Sorry to be so long between updates; things have been rather non-stop for a while.  Here’s a brief overview of the last couple days, then we’ll get right to the many great stories from students.

Wednesday morning we got to sleep in, which was a welcome relief for everyone.  We had an afternoon concert at a private school in the North Valley called Academy of Excellence.  We set up on their concrete outdoor basketball court and played during their ‘Enrollment BBQ’ between 3 and 5pm.  This was a cool opportunity, because not only were almost all the students around, but their parents were there as well.  It was a carnival/block party kind of event, so when we weren’t singing, some of us were helping serve hot dogs, man the inflatable games, etc.  Not that I got to participate, but I did observe a fairly epic game of football going on in the lot adjacent to the court where we were setting up.  One of the school leaders presented us with a plaque of recognition in thanks for our participation in their event.

After the school event, we packed up very quickly in order to make it over to the Rescue Mission, get set up and ready to go by 7:30.  We barely got going in time, but it turned out to be the smoothest program we did all week.  Since the stage is very small, we did the whole show acoustic.  Since we had a fairly attentive sit-down audience - and free reign to share the Gospel - we took a break in the middle of our usual program to add in a couple of extra songs.  First, we asked Stephanie to sing and share a bit of her story.  She shared about her father’s death and how it impacted her, then she sang the song she sang at his funeral.  We then sang ‘Hold Me Now’ and ‘Revelation Song,’ which turned out to be some of the most passionate and effective songs we did.  We picked up again at ‘Whatever Reason,’ where we had left off, then Matt got up and issued a brief Gospel presentation, to which probably a couple dozen folks responded by acknowledging a new relationship with Christ.  The Mission invited us to an ice cream social in their kitchen after the program, so we got to go hang out and love on them.  We ended up leaving all our equipment set up in their chapel, since neither we nor they had anything else going on before we were going to be there again.

Thursday we got up and met near the school where North Valley meets to do literature distribution.  We divided into family groups and passed out several thousand fliers in the community, advertising for NVF’s new series around Easter Sunday.  We came back to the guys’ house, had a pool-side group devotion time, then split into interest groups and spent the afternoon at various recreational activities.  One group went up to the Mission a couple hours early because they wanted some folks to come help with clothing distribution.  It didn’t quite turn out the way they planned, but I’ll let one of that group tell you about that later.  We had another program at the Mission at 7:30.  We did essentially the same thing (that’s pretty much all we know!), but this time Stephanie wasn’t around, so…she didn’t sing…right.  Also, at the end of this one, Matt came up to talk about all the things God is doing in Las Vegas, and we sang ‘God of This City’ together.  We had some more time to spend with the people while the band and crew tore down the system.

Today (Friday) we’ve spent most of the day at Red Rock Canyon, climbing and eating lunch, and now we’re waiting around for the girls to get their stuff together.  We’ll head to a cookout for dinner, then off to the airport.

That’s all from me for now.  Do you like how brief that was?  Now for the good stuff: