Inside Today's Experience (Hurricane Irene edition)

Well that was interesting.
Woke up at a little before 6am when the power went out.
Because of an underground steam that’s under our house, we have two sump pumps that run a lot.
I mean a lot…our whole neighborhood thinks we do weird things because were always pumping water into the street.
So with a big rain from the Hurricane and now no power I knew the chances for flooding had just increased exponentially (no pun intended…ok yes it was).
So our morning began by in the dark basically moving everything from the downstairs to the upstairs.
Yea fun…not.
Of course then my phone started blowing up with calls and texts from team members who were without power and wondering what we were going to do.
In the midst of that, my answer was made easier when the theater called to say that they had no power either.
Now it was an issue of figuring out what time it would have to come back on to have a full Experience.
We also were calculating how to have a scaled back Experience in the theater with no stage lighting or projection…just an acoustic guitar and preaching.
But as time continued to pass by, the likelihood of something happening diminished.
Finally I drove to the theater to check it out for myself.
The poor manager had been there since 3am since a group of people decided to break in that night.
Not condoning it but actually that was pretty smart on their part…finally intelligent criminals.
Ummm wait…except for the part where once they were in they didn’t actually get anything.
In any case, a small group of people had come out and together we decided a little before 9 to cancel.
Thankfully Chad’s house still had power so I was able to go there to get internet access and try to get the word out.
Guess the only people that worked for were people that had smart phones but I doubt many were coming anyway.
After I left Chad’s house I went back to the theater just in case people showed up at 10am.
I pulled a couple of chairs out near the entrance where sunlight was shining through and waited to see who might show up.
I figured I could do a couple minute devotional then send people home.
Funny thing was 3 local pastors and families showed up who had cancelled their own services and hoped to check us out.
I told them what was going on and they decided to try elsewhere.
Guess I don’t look like a good devotional guy! 🙂
We did end up having 4 others show up…including a family visiting from out of town that I’ve known for many years…in fact they knew Lisa when she was in elementary school.
So the 5 of us prayed together and then I shared a combination testimony/lesson from Luke 15.
In some ways it was really cool…very informal…in fact I had a baseball hat on since I hadn’t showered or anything.
But here’s the important thing…it was still church.
Jesus said, “Wherever 2 or 3 gather together in my name, there I am in their midst”.
He was present, He was worshiped and His Word was taught.
Definitely a memory I’ll carry with me.
Two good things did come of the storm.
First, our basement didn’t flood and second we were able to head out for vacation a bit earlier than planned.
I’m typing this from Williamsburg, Va.
The internet just began working at the resort so hopefully it’s still good when I hit “publish” on this post.
A good chunk of the city is still without power.
It was an adventure finding dinner last night (2 1/2 hours).
We found a KFC that was open although you just had to take what they had, you couldn’t be picky.
We also went to a partially lit supermarket and picked through what food they still had/was not being thrown out.
They were running the cashiers and a couple of light off of generators…it was very eerie.
Nonetheless, we’re looking forward to some rest since our vacation earlier this summer wasn’t very restful since we had to renovate our previous house which had been trashed by our tenants.
Hope everyone has a great week…next week our worship pastor Bill Butler is going to be preaching…can’t wait to hear what God has laid on his heart!

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