First Call Responders Banquet

Hello Prayer Team!

Last week we participated in a really amazing Friday evening performing at a private event which was an appreciation dinner for First Call Responders. Those are the people who are running into the burning buildings to save people while the rest of us are finding safety. The organizers told us that approximately half of the people in attendance were non-believers. We had the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at the beginning of the event for our very first time, and with the group of active and participating citizens in attendance, it isn't hard to imagine that their response to that performance was pretty incredible. We also did four more songs later in the program.

There was a local comedian who was the M.C. and he pretty much brought down the house. But the highlight of the evening for me was when a Naval official from the Pentagon in Washington D.C. got up to speak about people who risk their lives to save others. He was a Navy Top Gun instructor and is the pilot of the airplane in many of the action scenes in the movie Top Gun. He was in the Pentagon during the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and was the instructor of the committed Christian co-pilot whom, after being hijacked, struck the first building. The speaker was also in the very section of the building that got hit. Amazingly, he was spared. After crawling under the smoke and trying to save lives, having to be the one to tell the wife of a colleague of his that her husband perished in the attack, and making the four hour hitchhike home after the attack, his teenaged son gave him a bear hug and told him that he was SO happy that his life was spared.


External damage to the Pentagon


"Then, he backed away and looked at me and asked me a question I'll never forget, 'Well dad?', he said, 'What are you going to do with the rest of your life?'"

"He's older and is working right now, but if he were here tonight I'd have him come up to the stage in front of you who know how precious and fleeting life can be, and ask the same question."

He'd obviously decided that nothing in life was more important than sharing his faith in Jesus Christ with as many as he could.

After he'd finished, RESCUE got up on stage and finished the night with the song, "Rescue". We were so thankful to be a part of such a powerful evening and that lives were changed for God.