At Community Wesleyan's women's event

Last night I had a great time with the women at Community Wesleyan Church in Newark, OH, but it sure didn’t look like it would go down like that! When we got there, we started the sound check and nothing was working. I mean, nothing. That is very unusual, and I don’t usually worry too much about it for the first hour, because it pretty much always gets worked out (we usually allow 2 hours before the start of an event for the sound check). However, after an hour, I was getting nervous. They tried all our backup files, nothing. Then they brought in another tech person, nothing. Then they tried another computer thinking theirs had finally died. We had video then, but no sound. No sound is not good for a concert. So at that point, I was rewriting my whole presentation in my head, thinking through what I could do if I went from an hour of music and speaking to just an hour of speaking. The meal started and about 10 minutes before I went on, the tech came down and told me they had gotten everything working on a third computer. Crazy! By the time I went on, I don’t think the women had any idea any of it had happened. And we had such a great night of ministry! God is such the Redeemer of every situation.

Also just wanted to post a new video we put together. This is edited from one of my live shows, our famous Kenyan baby clothes story! Hope you enjoy it – you can check it out here.

Back at Cypress Wesleyan teaching Esther

Leading worship at the More 4 Orphans Summit at Vineyard Columbus

With Renee Swope and George Dennehy at the conference

Audio Adrenaline did a concert Friday night

This is sort of a catch up post, but it’s been so fun to watch God working lately!

Started a week and a half ago with two women’s events. First on Friday night, I did a women’s event for New Albany Presbyterian. It was their annual fellowship event and it was essentially a large house concert with amazing food. 🙂 We had a great time together, and it was fun to reconnect with so many Young Life people there. My family has always been heavily involved in that ministry (my dad, Dave Chilcoat, started it in Columbus and my brother Mike is now the metro director here), and I couldn’t believe how many people we knew there from that ministry!

Then the next morning I got up early, and went back to Cypress Wesleyan to do a one day retreat on the life of Esther. They were as wonderful as they had been several weeks ago when I gave my concert there, and again, the tech was fantastic so they made it so fun to sing! We had a great time with them all. My husband ended up coming as well to film it, and since that left my son, Toby, all alone, he also ended up attending his first women’s retreat. 🙂 Couldn’t believe how much of it he was telling me about on the way home – guess he was listening! He was a little embarrassed to be a boy there, but when I pointed out that half of the tech booth were men and he was with his dad, he got over it.

That week I had a big rehearsal with the band I’m bringing with me to do worship for the More 4 Orphans Conference at Vineyard Columbus. It’s so fun to play with a band again (I’m often solo), but it’s also more complicated as we had to all get on the same page – more planning for me.

Thursday we found out that a big article about our getting 500 kids sponsored with World Vision came out in several publications – that was really cool. You can see one of them here.

Then Friday morning we were soundchecking at 7:30 am to start the conference which lasted all day Friday and then Saturday until 2. It was so disappointing because the weather was just terrible again. So many school districts cancelled or were on late start that many people couldn’t come. It was a great conference though – the organizers had so much great stuff packed in – and we still had an inspiring time talking about all the ways we can help and influence people on behalf of orphans everywhere. I was doing worship and also presented a couple of breakout sessions on sponsorship as well as special needs parenting, and then I also got to feature a few of my songs and videos. They had a domestic and international track, and all sorts of amazing speakers and musicians including Renee Swope from Proverbs 31, George Dennehy, Audio Adrenaline, Bishop Martin, and so many others. Truly an inspiring weekend even if I was ready to drop in a pile when it was over. 🙂

This has been an unusually busy spring, and I’m so happy to have two weeks off to catch up on everything!