We've Landed/First Day

     For those of you who have never been on a missions trip, here's something that I've found out - If you make it through the airport without having an incident - no delayed/cancelled flights, odd stopovers, lost luggar, having your bags searched, you're probably not on a missions trip. I'm Joey, and I was part of the group who was on the Delta flight - there were eleven of us on it. Air Tram took the majority of the rest of the group. Being the leader in charge of video and sound, my bags have all kinds of fun toys in them that the TSA *loves* to look through - I've never been on a flight where my baggage wasn't searched since I was thirteen. But enough about me. What ended up happening was our flight was supposed to be the later flight and the Air Tram group was supposed to be waiting for us. Apparently what happened was that the Air Trammers had a layover in Ohio, which meant that us Delta folks hung out waiting in the Atlanta Airport. The last of the three groups to leave the airport reportedly ran into Unhindered, the worship band from the last Winter Retreat! We all met at a McDonalds between Atlanta and Toccoa and had a wonderful team bonding time as well.

     The drive up to the cabins where we're staying were a decent trip - we got here around 2:00 in the morning. By time we got our luggage and made our beds, it was pushing 3...and being on the worship team schedule, I had to get up at 7.

     We led worship for the service this morning, did several new dramas, and pastor Kevin presented the sermon. After service, Pastor Lenny and Sister Jackie had our entire team over for lunch. Lemme tell ya, there's definitely a reason why John Long gets Sister Jackie up to Smithtown every year for the Missions Convention - she puts the southern in Southern Cooking!

     After lunch, some of the team lingered at the church and fellowshipped, others came back to the cabins to grab a nap. We had about 90 minutes worth of free time/nap time before we had to get ready for round two.

     Pastor Lenny had us do an afternoon service as well. It was much more fluid than the morning service; the dramas were picked on the spot and the worship was very spontaneous. A new drama, "everything", was particularly powerful. In addition to being the designated blogger, sound guy, and video display guy, i also am the photographer and videographer for this trip as well (aside: I apologize for the lack of photos right now - I'll do my best to get a handful up tomorrow). Everything I see looks different through the eyepiece of the broadcast-grade, shoulder-mount camera we've affectionately named "the Monster" due to its large size and steep learning curve. I have filmed events that the people around me had an obvious expressive reaction to, and what goes through my head is "is the picture bright enough, is it focused properly, what's my voltage rating look like", and other such things to ensure that I'm getting as good of a video as I can take. In most cases it comes at the expense of my own reaction to the presentation at hand. Not this time. For the first time I can recall since I started filming with the Monster, I watched "Everything", and I was nearly brought to tears. The struggle for restitution between Shae, who represented mankind, and Tori, who represented God, was all too real and even I, a seasoned churchgoer who has heard the story countless times and was watching it in black and white through an eyepiece the size of a postage stamp, was nearly brought to tears. It's that powerful.

     We were also fortunate to have heard from a missionary with an amazing testimony. Her family were orthodox Jews and live in Jerusalem, her husband is an Egyptian Arab with a Muslim background. She told us the story of how God worked in her life and even raised her from the dead! Her intensity was the topic of an informative discussion among the guys in my cabin later that night.

     Despite the downpour of rain, we had some wonderful team moments after the service. I personally was grateful to the team; they were so eager to help me pack up all the sound and video gear that I had to tell people to sit tight until I could figure out what I could have them do! This made for a record-time breakdown. In the shuttle van I was in, we stopped at a railroad crossing for a 68-car train to pass buy - yes, we all counted. When we got back, John Long had pizza ready for us. John Long pizza - 'nuf said. After that we had a brief team meeting regarding schedules and other things that needed to be set out at the beginning of the trip to ensure fluidity and unity throughout the next several days. After the meeting we all had some free time. I personally needed to retreat to the bunk to capture the video and start writing this, but since we had several  birthdays today and yesterday, John Long made birthday cake for the team in celebration. At 10:00 we had our bunk time where we debriefed about the day, and lights-out was 19 minutes ago. wow - a dozen guys in the same cabin and at 11:19 the only sound i hear is the clickety-clack of my keyboard.  Yes, God works miracles =).

     Well, that's all I got for now, I need some shut-eye myself! Feel free to leave us comments and of course continue to keep us in prayer as we continue to wage spiritual warfare against the devil who went down to Georgia. Be Blessed!

We've Landed/First Day