A Decision To Be made, And A Moment of Pure Joy

Dear Prayer Team,

It would be difficult to come away from a weekend like we had, even with all of the challenges in our personal lives, without feeling extremely blessed.We're blessed to be alive to experience such a beautiful weekend; blessed to work with such a wonderful, hard working, and creative team of people; blessed to meet and fellowship with God's kids, wherever we meet them; and blessed to be able to be an agent of God's reconciliation with those who may not know Him or who have fallen away from a close walk with Him.

On Saturday, we had an outdoor concert at Light Of Life Lutheran Church in Aloha, Oregon (part of the suburbs of Portland). It was quite a sunny day,and we had the blessing of setting up our stage area in the shade, so that we didn't get too hot. They had a German sausage barbecue and the people from the church and some of the local neighbors just pulled up their lawn chairs and blankets. We had a really nice time together. Afterwards at the product table I met a man who was profoundly affected by one of our new songs (He Won't Let You Fall From His Hand). He told me that he had been discouraged by a situation that happened in church a long time ago and thatwhile he still loves the Lord, he just hadn't been sure if he should venture to trust fellow believers again. I told him that the particular song he was speaking of was written in the middle of a very difficult stretch of road that I had while ministering in a church, and that I truly understood his plight and have had to fight the urge to cut off the church and to focus inwardly. I said, "The great part is that through that situation God has been building the strength within me to have an open heart to the people of God wherever I meet them. There are so many blessings that you miss if you aren't in a church."

He removed his sunglasses to reveal eyes that seemed to plead with me for assurance that he could really trust that God would see him through it all.Then I noticed the tears that seemed to water the scorched ground of a heart, seemingly cut-off from the sweet fellowship of the saints of God. I believe he made a decision that day and I am praying that he'll follow through with what he knows to do.

Sunday night we sang at Tri-City Baptist Temple in Gladstone, Oregon. Our concert took the place of their normal evening service. They were such awarm group of people. We had several personal friends that came to the concert there. I got so tickled as I noticed, for the first time that I can remember, people's mouths were kind of gaping on songs like "TheDifference" because of all of the weird vocal parts and percussion happening all at once.

Afterwards I had record numbers of people wanting to hear the duck voice that I used during one of the comedy bits. A couple and their twenty-something son, Andrew, came up to chat with us. Andrew has Down's Syndrome and although he was very well mannered he just seemed so thrilled by the concert he almost couldn't contain himself! As his father chatted with us, I noticed him quietly trying to sing some really low tones. His chin seemed to dip lower and lower as he sang. He kept looking over at Joshua to see if he'd notice him, and when Josh told him that he sounded really good, he positively beamed! We all shook his hand and he politely said "hello" to each of us, then he pointed to each of us individually as he counted, "One, two, three, four, five...", and then, with a sly smile on his face, he pointed to himself and said, "...SIX!!" What a wonderful moment of pure joy!