Missions Fest B.C.; Waco, TX; Crossroads, Vancouver, WA; Portland Christian Center

Dear Prayer Team,

Wow! Has it been that long since our last prayer bulletin??? I apologize for such a long period of time between emails, and I won’t let it happen again. Between preparing for concerts with Brandon (who is doing wonderfully), studying lots of new lead parts/lyrics to fill some of the gaps until we find our 5th member, having a couple of pretty heavy duty fly-out dates, an incredibly demanding schedule and workload at my day job (we lost a couple of employees during the year and I am being flown around the country for lots of retraining and upgrading of skills so that we can fill in the gaps there), and all of the regular stuff that we humans must do to keep the home fires burning, I am getting kind of punchy! J These are things we must all do in service to the various callings that God has given us, so I am not complaining, just feeling very human.

I think I am going to launch right into the wonderful things God has been doing in and through the ministry of RESCUE during the past couple of months. If it gets too lengthy, just skip down to the Praises and Requests section.

On Thursday January 25th we traveled to Vancouver, BC, for a Missions Fest. Aside from the challenges of getting through customs with all of the equipment and CD product, we knew it was going to be a difficult series of programs to pull off because we needed to move our two sound boards and various other equipment between two large convention halls several times a day (praise God for wheels!). This was also our first official concert date with Brandon Bell as our vocal percussionist / singer. We needed to do between 3 and 5 songs in 8 to 10 programs. WOW! It seems impossible to accomplish that many programs and make much of an impact. What is impossible for us, God can do SO easily. He brought us all the right kinds of helpers and support to make this happen.

One of the two rooms we sang in was geared toward the youth that were attending the event. He allowed us to sing to a huge cement room (it echoed like a cave) full of excited (and very boisterous) young people. I just wasn’t sure we would have much of an impact on them. We sing a capella and I worried that with the full worship bands playing right before us that it would make it difficult for our style of music to translate. I was very wrong. After the concert we talked to young person after young person who were very glad we were there. I am pretty sure that adding a world-class vocal percussionist like Brandon didn’t hurt us at all.

Our booking lady, Doreen and her husband, Dallas traveled with us as she had done so much preparation for us to cross the border and was ready for any question customs threw at her. That preparation was made possible by some very key Christians who she met, purely by accident , along the way. We got into Canada in under the time we were prepared for, and we crossed back into the states in record time! God truly blessed our time on this trip!



By the way! The city of Vancouver, especially at the water’s edge where the convention center is located, is absolutely beautiful! Besides doing all of the preparation that road managing entails and all of the support work he does so tirelessly, Mike Zumstein took a TON of pictures. Will Holmer also did an amazing job of transitioning between rooms and mixing our sound under some difficult circumstances. Audra Cross and Becky Bell handled the product sales and had to cover both rooms at various times, but they handled it all with a smile! Brandon & Becky, Steve & Audra as well as Doreen & Dallas, all stayed with some of Doreen’s close relatives in Vancouver. She grew up there so it was a particularly meaningful for her to finally get us into Canada.

On Thursday, February 8th we flew to Waco, Texas. You may remember that we received a sponsorship for our Westone In-Ear monitors from a company called Martin Audiology. They have been very strong supporters of ours and between RESCUE and Martin Audiology we all wanted to find a way to go to Waco and meet all of them. The Martin’s have a daughter who was getting married so they brought us all the way to Texas to sing for her wedding and to sing at a joint benefit concert with another sponsored Christian artist named, Conrad ( www.conradsmusic.com ).

The Martin’s have been putting on an annual concert called the, “So The World May Hear” Texas Jam, which raises funds and awareness for underprivileged children with hearing loss. They have been on missions trips with Starkey’s Hearing Foundation to Mexico and provided hearing aids to hundreds of children. They decided they wanted to effect children in their own community so they started the concerts and a foundation as a means to that end. The concert we sang for is their first attempt at benefit concert specifically geared towards Christians. We were very blessed to be a part of such an event with such amazing people. We had a blast kidding around with Conrad and his band. They are a great group of guys! Joy is the Martin’s point person who arranges all of the sponsorships and brings in the artists for the concerts. She has been incredibly supportive of RESCUE over the last year. It was great to finally meet her even as she was going through a very difficult time in her life, physically. She was stepped on by a horse as a young person about 20 years ago and it shattered her foot. She has endured foot surgery after foot surgery to correct the damage done. She decided it was time to end the pain and had her foot amputated, and the day of her surgery turned out to be on the very weekend of the concert that she had worked so hard to organize. You would not believe the poise she exhibited the night before the operation as she helped us get settled. I was just struck by the quality of people that God has brought us into contact with.

Wednesday February 28th we sang at a Wednesday night service at Crossroads Community Church in Vancouver, Washington. I was really blessed to have my wife Kimberly with me at this concert! Some kind of strange fluke allowed us to have a sitter that night. After hearing a wonderful praise and worship service we were allowed do a 30 minute concert. My trepidation was, “What could we possibly do to add to such an excellent praise and worship time by such an amazingly talented praise team?” Through some very powerful testimonies after the service, God clearly allowed me to see that sometimes he just wants to use us… not because we sing pretty, not because we are so smart, he just wants to add our testimony to the mix of testimonies heard so that the light of his gospel as it shines through the facets and flaws of our lives can reach past the walls and into someone’s heart. Someone specifically led to be there on THAT night, in THAT service, with THOSE needs. It’s overwhelming and humbling to ponder that the One who gave the storm its fury, and the flower its beauty made one so flawed as I to bear witness of his amazing grace and resurrection power. WE have a part to play in someone’s eternity. PRAISE GOD!

And on Sunday March 11th we sang at Portland Christian Center’s Music appreciation banquet. It was great to share this time with them as they looked over the things that the Lord had accomplished through them in the past year.

It’s really good for us to stop every once in awhile and ponder what the Lord has done, much like this email has been for me as I sit here, much later than I wanted to be up, thinking about the way that God, through his grace, has mingled the heavenly with the earthly. What good is my cracked, earthen vessel without His living water to carry and distribute? How will those waters find thirsty souls unless His people will fill up, and go?