On Wednesday, Erick took the older kids to my parents' house because they were going to the Student Action Trips with Generation Joshua again. This year they are going to Virginia. So we just have Rachel and Tim with us for the week. When he got back, one of the guys from our church, who is the father two of Erick's sibling's spouses, called to let him know that his mother was dying. So Erick went to the hospital and spent all night with them. His sister and her husband came out and stayed overnight, but because I closed at Walmart that night and opened the next day, I never even laid on eyes on them. The grandmother passed away the next day, but before she died, Erick was able to pray with her for assurance of her salvation.
On Friday (yesterday), one of the other ladies from church took Rachel and Timothy to an event at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic (which is still open even though we are in a government shutdown because it is a state site) for a candlelight walk. They are having another one tonight, so if I have time after I finish my school tonight I would like to go, too.
Then last night, some other friends from church took us to a Booth Brothers concert. They are a southern gospel group, and apparently they've won a lot of awards. One of the guys had lost his voice and wasn't able to sing, so there were only two of them who sang, but they did a very nice job. They used to tour with the Gaithers at one point, they said.
Mark and Pam Fisher, the couple that brought us, have a music ministry, too. They sing at a lot of churches and they are really good. They also lead worship at our church, and singing with them on Sunday mornings is one of my absolute favorite things. Anyway, the Booth Brothers got to one song that people wanted them to sing--I don't remember the title for sure, but it was something along the lines of "Welcome Friends." They said that they didn't think they could do it without their third member, and asked if someone knew it that wanted to sing the other part. Someone called out Mark's name, and they invited him to come up. Mark said that he knew all of the other songs up until that point but didn't know that particular one, so he declined it. They sang it anyway, and just hummed when they got to the other guy's part because they didn't know the words. It was funny.
Afterwards they took us to Cracker Barrel. It was so late by the time we got home--like nearly one in the morning, but we had such a great time. They even bought us one of their CDs so we could hear what the Booth Brothers sound like with all three parts.
