Dodge City Weekend

I should have posted about this much sooner, but everything has been getting busy lately. I want to give you a recap of our final weekend in July. It was a great weekend, but it definitely had some downs in addition to the many ups.

We began our trip heading out to Corinth, Mississippi to be at Brigman Hill Baptist Church for the finale to their week of Vacation Bible School. As some of you may know, our tenor of over four years left to sing with another group, so we've been using some past singers as fill-ins while we're looking for the right person to fill the position. This weekend, Jeff Schreiber (member for over 6 years) was able to fill-in for us, but he had to fly into Birmingham from Louisville. Well, he missed his flight due to traffic, so I started to panic for a few minutes until we found out that he would still make it in at the same time due to connecting through Atlanta. He was still able to get on the same flight from Atlanta to Birmingham. (Now that I think about it...why didn't we pick him up in Atlanta? I'll have to get back to y'all on that one.)

We made it into Corinth and had a great concert with Pastor Chris Estep and his wife, Beth, who grilled us some of the biggest steaks we've ever seen. They know how to guarantee that we'll come back when they call us. When the concert ended that Friday night, we drove through the night to Kansas City where we spent the day with Dave Thompson and his family. We hadn't seen them in well over a year, so we enjoyed sitting around the breakfast table and getting reacquainted. Their kids are extremely talented and have a great heart for the Lord. That day was uneventful (I think) and we had a great concert that evening with the Sudanese Refugee Choir. I can't imagine what these people have been through, and all because they are not ashamed of their faith in Jesus Christ. Would we still proclaim our belief in our Saviour if there was a chance that we would be killed? How many of us proclaim our belief now...when there is no risk?

After the concert ended, we drove through the night and arrived at 3:30am in Liberal, Kansas. We got a couple hours of sleep and then arrived at Fellowship Baptist Church around 8am. Again, I think everything went fine that morning. We met up with Greg Howlett (www.greghowlett.com) and as always, enjoyed being able to have him play for some of our songs and hearing him play his solo songs. If you still have not heard his music, go to his website and find out more about him.

Sunday night, we were in Wichita, Kansas. Greg had a solo obligation at one church and we were at Heritage Baptist Church. Pastor Larry Olson was a joy to meet and we had a great time with his people and with his family after the service. That evening, we actually got to sleep in a bed. Lance Cummins, one of our former lead singers, is the Worship Leader at New Spring Church, and he opened up his home to us. It's always great to see Lance and his family and we enjoyed eating at Cracker Barrel the next morning with his family and some other friends from the Wichita area.

Finally, now to the part where the problems began. If you've read some of my previous posts, you will know that we have been to Dodge City, Kansas many times before and that we've had some sort of mechanical issue or flat tires or inverted trailers every time we head that way. The only exception to this fact was last summer. We traveled to Dodge City and back without any incident whatsoever. That of course was made up for when our trailer flipped on our way to Dodge City this Spring. Well, we drove over to Dodge City for the annual Dodge City Days and as we pulled into town we noticed a problem. Our van would not accelerate properly as we would stop and go at the lights through town. It would hesitate and then finally get around to moving each and every time. We had allowed for some extra time when we got into town, thankfully, and Dennis and I headed down to the auto parts store to see if we could find out the problem. Well, we though it was the fuel filter, so we purchased one and I sent Dennis under the van to replace it. (I'm not even close to being mechanically minded, so he was the better choice) After 30 minutes of laying under the van on the hot concrete, we finally figured out that the fuel filter was unaccessible. In fact, when we Googled it later, we found out that it is in fact unserviceable. Convenient, to say the least. Well, we had another repair shop come out to look at the van and drive it and they couldn't make the van repeat the problem. We thanked them, paid them and prayed a lot. We finally got around to the concert...almost!

30 minutes before we were supposed to start, it began storming. It seems to always rain when we come into Dodge City, and this was no different, except that it was harder and windier than usual. Well, there has been an issue with the roof in this $40 million building leaking, and the only place that it leaks is right above the stage...and right above the laptop we use to play our soundtracks. Dennis, who owns the laptop we were using that day, got some towels and mopped up the water on the keyboard and screen and checked it out to make sure that it would work. It seemed like everything was fine, until our second song, when it just turned itself off. There were 800-900 people at the concert, so Jason began to do what he does best....talk! I went out to our van, got my laptop and brought it in. By the time I had come back in, Dennis had gotten his laptop working again, and began to sing another song...until the inevitable happened and the laptop died again. I know you're thinking that we were probably laughing about this and praising the Lord, but we weren't! We were frustrated (can I get a witness?). We finally hooked up my laptop and got something working for us to be able to finish the concert, but I think we did more acapella in that evening than we did the rest of the weekend.

After all was said and done, it was a great evening and many people expressed their appreciation, testimonies and condolences for the laptop. God even provided for the laptop to be replaced through some friends of our ministry who we will never forget. (Dennis surely won't, since he almost cut off two of his fingers at their house earlier this year). When we left Dodge City, we prayed that our van would make it home and we headed to Wichita, where we dropped off Greg to fly home. We then headed to Kansas City, where we dropped off Jeff to fly home. Jason, Dennis and I then drove the rest of that day to Gatlinburg, Tennessee where we ended up singing the next night for Impact, a youth conference that had over 2000 teenagers in attendance. There was definitely some energy in that room.

We finally made it home in the middle of the night on Wednesday night, 6 days after we started out on the road. Our van made it, and it is still running...just fine. It is a little dirty though, so we should probably wash it.

You know what, when I began writing this post, I thought that the weekend had a lot more things go wrong than actually did. I guess Satan likes to make such a big thing out of a little thing that our focus gets lost. I'm in the Chicago area as I'm writing this, and I just heard Pastor Bruce Humbert speak on "Making Something Out Of Nothing". God made the world out of Nothing; without Christ, we can do Nothing...we are Nothing. I would rather allow God to take the Nothing that I have and use it than to let Satan have anything to make into an obstacle in my life. So, in looking back, we had a great trip that weekend.

I hope that your life can be used by God for Good and that it won't just be Good for Nothing.

Nathan