Thursday evening Mountain Lake Church (MLC) in Cumming hosts it's first ever Girlfriends Mixer from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. It's an opportunity for women of Forsyth County along with vendors from the community to gather together for a night of shopping, giveaways and fellowship.

"We were looking for a way to create the ultimate girl's night out," said Tricia Lovejoy, leader of the women's ministry at the church and wife of lead Pastor Sean Lovejoy. "It's just a fun event where you can invite your friends at night so working ladies can be involved as well."

The event will feature items for sale from home based businesses like Silpada & Premier Jewelry, to local businesses like Market 334 and Heavenly Dove Bookstore to name a few. Each vendor will have an opportunity to show off what they do and display the items they have up for sale to the women attending the event.

"You can't take a group of several hundred women shopping at one time, but if I bring the shopping to us we can have that ultimate girl's night out," said Lovejoy.

Lovejoy hopes that those who may not attend church on a regular basis or at all will attend the Girlfriends Mixer and enjoy a few laughs with their friends and indulge in the shopping deals that will be offered at MLC.

Lovejoy said, "She may be more willing to try us Sunday morning for worship service or a Saturday night worship service we're having now. It's an open door event, a little bit of fun, a little bit of outreach, a whole lot of shopping."

Last December Mountain Lake Church began a new ministry called "Girlfriends" a  monthly event held on Thursday's at 10 a.m. focused on bringing women together to connect.

The ministry is comprised of three components, girl time, God time and giveaways.

"Our girl time is getting to know each other, our God time is a message from the stage that I teach straight out of the Bible, and then giveaways," said Lovejoy. "We just like to have fun and give stuff away--every woman loves a surprise, every woman loves to walk home with something."

According to Lovejoy, the ladies of Mountain Lake "are eating it up!" The ministry is an opportunity for women to gather together every month for an hour and 15 minutes, let their hair down and relax, say goodbye to the demands of life and focus on themselves for a short time.

Since its creation the ministry has grown to about 100 ladies every month and is open to women and girls of all ages.

"Of course we want to minister to the ladies of our church, but nothing at Mountain Lake is geared towards just the members of Mountain Lake," said Lovejoy. "We really are focused on reaching outside of our world and our people get that."

The Girlfriends ministry has grown in popularity attracting visitors who are new to the church, neighbors and friends of the women who are members of MLC as well as members of other churches.

"So by no means is it a click or inward focused group, we have first time people all the time and I love that," Lovejoy said. "It's so common--women just want to be together--we just want to be together, make friends, shares our lives, learn from one another and God is at the center of all of it."

The event is free, refreshments will be served and plenty of giveaways.

Mountain Lake Church is located at 3105 Dahlonega Highway in Cumming. For more information on the Girlfriends Mixer and Girlfriends ministry call 770-888-2513 or visit their Web site.