Amazed....

We used to do a worship song, "Lord I'm amazed by you" and I think that song really sums up this weekend. I'm sure by now all three pastors, (Pastor Daniel, Josh, and Pick) have all blogged about the weekend, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

So let's start with Saturday, If you read Josh's Blog you know we've been tracking the weather all week. Since Monday all the weather stations were calling for rain. Our prayer was for a warm sunny day. As always God 1, weatherman 0. (More on this later)

Setup ran really smooth and the volunteers. We had over a hundred (near 150, from an earlier account) Lifepoint volunteers show up to help get the event rolling. Boy did it roll. I'm sure either Josh (who was the lucky person designated to be the event coordinator, or Pastor will be getting a call from the city. Last year we had 2500 people and stopped traffic for 2 miles around the school where we meet. No problem, we figured around 4-5 thousand people would show up this year. Depending on your source, (newspaper, radio, etc) we estimate somewhere between 7 and 12 thousand people showed up, traffic was backed up for MILES in every direction. I heard as far as the mall on Rt. 3 from one side, Lafayette Blvd, from another. We had chick-fil-a as a vendor and they kept running out of food! Oh and did I forget to mention that the police had to shut down our entrances? yeah we had THAT many people showing up. In fact we're already talking about where to go next year. The problem is finding a venue big enough, and one that can accommodate such a huge surge of traffic. And while I'm on the subject Mad Props to Tom Spellman and the whole Parking team who were swamped and went way above and beyond normal call of duty.

Then the eggs, I had the awesome privilege of doing all the ground level filming. (So if the video sucks when Josh get's done editing it, then it's my fault). I had joked all year leading up to this event that it looks like Lord of the Rings when the kids rush in to get the eggs, Well, you'll get a chance to see it I filmed several opening runs from the "epic" angle, just say a quick prayer that it turns out all right.

Also filmed some of the other events going on, we had a petting zoo, a rock climb, and a couple other vendors showed up as well.

Mad props to our Volunteer army, who put in, by my estimate an approximate 1,050 combined man-hours on Saturday ALONE. no idea HOW many hours were put in during the planning stages all I know is that it's a lot.

About the weather, next year I'm going to be dangerously specific with my prayer. Mostly clear with long periods of light cloud cover. I think most of us ended with sunburn from the day... here's an interesting bit of personal trivia in the last two years I've had a total of two Sunburns. The most recent was from the Eggdrop, the other was from our Gas buy down.

Then there was yesterday. What an amazing day, I didn't hear a count from the last service, but there was an estimated 30 people who changed their eternal destination from Hell and an eternity apart from God, to Heaven and an eternity with their creator how awesome is that! And that was just from the first two services! We had 674 people attend across three services, it was w00t-able.

Our set list was All Because of Jesus (by Fee) Mighty to Save (Hillsong) Wonderul Cross (Tomlin/Redman) with a performance song Meant to Live (Switchfoot) everything was so on! My whole upper body is killing me now too. I didn't just play, I didn't just perform I was in full blown worship mode and I have no regrets. Finally, Jeremy and Tom sang Mighty is the Power of the Cross (Tomlin) during the invitation, (with Ronnie, on guitar, Bill on Bass and Hannah on Cello) we were going for one of the those "Meet with God" moments I can't speak for anyone else but I know that my eyes were sweating.

And Pastor preached like the building was on fire, if there was ever (there wasn't for the record) any doubt in my mind about his Passion to reach people who are far from God, yesterday would have blasted those doubts away.

God we give you the glory for this amazing weekend where we celebrated the Resurrection of your son Jesus. Thank you for letting us, for letting me have a part in it.