Thursday, Part 1.

They say that every day that goes by without learning something is a day wasted. I was fortunate in that when I woke up, by definition I learned something. Since when is there a 5:30 in the morning? Who came up with that boneheaded concept? Pastor Kevin planned it out well in that everyone was told to take a night shower, ‘cuz our plan was to just get up and go and save valuble time in the morning. I guess I should be thankful though, since we set up last night and were able to leave the stage set up at the middle school, we didn’t have to do so in the morning. Anyway, we just changed into our performance getup and headed out. Pastor Kevin told us that we should look outside ‘cuz we might see some deer on the side of the road. I told him that it was unlikely – the deer weren’t up yet.
Why were we up at such a ridiculous hour, you ask? The middle school has a program they call ‘first priority’. It’s a Christian service that they’ve got every morning before classes; their school systems allow them to have programs of a religious nature as long as it’s not during the official school day. Not only are there kids who actually get up early to attend these events, there are a lot of them. I’d figure that there were over 150 kids there, possibly closer to 200. We did Irene, Pray, and Everything at the school on the drama front. Tom S. and David both shared their testimonies there. Tom S. also did a kickin’ guitar solo at the beginning which helped draw a little larger crowd than normal. Being as it was a public school, I hesitated to take a whole lot of footage of kids, and I didn’t think it would turn out well anyway due to the seating arrangements. Additionally, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of visible response to the dramas. I’m thinking that it is possible that the response was a bit less than we garnered at the high school and rehab centers because the younger kids probably haven’t done a lot of the things that Shae enacts, at least not to the point where they’d have hit rock bottom enough to feel that the drama hit home for them. That’s my take though, maybe I just missed the kids who the dramas really ministered to. I was fortunate enough to get the whole thing on video end-to-end this time, so hopefully I’ll be able to show everyone here what I’ve been raving about. We ended the time by singing the song ‘Lead Me to the Cross’. While most of the audience didn’t really seem to be keen on joining us in worship, the team thought it was the coolest thing to sing the song in a public school. I had an interesting thing happen on that front myself. Their “cafetorium” was equipped with a NICE projection system. Problem is, no one there knew how to use it. The person I spoke with said, “I’ll take you up to the room, and if you can figure it out, you can use it”. It took me a while – nearly three minutes – but only because nothing was labeled =). Actually it just occurred to me that I never went back up there to shut the system down. Someone isn’t happy with me. In any case, the interesting part was that the only place that I could plug in my laptop was on the stage, so I got to run the lyrics from the stage instead of the back, so that was kind of cool.
Once we left there, we went back to our cabins to take some group photos, do devos, and eat breakfast (cheese omelets and homefries in case you were wondering Ruth). Once that list was completed, we headed back to Pastor Lenny’s church for round 2 of construction.
It’s 11:44. I know I’m getting very behind in a lot of things (I still have 2 days worth of photos I haven’t downloaded, I haven’t even started my care cards, and my bags are about 1/3 packed), but it’s late so I’m gonna pull another To Be Continued on everyone. There will be a part 2, it will have photos, and it will be up by 1PM tomorrow. I can say that since we’re going into Atlanta and have a 2 ½ hour drive to get there, and I’ve got the internet on my cell phone and a power inverter. As you can see by my rambling, these late night blogging sessions are taking a toll on my blogging skills. Professor Maurer, if you’re reading this, you were warned! =)

Thursday, Part 1.