apexworship

Well, I believe that played more praise music this past week than I ever have...and it was a BEAUTIFUL week!!!

Bright and early Sunday morning, Joel, JP, Brian, and I embarked on our jouney to Cleveland, TN where we were the praise band for "Global Impact"; a missions conference at Candies Creek Church. One of my favorite parts of this whole trip was in the car, on the way down. At 11:00am, we had our own church service there in the 4 walls of a Chevrolet Trailblazer. All 4 of us brought the Word, discussed the Word, prayed, and sang praises. I was very challenged in my views of service and servanthood. Those 3 guys can preach!

Well, we made it to our hotel safely where there was a very nice package waiting for us. It was full of candy, water bottles, cookies, and other goodies. I went out to the front desk and asked Bart (the concierge) who it was from. He said "that's from the church". Let's just say that this package was a small forshadowing of what was to come. Oh, and by the way, the crew from "Monster House" was staying at our hotel. They had just redone 2 places in Cleveland, TN.

We got to the church and immediately we were being taken care of. Guys were helping us unload, setup, get ready, etc. It was great. We got a soundcheck and met up with the missions pastor and the speaker for the conference. The prayer time that we had that night set the pace for the rest of the week. They/we were here to make the glory of God known to all peoples.

We had a couple nights of sound difficulties...mainly due to the fact that we had an 80's metal head running sound...which we were ok with, but the church wasn't quite as cool with. hah. Eventually we got it worked out and it was all good in the hood...or maybe it would be better said it was "all good in the woods. "

The coolest part of this conference was not the conference itself, it was the people we got to meet and get to know. This church made us feel at home; we felt like we were a part of Candies Creek Church. Each night, a different group of people would come up to us and say "hey, we're taking you to dinner tonight". Some were small groups, some were families, others just good friends. But they went out of there way to make us feel welcome, and they succeeded. The volume of our laughter was heard in many a restaurant in Cleveland, TN that week. Apparently they must think that bands and football teams are much alike because they took us to buffets for 1/2 of our meals.

Some other cool people we got to meet were the missionaries...who were our age. We met one guy, Jason, who was 29 but had lived in Tajikistan for 4 years with his wife and 2 kids. He had just been literally run out of the country by the religious leaders in his city. We also met Steve who was 26 and was now an assistant missions pastor at Germantown Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. He had previously spent a year in Egypt before taking a job at that church. Last was Will who was 25. He had just spent 18 months in South Asia. He is back in the states for 6 months mobilizing and equiping people, mainly college & 20's, to do mission work.

They were our age!!! I was reminded that missions isn't an old people thing, it's a Christian thing, regardless of age or location.