After spending the week in Steubenville, OH, we're on our way back to Wilmore to get Cliff (finally!) and then we're heading back to First Alliance to lead worship Friday evening and Sunday morning. To follow the usual format, here's the recap of our last week and pray requests for the next venue.
Recap
We led worship for a youth revival at Finley. We stayed in host homes, hung out with the youth, and played 6 services throughout the week.
When we arrived in Steubenville after some difficulty (Brandon's GPS was right, ours were not. Let's not talk about it.), we hit the ground running. We met with Tom and Ryan, who helped us set up our instruments and their sound system in the church, and we started practicing for Sunday morning. After a long night of practicing, we headed out to our host homes to get some rest.
The guys stayed with Ms. Paula who constantly put our boys in a food coma and spoiled them mercilessly. The girls stayed with the Keyser family whose hospitality manifested in good food, amazing conversation, and taking a day off to make time to hang out with us.
We got to hang out with the church's youth group and do service projects Monday and Wednesday afternoons. On Monday we set up a grill and hotdog bar outside the church on the street and served lunch to people passing by. With the meals we handed out business cards for the church, and we got to have some pretty meaningful conversations with people who stopped to get food. On Wednesday we went to the Urban Mission food pantry to help out with some odd jobs. We had been told there was a lot to get done, but by the time the 15 of us got to work, we knocked out all the work and then some in about an hour. We enjoyed getting to serve the community and to work with Finley's youth group.
The evening services were up at Finley's ministry center, which is a church building that was given to Finley that they have converted into the world's coolest youth group building -- the pews were removed and replaced with a random assortment of couches, foosball and pool tables, and that basketball arcade thing you had in your basement when you were little. We played music for the services and then hung out with the kids afterward eating food, playing the world's worst game of volleyball, teaching foursquare on an awkwardly large court, and discussing the proper way to make s'mores (Gabe prefers his marshmallows burnt to a crisp while Brandon and Kat prefer a nice golden brown color).
Over the course of the week we had a few directional difficulties including but not limited to finding a giant giraffe on the side of the road (picture below). There was also a turtle killed in the making of our week, and a 40-minute moment of silence held in his honor.
We especially enjoyed getting to know the people at Finley like Tom, who organized our whole stay and took great care of us while we were there, and Gabe and Harper, the pastor's kids who just clicked really well with our group. We also got to meet a lot of people we'll get to see again at Hollow Rock like Rachel and Abby.
Speaking of Hollow Rock, we're discovering more and more that this whole SMT thing is an existing universe outside of Asbury. Joining this team was stepping into something so much bigger than just the 7 of us touring the country, and it's been really awesome diving deeper into that world.
Prayer Requests
As we go into this weekend, please pray for the following:
- Pray that Cliff transitions well from Malawi to our team, and that we make his transition as smooth as we possibly can. Also pray that musically we would get back into the swing of being a full band. Since the summer began we've been playing acoustic sets with Conner on cajon (the box drum), so it will be nice to have Cliff playing a full drum set and Conner back on his tertiary instrument of bass (his primary and secondary are guitar and vocals, so he's a little out of his comfort zone in general this summer). Our dynamic will be totally different when Cliff joins us, both socially and musically, and we're all really excited for the change.
- Pray that we would minister well to the youth at First Alliance on Friday night and to the congregation on Sunday morning, especially that the Holy Spirit would speak through us in all we do and that we wouldn't get in the way of what Jesus wants to do this weekend.
Thank you for your support!
Picture: The Giant Giraffe that signals "You've gone the wrong way."