Monday, August 4, 2008

A Night to Remember

On Saturday night, I had the opportunity to share about Orphan Relief & Rescue at Acoustic Jeremiah. My sister Julianne went with me. I should have known...when the two of us are together, it always makes for an adventure!

We decided to leave the house early to head to the north side of Atlanta; we planned to make a pit-stop at REI and then we would head to Canton. We allowed an hour to get from REI to the Chapel, and I knew that would be plenty of time. As we approached exit 14, the sky looked ugly! We drove through Micky-D's for a $ menu dinner, and as we sat in line at the drive-thru the rain began to pour...and I mean, POUR! It seriously looked like a hurricane! (I later heard there were 70mph winds around Atlanta)

We got our double cheeseburgers and proceeded to the Chapel with caution. Well, there was a completely uprooted tree laying across 3 lanes of the 4 lane highway, so we waited about 15-20 minutes to pass. Then we turned onto the road that the church is on, and I knew we were only about 2 minutes away. There were a few cars stopped on the road, and come to find out, a powerline had fallen across the road...and this was the only way to get to the church. By this time, I was really beginning to feel like God was playing some mean trick on me!

After waiting here for almost 30 minutes, we got tipped off by a local resident that there was a gravel driveway that we could take to bypass the downed powerline. We decided it wouldn't hurt to give it a try...so off we went, looking for the magical gravel driveway. We bypassed the roadblock, and arrived to a chapel with an empty parking lot and without electricity...making it alittle difficult to have a concert! We decided that we would walk back down the road and tell everyone about the magical driveway...and people began to make their way through. We walked back to the chapel, and almost every car that had gone down the driveway was now in the parking lot! And, the lack of electricity made for a very good topic of discussion with the 50 or so people...trying to get them to imagine life without electricity. I honestly really don't remember what I said, and I think I spoke for about 10 minutes. I sent eveyone home with a postcard that I had put together the night before, so I hope it will be a reminder to check out ORR's website and my blog. I also asked them to pray for Liberia, for the children and for ORR's ministry. Then we had a really good concert...without power...without mics...without guitars plugged in...without lights....it was the real 'live and unplugged'!

Anyway, thanks to Matt at Acoustic Jeremiah for giving me the opportunity to share! It was an adventure! I figure this was pretty good practice...nothing more could go wrong, right? And, since I'm not much for speaking in front of crowds, it made it much easier to do it in the dark and without a mic! If you were at AJ, and that's why you're reading this now...thank you for listening and thank you for digging deeper into God's call to care for the fatherless.
[I was pretty proud of my flyer creation, haha.]




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