Friday 12 February 2010

USA Tour: Day Six

A day for pirate glory and launching the boat….

Sadly for curious amongst you the two seriously weird breakfast items were absent today so no photo but a much better crispy bacon and scrambled egg alternative had appeared. My prayers were answered! We jumped in the car and headed into Charleston centre and parked up near the old market. During our little browse around we found a leather goods shop, it wasn’t cheap but the smell of the leather was incredible. An older lady called Sue who was serving asked us if we were OK and when we said yes and asked her in return she said she was but she seemed to have forgotten the huge medical arm brace she had on her left arm keeping everything from the shoulder to the wrist immobile! I said your arm doesn’t look OK and I asked her what was wrong and she said she’d had the whole shoulder joint taken apart and ligaments re-connected and then all put back together. She had six more weeks of the brace then several months of recovery ahead. I asked her if I could pray but said I wouldn’t put my hand on her arm because of the pain – I prayed with her for just a few minutes and she seemed to get really touched; perhaps before we leave I’ll get a chance to pop back in and see how she is, I’d like that. Then we hit the mother-lode a shop called “The Brass Pirate” – a shop selling nothing but pirate stuff! Everything from key-rings to flags to t-shirts to CDs of pirate shanties, wow this place had EVERYTHING and there was a lot of Pirate Glory in the place. Dave was ready to buy up their whole stock of t-shirts to sell at the next Sloshie and he’d tried one and pulled a load out ready to buy when I spotted all the art-work and writing was all on the back of the t-shirts with just a tiny pirate logo on the front! This just looked the wrong way around – but the woman in the shop seemed to think we were crazy to want the main design on the front of the shirt! So Dave abandoned his bulk-buy and contented himself with a few little odds and ends. I’d have had a t-shirt too if they’d been printing the right way round. I don’t think we got to the best parts of Charleston today but we ran out of time. 


Sitting in the car before we headed back we listened to Romans 8 in The Message Audio Bible on Godfrey’s iPhone and got jacked up good. The truth and revelation in there is awesome.

We had to be back at the hotel for 12:30 to meet Woody and some Indian missionaries to go for lunch with them. We had visions of slight little men from the sub-continent but in fact it was an American couple called John and Sarah who have an adopted Indian son. They’ve been out in India for years and run two orphanages amongst other things. They were clearly carriers of the shoobie and we got pretty jacked up just in the lobby of the hotel. The Holy Spirit was evident and party was near at hand! We drove out into the boon-docks for quarter of an hour or so to a proper ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ style Mom ‘n’ Pop cafĂ© attached to tomato farm. I had blackened cajon salmon with mashed potatoes & gravy and collards (pronounced without the ‘r’). Collards turned out to be some kind of cabbage leaf cooked in a particular way that made sure it didn’t taste like cabbage! This was the best meal so far and we all instantly connected with Brad, Woody’s son, and with John and Sarah. Paul joined us too and there was a lot of laughter and sharing of life. It was a joyous meal. John and Sarah are the kind of people you feel like you’ve known for years within minutes of meeting them. Woody blessed us by buying the lunch and then we headed back to the hotel to rest up before the start of the British Invasion of Glory meetings in the evening.
I managed to get hold of my lovely wife on the Skype phone during the afternoon (evening UK time) for a chat as she’d been out all day being busy and I’d not heard from her at all today up ‘til then.

After a much needed nap we set off at about 6:15 to Abundant Life and the meeting kicked off at about 7pm. There was a pretty good crowd in for the first night – often the first night isn’t particularly well attended but if more people come as we progress through it’s going to be absolutely packed by Saturday! Godfrey did a great job leading the worship time and there was a good mob in the front dancing and soaking up the heady presence of Jesus, including John and Sarah. Dave then came up and just told the truth of the glorious fullness of the Gospel and some of the stories of what God’s done in his life and with the Emerge Wales team across the UK. He was a really good boy and you could feel the expectancy and faith levels in the room rise as people dared to believe. Godfrey then came back on and we pushed on through to even higher breathtaking heights while Dave went round everyone who wanted prayer and laid hands on them and prayed with them. The meeting lasted three and a half hours, Godfrey must have been pretty shattered by the end, I know I was. A lot of people just didn’t want to leave; they were enjoying soaking in His presence too much. They even stayed when the band stopped playing and someone just put the “Hijacked” CD on the sound system! Dave and I and some of the locals just carried on praying for people as the meeting wound down, it was awesome. There so much liberty when the Holy Spirit is allowed to have his way, people get set free, healed and heavy yolks are lifted. It was a great start – we’ve got an amazing place to start from tomorrow. There’s a real sense that although tonight was good, very good, the Holy Spirit really wants to take these people somewhere truly spectacularly wild, free and glorious. I can’t wait for tomorrow night. We moved the drum kit and Godfrey’s stuff up off the floor and back onto the lower part of the stage at the end as it was a bit weird having half the band on the stage and half not – although being off the stage has advantages we thought it would help us keep tighter musically if we were all together. Some good guys helped clear space, dismantle the drum cage and remove it and get everything set up for tomorrow.
We went out for meal but we were too late at 11pm to get a main course so we had to settle for a whole load of appetizers and cold drinks. This was OK. We had Paul, Woody and his two sons, Brad & Matt, and his daughter Hannah with us as well as Matt’s girlfriend and a friend of hers. There was a lot of drunken glory round the table. The waitresses were very gracious to cope with a large party of drunks so late in the evening.

A tiring day but a good day. Tonight we launched the boat - we're off adventuring in it tomorrow!

Sadly the hotel’s internet access was down when we got back so although I wrote this blog last night it had to wait until this morning for me to upload it.

1 comment:

  1. We had a blast with you, John, Godfrey and Dave. "NO MORE EAGLES IN THE CHICKEN COOP"

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