UPDATE: So far the soul count appeas to be eighteen from that trip. God == awesome.
So I did a lot more than configure wireless networks the week of July 5th. You know, like helping run sound for a Vacation Bible School program that brought twelve fifteen kids to Chirst (about half of the local people who attended). We also reached out to the adults in the community, with a hamburger supper, an ice cream social/worship night and even a bounce castle at the end of the week. The sponsor church for our dead-church-turned-church-plant even brought down a Sno Cone machine and a popcorn machine for the occasion (though you’re right in thinking the bounce castle was the bigger achievement).
Due to the policy of my home church with respect to mission trips (if you go, you donate your time, not your money) a vast swath of the Faith Baptist Church congregation was at Gateway Baptist Church in Big Spring, TX (somewhere between the middle of nowhere, a wind farm and an oil patch) for the duration of the mission trip. This allowed a single church to cover a lot of ground in spreading the light to the community. Now it just remains to be seen how the field work continues, since the church population has reverted back to its predominantly older, smallish congregation. Lord willing, the harvest will continue.
If you want to see pictures of the trip, I have nearly 100 of them (over one thousand were taken, but I’m not showing them unless I know you) displayed on my Picasa account (under Big Spring Slideshow if laziness isn’t curbed and memory serves). If you’re the kind that doesn’t easily get epilepsy or vertigo, Animoto mixed those photos into a crazy three-and-a-half-minute slideshow, which can be seen here.
Lastly, for the technical side of things, I ran sound (for music and the daily VBS drama) off of my MacBook (iTunes for music, QuickTime and VLC for sound effects…two players used so I could do simultaneous effects). The 3.5mm output of my computer ran into the church’s Peavy Unity 2000 sixteen-channel board via a 3.5mm-to-High-Z adapter cable. I actually tried using my Jabra BT3030 Bluetooth-to-3.5mm adapter (aka dog tag) but things were way too choppy and, after moving the sound board a few inches, there was just enough room to put my MacBook in the sound booth, and me with it. No PowerPoint (old school transparencies FTW), all fun.