Let me put a disclaimer here before I start: This post is not intended to gripe and complain or only talk about the bad that happened as we were planning this event, viagra sale but in order to understand just how awesome God is and how miraculous the end result felt, purchase you need to understand just how desperate for His help we were!
The last night of the Supernatural School III was called Supernatural Kids. I was so excited when we were asked to organize this event. Last year there had been a youth night and this year they wanted to hit every age group. We agreed and with more than four months to plan I thought it’d be a pretty easy, thumb breezy event to pull together. I learned two key things about this beloved Colombian culture. One, they’re not so into planning in advance, but rather prefer waiting till the last minute to get things done. Two, they will tell you what you want to hear until the very last second when they have to spill the beans that things aren’t quite as together as they portrayed. So my easy, breezy ideas gusted away once we really got to work. What I learned about God, though, was that He could take something that felt like absolute chaos, imperfect people, last minute changes and turn it into a something fantastic that would bring glory to His name and touch the lives of the most unexpected!
We began planning the event and the idea was to include as many churches as possible – break down the 2 hour program into 5 to 10 minute segments consisting of music, drama, games and “mini-sermons” using a different church for every part. Here’s another thing I didn’t know until we got to work – the AG churches in Medellín aren’t really into doing things together. They all like to do their own thing, but there is a lack of unity among them, a sense of every man for himself. Over months of planning, however, we were able to fill each spot with a different church. I was proud to have my team from our church, Semilla de Fe, taking on key roles including one of our leaders writing the whole program. I felt like everything was going fairly well until October came and I learned that second lesson about Colombian culture I mentioned.
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| Our key characters in rehearsals weeks before the event. |
It turned out my contact person who was supposed to be keeping up with each church wasn’t actually staying in contact with them (although telling me everything was set). It turned out one of our worship bands who said they were all in, weren’t actually going to be able to play. It turned out one of the drama teams didn’t know they were supposed to take part. You get the idea – what I thought was running like a well-oiled machine was actually missing several parts! Two weeks out we had a full dress rehearsal and only two of the six groups participating showed up. Worry set in, but we managed to get things pulled together, though, shuffled around and the week before the event I felt like things were back in good working condition. Maggie was so encouraging and reminded me that every time we do a big event or every time someone does a play, etc. that it always feels like chaos until the opening night and then it all falls into place. I put my trust in that idea that it would all come together in the end.
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| Templo Belen All Kids Praise Band |
Apparently the enemy saw that we were getting things worked out because the week before the event we got hit HARD with so many attacks. Our writer, director, narrator, my right-hand person is young, full of creativity and talent and this was his opportunity to shine using his various gifts. However, a couple of weeks before the event he was in a motorcycle accident and injured his foot. He couldn’t work at his normal job and was basically put on bed rest. During this time of sitting home alone he really sunk into a depression, felt he was unworthy to be part of the event and started bailing out of all of his responsibilities. The day before the event we had a long talk and prayer time together, working to overcome fear, unworthiness and anything else that was holding him back from feeling like he could put his whole heart into this event.
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| Maggie and Alex (aka Fiel) at the dress rehearsal. |
The day of the event I felt exhausted. The nights before the kids event were filled with the youth and family nights, so we were up late translating and praying with people. The days were spent running like crazy trying to make sure our own children’s church was prepared for the event with t-shirts, name tags, money for the bus they were taking to the event and all the logistics ironed out so the teachers taking them would have everything they needed. The night before I went to bed at 2:00am and that morning I was up at 6:30am finishing up the details.
We gathered everyone from our team at noon to head to the event site. Beforehand we had confirmed that the church and the sound team would be available at 12pm for us to do sound check and rehearsal. We arrived at the church and the sound team was not there. After some frantic calling one of the event planners told me they would not be arriving until 3pm for our event that would open doors at 4:30pm (remember that we never had a full dress rehearsal!)
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| Sound check – less than an hour before start time. |
The teams participating in the event arrived and we were getting things together, albeit hurriedly, but trying to get everything organized when I noticed a couple of men taking chairs out of the church and leaving huge holes without chairs. The pastor told me he had loaned the chairs to the event for the first two nights, but he had to take them back to his church. I began running around looking for chairs to fill the holes.
At the same time I was getting frantic calls from our home church. The bus driver showed up to pick up the kids and they were still getting them lined up and organized when he got very angry and said they were supposed to be ready at 3:30pm. He said he was going to drive around the block and come back to pick them up because there wasn’t a good place to park. He left – and didn’t come back. We had about 40 kids waiting at the church with teachers and no bus to get to the site. I was getting phone calls about every minute from the secretary, teachers, parents trying to figure out what to do. At the same time, one of our team members came to me to tell me one of the preachers for the event was not able to come. So on both sides I was frantically trying to figure it all out. Fortunately, the teachers at the church were able to run over to a bus lot and find a bus that could bring the kids to the church. Another team member stepped up and said she could do the preaching part.
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| The kids start arriving… |
The church began to fill and I called our team together for prayer before we began. It was at that moment that another team told me the person in charge of their part wasn’t able to come and we were left with another hole. This was MINUTES before the event began. I felt a second of distress but decided to leave it all in God’s hands. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do at this point! Corey began a countdown clock to start the event – five minutes. I looked at the time on the screen. I looked at our new narrator who at the last minute took on the role after our director was no longer able to do it. The fear that ran across her face made me wonder if we were going to deliver a disaster to the children that we wanted to bless. My heart pounded. My hands were sweaty. I wasn’t sure this was going to work out… BUT GOD…
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Ha! God had other plans. Check out tomorrow when I tell you what God did with all that chaos!