Dusting for Fingerprints

Yesterday I told Sarah that the day was amazing, but for all the wrong reasons. Why? Well, from an outsider's perspective I'm sure it had the suspicious appearance of a nightmare rather than a dream. But it was actually totally the opposite. Sure, we had many challenges, but they became opportunities for God to get involved. (I'd say that God is always interested in being involved, but often the only way we'll let him is when we're at the end of our rope.) Let me tell you of some of the ways I saw God being involved. The night before, I agreed with Cassie that I would pick her up at 8. Well, I was up basically the whole night getting ready for the next day, and when I finally got home for a shower and food, I thought I might be able to get away with a quick nap. K, let me just say that one should not set his alarm when sleep deprived. I set the alarm for a time that had already passed, and I subsequently slept through the time I wanted to wake up. Cassie saved my butt when she called around 8:30 wondering if I was still going to pick her up! So I got back to the church already behind the 8 ball, being an hour later than planned. By God's grace I was able to just trust that God would work everything out, since he had planned M:A in the first place and had forseen what would happen. All the loose ends did finally get tied up (thanks to some very hard-working and committed individuals) and we left the church around 12:15, still running late. We got to the park, started to unload, stopped to pray together, and it promptly rained. Actually it poured. But since we had still been running late, it didn't affect us too much, except to wait it out. Oh yeah, also the climbing wall could only be set up on the pavement, which totally messed up our set-up plans. But we thought to use the stage backwards and it turned out to create a nice intimate stage/audience set-up--one which we might adopt for the other six weeks!

There were other challenges which didn't turn into interesting plot twists, but the fact is that we got through them. There was the little issue of having two vehicles with manual transmissions to get to the park, but I was the only one on the team that could drive them! The velcro wall provided it's own challenges with a seam tear with chasm-like proportions. And then I kind of took one of the most important pieces of the backdrop out of the trailer before we even left the church! That darn egg just would not get sucked into the bottle. The cordless microphone almost drove me bonkers. And Secret Agent Man would still be waiting for the phone to ring because of my blunders with the sound clips. Finally, there was the automatic sprinkler incident. Can we say "expensive sound equipment and its technician getting a pleasant shower"?!

But through it all I had a blast. I hope the rest of you Tuesday people did too. And way more importantly 30-40 kids still came, despite the rain. And they had a great time, despite the challenges we faced. And we have close to 30 signed up for the Tuesday M:A, with some of them planning to bring friends with them next week.

Appears that God's fingerprints are all over that day.