Our musical group felt like we needed to go back down to Cairo, IL to visit and minister to our friends down at the Promise Land Mission. So we gathered together some clothes and met this morning at Michael's house to carpool down.



The awesome thing about this trip is that Lisa was able to go with us. I was super-excited about this fact (After all, she had never seen the musical before - she had only heard me sing my song and Michael sing "Listen to the Rain" in person. She has heard most of it on the CD I gave her, but it pales in comparison to a live performance. She also pointed out the fact that she had learned that Cairo was the site of one of the more vicious race riots in the United States.



So Amanda joined Lisa and I in the car and we took the 3 hour road trip down to Cairo. We ate at the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in downtown Cairo (this is becoming a tradition of sorts - plus it's all-can-eat buffet). We met up with pastor Dewayne and made our way a couple of blocks to the mission.



We placed the sacks of clothing out on the picnic tables for the people to search through after the service. It wasn't near as cold this time as it was the last time I went down to the mission, so they didn't have the three space heaters cranked - which made me very happy.



By the time we were ready to start singing, Lisa had bonded pretty well with Esther Ruth (Ruth's daughter) and they sat with each other. We sang through the first act, and everyone did a fantastic job. My song went really well. I really enjoy being right there with the people and on the same level with them.



After the sermon we had communion, which for these people was a very rare event. In fact, I don't know if some of these people had ever had the opportunity to take communion. It was a very sweet time of congregational singing and prayer.



We went back up and finished the evening with the latter portion of act two. By the time we were finished the room was quite warm and I was pretty well spent. We left kind of quickly in order to get back at a decent hour, but everyone seemed genuinely appreciative and thankful. It's a nice little place to go to recharge and share all at the same time. Lisa and I drove home by ourselves, which proved to be a period of good reflection and discussion.



The push is on to get all of our voices on the CD. I almost had the opportunity to go down to Nashville this week to record my song, but that fell through at the last minute. My turn should be coming soon. We'll drive down, record for a day or two and drive back. Maybe then I'll have a clip of my song (with me singing) that I can post on this site for you all to hear.



It's quite an exciting time right now...