For 23 years, my wife and I raised our three girls going to the Christian Missionary Alliance Church in our smll home town of Bridgton, Maine. As happens, we were led to start attending the Alliance church in Casco six years ago, but the paston in Bridgton has been very gracious about not having hard feelings for our moving on, and has even utilized my ministry many times since then. Then this weekend for the first time we took it one strp further and my entire LOL team did a Sunday morning service at BAC. What a sweet time it was.
Of course, many people we know still attend the Bridgton church, and it was great to see them again. After the service, all of us joined all of them all for a pot luck luncheon. If there's one thing the believers in Bridgton excel at (and there's many) it's throwing a grand pot luck. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The show opened with a lot of energy with our usual routine of introductions to BOB's "It's a Ska, Ska, Ska, Ska World". In spite of fairly thick carpeting on the sanctuary floor, Avery was able to zip by on his rip-stick while juggling three balls. This was Faith and Mary's home church, so of course the congregation loved Faith's star dance and Mary's 50 foot mouth coil production.
The show moved along quickly and smoothly from there. Autumn performed machete juggling for the first time. Luke was flawless with his devil sticking, including a very high throw, and Liam juggled a golf ball, softball and volley ball extremely well. Liam also continues to do great with his apple juggling / eating routine.
As for the illusions, Luke was a bit of a hero. Normally three students use three change bags to produce an effect. These three students were the only three unable to attend Sunday's show. Luke, armed with only one change bag and minimal experience with the prop, filled in for all three without a hitch. And home church hero Mary's candle vanish / reproduction got an audible gasp from the crowd.
The best part of the show, however, was at the end of "Beautiful, Scandalous Night", in which the kids act out leaving their burdens on our big wooden cross, we invited the audience to do the same by writing something on a post-it note and sticking it to the cross. Many came forward to do so. Then, on Monday when we were back at school, the class used these notes as a jumping off place in praying for these people. As one audience member told me, "I cried at the end". The Holy Spirit was evry present Sunday morning.