GX International In Kilmarnock

Last Thursday evening was the last night of Impact World Tour in Scotland. As usual the last night is reserved for GX International (skaters, bikers, bladers, dancers, etc.). Well, it just wouldn't be right if there weren't some kind of challenge once again.

The day started out early as many of us gathered to help set up the skate park in the venue. There were many tired looking eyes as the previous evening with Island Breeze ended not too many hours before. Soon everyone got moving and we forgot how tired we were and focussed on the job at hand. We had to have a full size skate park built by 12 noon so the skaters could have enough time to get a good feel for it. Well, we came real close as most of it was in place just after noon before lunch.

While we were building the skate park one of the local youth leaders informed me of a plot he had heard that there were a bunch of kids planning on showing up with knives and they were going to try and cause problems during the alter call. So, we had a brief meeting with those overseeing security and put a plan in place to beef up security a bit. That meant more police and strategically positioning security personel and once again using the guys from TX for an extra security presense. The police were also instructed to not allow trouble makers in the door. Apparently, they know who they are. Well, aside from one guy who flashed a knife in the bathroom (he was thrown out immediately) nothing happened and many people once again gave their lives to Christ that night.

All in all we had over 600 recorded commitments out of approximately 6000 that heard the gospel at all the different events. Normally, 7-8% is the average for western developed nations. New Zealand had about 8% but we wern't quite that optimistic for Scotland because we had been told over and over again not to expect much. I am going to be very skeptical about the skeptics from now on because God is much bigger than any of our preconceived negative notions. 10% is amazing considering much negativity in the beginning here and that is probably a low number as we are being conservative because we don't want to sensationalize anything.

After the show, I had to take the kids and Betty back to the Ywam base, get the kids in bed and then head back to the venue for an all night tear down. Actually, we were there till 4am which isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The next morning, Erin woke up at her usual 7am so we didn't get much sleep and I was one cranky dude all day and we weren't finished yet. We went to a celebration dinner back at Fenwick hall. I was definitely not in the mood for that but after we got there and saw some of the teams for probably the last time, heard some testimonies and shared communion together, it was well worth it!

Tonight, we have one last time to gather with some of the people who were involved with the tour. Frank made a video from the footage Jeff got which we will watch and I'm sure we'll hear more testimonies as well. Its so cool to see the encouraging faces and stories of the locals!

I am feeling though a real sense that it is time to move on and report for our next assignment God has for us. I'll share more on that tomorrow. Actually, it might not be until Wed. because a nice family from Kilmarnock has opened up their house near Inverness for us to go away for a couple of days. It's really out in the boonies, about 20 mins from Inverness so I'm sure there's no internet there which will be good to get away from for a few days. Inverness is on the north side of Loch Ness so we'll be on the lookout for 'Nessie'. On the way up Sunday morning we plan to stop off at a Calvary Chapel for church if we make it in time. This is a church that was planted about a year and a half ago by some people that came over from the states and they have over 150 people attending there which is amazing in this country. Hopefully, we'll make it on time and I'll report on that as well.

Till next time, may God bless you all richly.

Here's a good verse to ponder as well.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." - Phil. 4:8

Island Breeze Night

Well things didn’t actually start out too well on this evening as around 5 pm we received a phone call from the venue stating that a large truck had just struck a utility pole and had taken the main line to the arena out. This meant no power for the venue and around 300 homes in the nearby area. Word has it that the driver leaped out of the cab for his life as there was a live wire dancing around the truck. He actually would have been safer to stay inside the cab as he was grounded by the tires on the truck. By jumping out he came very close to losing his life. If he had even glanced a part of the vehicle while jumping out, he would have been fried on the spot. Praise God that didn’t happen. Having had many shall we say challenges in New Zealand which threatened to stop the shows on each night, we weren’t sweating too much with this one even though we had less than 2 ½ hours till show time. We prayed and sent out prayer requests around the globe and got down to business. We ended up having a good connection with Scottish power and had some generators brought out in the mean time. The show went off about a half hour late powered by 3 generators but looked flawless from the audience perspective. We knew differently as the whole lightshow pre-programming was lost from the power outage so Tchiago, the light tech. had to do it manually. The other thing I just found out about yesterday was that the stage catching on fire during the fire dance was not planned. When it happened, myself and everyone else in the venue thought it was planned with piro-techniques but it was an accident. It did however look really cool as it completely surrounded the guys doing the dance and seemed to go out by itself on cue.

So, other than the power thing, the night went off great with many more coming to Christ. One of the really cool things that happened with the power outage was the owners of the venue got to see how Christians respond in a crisis situation. He was blown away watching how we all just got down to business without anyone freaking out or yelling and cursing at each other. That was encouraging because he commented that had it been anyone else, there would have been a complete meltdown. Just a little reminder that we are being watched all the time by unbelievers to see if we live up to our words. Before the whole thing began, John Ross the Tech. team leader had us all together praying that specific prayer. Praise God for that.

More tomorrow,

Marc

Team Extreme Night in Kilmarnock

I don't know what the deal is but I have been having so many problems with the blog lately which is why there was no post yesterday.

Though this is a week late I thought I'd continue to share some pics from the different nights and so these shots are from last Tuesday night of our evening with Team Extreme.

Since this was the first night in the main venue things got a bit crazy when volunteers were checking in. That's what is going on with Raquel, Julie and Heidi to the left. This picture was actually taken after things calmed down a bit but it was pretty crazy just prior to this when the Local Links, Stewards and other volunteers were checking in, getting signed up and getting their passes.
In this shot a couple of TXers were getting ready to have a race by seeing who could get these big tractor tires to other end of the arena first. That's Victor from Latvia to the left with Jimmy from USA getting in position to officiate and one of the guys from Samoa ( I can't remember his name) to the right. The Samoan ended up winning but it was real close.

Overall the evening was a major success with over 1500 in attendance and close to 300 coming forward for the alter call. Well over 200 were registered decisions for Christ. Praise God!

After the alter call Jeff went around with Candace (from Ywam, Edinburgh) and got some amazing testimonies from people. Jeff also was busy getting footage of all kinds of stuff which has just been edited by Frank into a 40 minute video. We'll be sending some home to Jeff and others some time next week after they're duplicated. We just finished watching it and it was really cool.
Tomorrow I will try and give a report on Island Breeze complete with pictures as well. Till then I hope you enjoy these pictures and the wee TX report.

IWT Week in Pictures

Since we are way behind in blogging I thought the best way would be to do kind of a photo journal type of thing.

The picture on the left was shortly after the team from Zion arrived and recieved the obligatory Scottish greeting from Alec the Piper. As some of you know, it comes complete with an optional bagpipe lesson (which I have opted out of because there were entirely too many lips touching the mouthpeice for my comfort). Anyway, many of the team gave it a try with Jeff sounding the least like he was putting a duck through a tortuous excruciating death.

On Friday we broke camp at our house after a great night with TX the night before with over a hundred kids and some adults coming forward to make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

On Saturday we headed down to Ayr to help out with the 'Death and Desire' concert at the 'Ark' a Christian led dry pub. Though the band was very good, the gig to be honest was a bit of a dud as hardly anyone showed up so it was just music and no ministry. We were pretty disapointed as the club had mentioned on many occasions that they average as many as 250 per night. Besides IWT staff and Ark staff and groupies, there were probably 15 kids that showed up. The other disappointing thing was that the only lyric I understood from the evening was something from one of the other bands which I can't repeat here on this blog. I know what some of you are thinking, Marc's getting old, but as we left the building that night, one from the Zion team said the exact same thing and that person was at least a decade younger than me. All that being said, the guys from 'Death and Desire' were really nice guys and I'm sure somewhat disapointed in the evening as well.

On Monday we had set up day at the main venue which by the time this picture was taken was just about complete. That's Tchiago the lighting technition from Brazil in the pic to the left. He was a trip as he was always joking around and a lot of fun to be around. He also really knew his stuff and did a great job with the lights. As with anything of this magnitude you are going to have some challenges and at around 1pm on set up day we had our first one. We got a phone call from customs that our sound and lighting equipment truck that came over from Norway was held up in customs because the ferry company didn't have the right paper work. Well after much prayer they finally released them after about 4 hours which put us really far behind but it all got done in the end.
On Tuesday we had another challenge as an inspector from the Kilmarnock council told us our stage wasn't set up properly but that was taken care of as well and we were ready for the first night with Team Extreme International.

I'll post on that tomorrow.

Bye for now, Marc 

Things Getting Back to Normal

First of all I am sorry to all of you out there that have been waiting for blog updates on the tour last week. I had tried on several occasions to post a blog only to be blocked by the internet system at the Ywam, Seamill Centre where we were staying. I was extremely frustrated as I spent a good deal of time only to have it be lost out there somewhere in the blogosphere nether regions. Oh well, I'll give it another go and I think it'll work this time as we are back home now.

It's good to be home in our own beds and back to normal schedules. By the end of the week, we were all pretty exhausted especially after the last night as many of us were up until 4am. That wouldn't have been so bad but Erin's sleep schedule didn't change just because it was IWT week in Kilmarnock. She still woke up at 7am and repeatedly yelled, Dadda, Daddy until I gave her my undivided attention. So, on Friday we had a total of three hours of sleep and we weren't finished yet as we had a celebration dinner in the evening we had to attend. Needless to say, I was one cranky dude all day long and not much fun to be around. The celebration dinner was pretty cool as many testimonies were shared and we said goodbye to many of the team members for the last time. They were a fun yet strange looking bunch as we had people there from all over the world including: Latvia, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Spain, Germany, Samoa (and some other south pacific countries that I can't pronounce or spell), New Zealand, Brazil, USA, Canada and of course Scotland. These people came in all different sizes as well as the Team Extreme guys were somewhat larger than the rest of us. One of our goals each day was to get in the food line before them to ensure that there would actually be food leftover. Most times we were successful.

I will share more in the next post but I thought I'd wait 'till I could get my pictures up from the camera which is currently in a room where someone is sleeping.

More soon.

Marc