Six Concerts

Dear Prayer Team,

Wow! It’s been a couple of VERY busy weeks around RESCUE! Since our last bulletin we’ve done SIX outdoor concerts! I think I’ll just give you a little taste of each of them.

Warner Pacific College was rolling out their new logo and decided to have a community event with local radio personalities, HUGE balloons, and CUPCAKES (yum!). We had an outstanding time at this very well-planned event!

Sherwood Presbyterian has a nice little park right across the street from their church where many community events are held, so they decided to bring Jesus to their community. There were several other Christian musical groups there and Starbucks had people there with, get this, coffee backpacks! Very cool! We think Dustin needs one.

Garden Way Church in Eugene brought us out to do an outdoor concert on their huge church lawn on a sunny Sunday morning! We hate wearing sunglasses while doing concerts because we don’t want anything to get in the way of the message, but the blinding sun was reflecting off of the white tents, so we made it a "sunglasses optional" concert. There were such helpful people at the church, we were well taken care of! It was a great event and I am sure that many were encouraged in the Lord because of their efforts. I had some barbershop friends from the Eugene area come to the concert to check up on me :-) . It was great to see them!

We also did a concert for a group called "Stand Up Girl". It is an organization dedicated to help at-risk pregnant teens to make godly decisions, encouraging adoption rather than abortion. There were two other groups before us on the program including a great sounding Christian band called "Allaway" (turns out I knew the drummer from barbershop) and a group of four sisters aged 13 to 19 from Grants Pass who sing Christian Bluegrass called "The Emmons Sisters". The concert was on a huge stage in idyllic, Monteith Riverpark in Albany, OR. We had a great time meeting with people afterwards and were glad to be a part of an event to benefit such a worthy cause.

We traveled from Albany that night to Sisters, OR and arrived in our rooms at about 2:30 AM. We woke up early the next morning to set up the equipment on the lawn at Sisters Community Church for their morning service. If I had seen the view of the mountains from their lawn in a movie, I wouldn’t have believed it was real. I wanted to just stop and stare at the Three Sisters Mountain Range, but then I saw another unusual sight. Right across the street from the church, toward the mountains, there is a herd of domesticated Elk. They were amazing! We had a really fun concert! My family’s closest friends live nearby so my family and I stayed there for Labor Day.

Last Saturday evening we traveled to Community Chapel in a little town called Sweet Home, OR. I heard Over mention something about an outdoor amphitheater, but I didn’t give it much thought. When we arrived it was dark, so we didn’t get to see much, but I could tell this was going to be quite an experience. The next morning as we loaded in the equipment we saw the amphitheater in the full glory of the morning sun. I was DAZZLED! There were flowers everywhere, a pond, and PALM TREES?? We’ll have pictures on the website because words cannot express how beautiful this place is. I thought I must have been transported to Hawaii in my sleep! We had a great time there. During the middle of the concert the pastor delivered a great sermon about serving others with what God has given each of us, and there was a big barbecue afterwards.

Even with all of these concert dates, Over was STILL able to get the pre-release album done this week! PRAISE GOD! (details at www.rescuemusic.com)

Even though it takes a lot of emotional, physical and spiritual strength to shoulder this type of schedule we’re so very thankful for the opportunity that God has given us to encourage the body of Christ and to share the Gospel with the people who come to our concerts! The members of RESCUE and our support team of friends and family all know that prayer, and prayer alone, has made this possible!