Linda's husband, Jon, getting some help from Ava with the sound check
Our old house! The new owners have clearly put a lot more money into it than we did
Cars getting ready to drive off the ferry
Some of the tornado damage in Masachusetts
Prepping for the concert at Evangelical Covenant Church
Linda and Pam with the famous golden tennis shoe - it's a long story
This past weekend, I got to go back to my old stomping grounds in New York. It was so fun – I flew into Islip, Long Island, and my dear friend, Linda met me at the airport. I haven’t seen her in years, and it was just wonderful to have some time with her! I was doing a concert at her church the next night and then she came with me to Massachusetts to be my roadie for the weekend so we could spend more time together. We had a blast!
I did a concert Friday night at her church and met an incredible mom and daughter, Jodi and Kyli. Please keep them in your prayers. Kyli is 9 and can’t talk or move much, she’s on a feeding tube, and yet, no one has been able to diagnose what the problem is. They are just not sure.. Her mom is the most patient and persevering person I may have ever met, and she just loved her little girl. You can tell that Kyli is very bright, though, and she loves music, so she enjoyed the concert. My heart just goes out to them – we lived in uncertainty for our son’s diagnosis for quite a long time, but I can’t imagine 9 years. Please pray for their doctors to have wisdom!
Linda and headed out on Saturday morning and took the ferry across the L.I. Sound to Connecticut. I took a bunch of picture for the kids – they thought is was so cool that the cars could drive right onto a boat! Then we drove up to Massachusetts where I was leading worship on Sunday morning and singing a concert on Sunday night at the Evangelical Covenant Church there.
That area has simply been rocked this fall by crazy weather – they’ve had a tornado (in Massachusetts!!), a hurricane, and a microburst. We were just astonished at the level of destruction. I was there about two years ago, and it was really shocking. Our host, Pam Pearson (hey, Pam!) had been lucky with very little damage to her actual house, but the microburst did flood much of her bedroom because she had left her windows open a few inches to normalize the pressure and the rain was blowing sideways – through a couple inches of window, it flooded half her room! Just crazy.
Because of all this bad weather, a missionary family who had been scheduled for the church earlier was rescheduled to the week I was there – they had canceled church when it lost power before. They were also staying with Pam, so it was a full and very interesting house! They have 5 kids, the oldest is 11, and they live in Papua, Indonesia, in a remote jungle village that is a three day hike to the nearest road. Yup, you heard me – three days to a road! Just incredible. They were wonderful and had amazing stories. What an interesting couple of days! For me, it is one of the coolest blessings of what I do, that God connects me with His people all over the place.
After the concert, which was wonderful (ECC, you are some of the best hosts out there!) and one more night in MA, Linda and I drove back to Connecticut, took the ferry to NY, drove across the Island (stopping to buy a sock monkey – can’t leave a good friend without a sock monkey to remember you by!) to the airport, and I headed home. So tired, but so exhilarated at the same time. And so much to tell my family!
