Sunday Post Game: 80 Hours

Hello friends!
We are officially home. I hope everyone enjoyed the timed blogs (even though two of them decided not to post until AFTER we got home...maybe it missed me). Let's take a look at some of the recap from this week:

On Tuesday, we loaded up the bus and made our way to the ALIVE festival. This was it! We were looking forward to this trip absolutely all winter and spring, and it was finally here. We boarded the bus and drove the 3 hours or so to Canal Fulton Ohio. After setting camp up, and getting something in our stomachs, we ran into the true enemy of the trip:

Rain.
It rained almost all day on Wednesday. It would break up a little bit every now and again, allowing us to see Mixtape Metro (who changed their name to "Sunny With a High", a decision I do not approve of, and put on a sub par show compared to their CD. I was a little disappointed) and Skillet (who put on a SUPERB show!) We also had some time sitting under the canopy at our camp sight and sang worship song after worship song. My fingers were tired and blistered at the end of the night from so much guitar action. It was stupendous!

Thursday the skies parted and gave us a wonderful day. However, we were starting to get calls and e-mails from parents. Apparently on Friday the end of the world would be striking right in the dead heart of Ohio. If only I had some sort of tool to help me through the decision process...

Seriously, the olde iPhone made its worth known to all this week. I spent an unimaginable amount of time browsing the weather forecasting world, trying to determine if we were really going to be hit with lightning and hail and perhaps even tornadoes. When we decided around lunch time to cancel the rest of the trip and move on to something else indoors, the iPhone allowed my secretary (MVP of the trip, by the way) to e-mail me a list of parent's phone numbers, and then set up a call chain. I got to book our tickets at a second event, and get permission slips to all the kids parents before we got home. And I did it all from an iPhone. Rock and roll people, rock and roll.

We did decide to come home. We did miss the Crowder band, and several other acts we had hoped to see. We also heard that there was a pretty big storm to roll through, so I'm not exactly disappointed with our decision. It just means that I'm going to have to pre-order our Church Music Tour tickets pretty soon. We decided to wake up on Friday, break down camp, and hit the road. We did that all in some pretty serious rain, so I'm kind of scared right now to open our youth room where we stuffed all the wet tents.

We decided to comp the kids for the missing days at ALIVE, we would make a trip up to Splash Lagoon in Erie. Ever since I had come to Westminster, I had heard kids asking me when we could go back to this place (they had gone just a few short months before I got there and loved it), so I figured this was our time. We loaded up the church bus and a couple of extra cars, and made another 2.5 hour drive to an indoor water park.

I will say it was nice to have a place to write my sermon where I could take a break every half hour or so and take a few laps in the lazy river or park myself in the hot tub. Good stuff! The kids really seemed to have fun, especially when they talked me into going down this death trap pictured above. I saw at least three people fall through head first! I made it out alive, but just barely.

When you count the working hours this week, Ed and I were on for 80 hours. We worked twice the daily recommended dose without even thinking about it. I've said before that I love my job so much that it never feels like work, and it absolutely doesn't. I do feel about as tired as I've ever felt though, and so I felt pretty bad about this week's sermon. A few people told me that I'm crazy and that it went well, but I just wasn't into it today. Shockingly, that's my last sermon for the whole summer. From here on out, I'm a worship leader and pretty much nothing else! Which will give me some space to keep writing the book.

Tomorrow is a day off! Tonight is peanut chicken with my dad (and the rest of our family, but it's father's day!) Rest is coming!

Godspeed,

Jason


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