little Texas roundup, part 1

I am feeling quite revived currently, from eating Chinese food all ALONE and then going to the thrift store ALONE. I heart ALONE, on occasion.

Now, about Texas. Lemme explain. No, let me sum up… we arrived in Texas on January 2^nd and then we started playing and doing pre-call rallies at churches and showing the bound4life video and promoting the events on January 17^th and 18^th. Probably my favorite pre-call day was Saturday the 16^th, when we played at a men’s conference in the morning and then a citywide youth thing in the evening.

About the morning: the men’s conference was filled up- about 80% of the participants were guys involved in rehabilitation and recovery from drugs or alcohol. This is one of my very favorite crowds to work with because they have been forgiven much, and they love much. They worshipped from overflowing hearts and blessed us SO much. I hope we get to go back there someday and do more ministry.

Saturday night we played at the Core and we rocked the heck. It was one of those flying nights- the band was in sync after all those weeks of playing together, and we gave it our all. Literally. We woke up on Sunday with no voices, from a combo of sickness and overuse. J Worth it. (also, little did we know this would be the last time we would play our instruments. What a way to go)

Sunday was theCall and we were scheduled to play last, at 10:15 pm. Our assignment is usually breakthrough either before theCall or at the beginning, so this was a change of pace and we were looking forward to blasting some high praise.

Except… we had no voices. We babied our throats all day, Richy drinking honey straight from the bottle and both of us swigging gallons of hot tea. We thought maybe it would work, but by the time we got up there for soundcheck, it was clear. Richy’s voice was gone. He made the decision to give up our slot, and not try to make something work. And it was God, you know? I would have expected us to be crushed- all those weeks of work leading up to this moment of being able to play together, in our home city, in front of this crowd.

Instead, we were glad to hand it over to Eddie James and let him tear it up for an extra 40 minutes. I’m not saying that because we’re so humble and holy- just we had so much grace. It was fun to be in the audience during Eddie’s set, dancing like fools.

Participation in theCall was awesome. I don’t have an official number of attendees, but I’ve heard 10,000. We were so excited to be a part, and to ask God corporately to turn the tide in Houston.

To be continued…