton. It took him two years but he did get his pilot’s license and took a job with American Eagle Airlines. For 12 years he has been employed by civilian airlines. flying in North and South America.

“I have always been busy with the children and the activities they are involved in,” Carlson said. “But now they are all out of the house. We have Abigail (24), Christian (22) and Travis (19). Abigail has graduated from college and is living at home right now. The boys are both attending Troy University.”

One would think that Carlson has a lot of time on her hands, but she is managing just fine. She has a blog online and said she gets a lot of satisfaction with it. She lost her mother to cancer a while back and her blog has helped her to go through her grief. The blog is online at deepwaters.blog.

With her part-time job at First United Methodist Church of Brewton, she finds that the empty nest at home is not so bad.

“I have been a wife and mother for so long, and we have always been involved with whatever they were doing,”she said.

She is active in her church and leads a Bible study. She does her blog, and loves to write.

“I love to walk and run too,” she said. “I’m not as devoted to it as some people, but I do enjoy it. I even ran in a race in Paris.”