RESCUE Sings At the University of Portland

Dear Prayer Team,

It was quite a relief to set up our loaned sound equipment last Thursday night. The performance was almost canceled due to timing circumstances at The University of Portland, but our tenacious contact there, an RA on campus, did his best and we finally got the word that we were "on" for Thursday. This concert date was put together in a very short amount of time and it was just a little too fast for the student organization to feel comfortable releasing funds for our concert. He went through an automatic appeals process with the senate of the Council of Associated Students of the University of Portland and won. Doreen, who was working with the RA, really feels as if God allowed that door to open. In his initial email contact with Doreen the resident assistant wrote, "There is something about youthful and energetic zealots for the cause of Christ offering their gifts of song that is soothing to the soul, especially during the Christmas season. It is for this reason I'm contacting you."

As a newer member of RESCUE, I couldn't remember singing for a college crowd this year so I was very interested in their reaction to us (and maybe a bit nervous). They did as much promotion for the concert as time would allow, but as the time of the concert neared there was only a very small group of people assembled in the half bowl-shaped lecture room we were about to blast with Christian acappella. We went to the little area they had given to us as a dressing room and prepared for whatever the Lord had in store for us that evening. I was still a bit nervous, but I had given it to God. By the time we got on stage the small crowd of 20 or 30 had turned into a crowd of about 200 plus! There were a few priests and a family or two, but generally it was all college-aged people. They were an AWESOME crowd to sing to! They responded to everything we did. They had such genuine faces and open smiles!

After such an amazing time, I was not surprised by the fact that a huge percentage of the people in attendance came by our table to shake hands and talk with us. I felt like I met everybody there! Many of them stood there kind of stunned, saying that they had never seen anything like what we were doing. Many of them were touched by the message of our songs. In the lobby, Josh even got to sing with a young group of men who had formed a quartet on campus that was missing their bass that night. What a blessing it is to be able to go out and encourage people and get so much encouragement back in the process!