Movies in the Meadows

Last Friday night we organized the first of our Movies in the Meadows series, and it was a great hit.  I think we stopped counting at 346 people, and we had to find parking for over 140 cars.  We'd put up the screen and mowed a big section of the meadow as advertising a couple of days before the event, and it must have worked.  The movie only started after dark (around 8:45), but people were arriving as early as 6:30 to claim their spot on the field and to play frisbee golf, or get their faces painted, or just sit and chat.  The meadow was still pretty soggy so we couldn't use it much for parking except for 4x4 vehicles.  The rest we parked along the road that winds up through the property and eventually to the house and barn.  I was directing traffic down by the entrance to the driveway along with one of our church members who's a cop and was in uniform.  Amazing how much better people behave when there's a policeman on duty!  We really didn't have any problems to speak of - a couple of angry people who didn't end up staying very long, but everyone else had a great time.  Hopefully the Word of Mouth advertising will work it's magic and we'll

We even had a not-so-angry Llama on hand!

have a bigger crowd this weekend.  The weather report says thunderstorms today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday... and 0% chance of precipitation on Friday... hmmm, almost seems like there's someone in charge of things :)

I will be preaching on Sunday, and I'm supposed to find the spiritual analogies in the movie True Grit (the new one with Jeff Bridges).  Mike spoke about this last weekend - how we can find truth anywhere in life because all of life originates with God.  Truth is truth, wherever you find it - and there are plenty of great lines from this movie that can be tied to some Scriptural truth.  As I was thinking about preaching on Sunday, it occurred to me that the last time I spoke on a weekend was a year ago and that the church has grown by 100% since then... no pressure!