Interview

I have never done an interview in my life until two weeks ago. I did two in one week. One was for a radio station in Virginia. Then, I did one online. Brock is definitely a natural at it and me not so much, but go here if you want to see it.

I Lost the First Dog I Never Owned

I am not an animal person. I didn't grow up with any pets except for a couple of goldfish and two tiny turtles. However, my goldfish ate my sister's fish (I don't think we fed them often enough) and my cousin sat on my turtles killing them (she was a little on the chubby side). So, when a puppy came into our lives I was not especially excited. I was unloading our luggage in my bedroom last spring and there was a puppy...a dirty, nasty little puppy...in my room! A couple of weeks went by and the puppy tended to linger in our yard. Every time we drove up the driveway, the puppy was there to greet us. We found out that our neighbor, Barefoot Billy, had taken him in. He has a tender heart for animals. The problem is that he barely has the means to feed himself and his girlfriend, much less a puppy. The puppy was so skinny. Finally, I gave in and fed him. We taught him to stay on the front porch and not come in the house. He looked like a chocolate lab, so we named him "Caoni" after our favorite chocolate bar. We called him Cao for short. I told Brock he should call him Kay, since that's my sister's name and she had named her dog Haley (which happens to be Brock's sister's name...he always found it weird when they were calling for Haley). The puppy began to grow on me. He was such a good dog. He wasn't loud and obnoxious. He was so sweet and gentle yet full of energy! We had someone living with us at the time, so I had her feed Cao when we were gone. She moved out and we were going to be gone for the whole summer, so I was sure Cao would run away or starve. Then, a guy who was having a difficult time, Randy, moved into our house for the summer. He found a true friend in Cao (K.O. as he calls him which really corresponds with my sister's name..haha). After the summer, we came back and Cao was there waiting for us. Since nobody was living with us anymore I didn't know how we were going to keep the dog fed. A couple of days after we got home from the summer, Cao sat on the front porch all day with me. For some reason, I thought, "This is the last day I will see Cao." It was. He disappeared after that. I was sad, but I didn't know who was going to feed him while we were gone anyway. Brock said that it would be just like the Lord to bring Cao just for Randy's benefit. Go here to read what Randy says about the dog none of us ever owned. It's a touching story.

Prayer for Upcoming Shows

Last week was awesome! We did a show in Baton Rouge, LA and Houston, TX. At one of the shows, an atheist came with her brother and gave her life to the Lord. The Lord broke that wall down in her life and drew her to Himself. At another show, a girl walked into the church from the neighborhood. She had never been to church before. She had been kicked out of school and had a reputation of being a troubled teen. She said that she knew that she was a sinner and was ready to surrender her life to the Lord. That girl was desperate for forgiveness and she received it the other night! I ask you, no I beg you to pray for our upcoming week. Tonight, we perform a date night in Missouri. Pray for marriages. Please take this time to pray for marriages all over Wentzville, MO where we will be tonight. Pray for your own marriage (present or future) and the marriages around you. Pray for marriages across this country. Satan is attacking married couples in a big way. Then, we drive to El Dorado, AR where we perform 4 nights at a big outreach there. We will be in the schools doing assemblies during the day and then perform at a big high school arena at night this Sunday through Wednesday. Please pray for the Lord to work in El Dorado, AR in a huge way. Pray for truth to resound and the Lord to turn darkness into light.

After the Break In

It seems that when you pray, you begin with your agenda, but the longer you stay, the more the Lord's agenda comes out. My initial prayer after the break-in was that the guys would not drain our personal and business bank accounts. Since it happened Saturday night, I was not able to cancel my debit cards until Sunday morning and not the checks until Monday morning. So, I prayed continuously for the guys not to go and use the cards or the checks. When I pray, I picture everything. Using Carl's description, I would picture the guys and what they were doing. I pictured them going back to their poor houses and families. Somewhere along the way, I stopped praying about what they would do or not do and simply began praying for them. We had just been at that event with a room full of teenagers hoping for a bright future. I bet none of them would say that they wanted to be a thief when they grew up. No, theft is for desperate people. I had heard some of those desperate stories Saturday. If I had met that lady living on the street when she was 13 years old, I would have wanted to walk up and hand her my stuff. She was desperate! First thing Monday morning, we went to the bank to close our accounts. I nervously shifted in my seat waiting to hear all of the charges that had been wracked up on our accounts. There were 0 charges that came in that weekend! My prayers had been answered. Now, we just needed to see what the insurance would take care of. I had no idea if they would take care of anything. Brock called and they told him that they probably would not cover the business stuff but they would file it anyway. This was bad new since most of the stuff was business anyway. Later that day, I received a phone call from a bank in Atlanta. A guy had seen our checkbooks on the side of the road and picked them up. He turned them into a Regions bank there (he happened to work at a bank and knew this was what you are supposed to do when you find checkbooks). Through this guy, we found out where he found the checkbooks and had someone in Atlanta go look and see if he could find any of our other stuff. I waited anxiously to hear. Maybe I would get my bag back or my books! (I love books can you tell?) Unfortunately, he did not find anything. They literally threw our checkbooks out. I have no idea why except that is what I prayed for. Monday, we replaced most everything because we were going to a show on Wednesday. The good thing is that our computer began acting up on us at the show on Saturday. We were planning on possibly getting a new one Monday anyway. The only thing we could not replace was our introduction videos that we play at our shows. Then, it hit me! I accidentally left a copy of the videos at the show Saturday! I rarely do that. So, I will have them mail it to us. Tuesday morning, our insurance called us and said that they were going to take care of everything with a $1,000 deductible and $200 cash limit. This means that we are only out $1,400 which we would have paid on a new computer anyway. The Lord worked everything out.

The Best and Worst Day Part 2

As we were coming out of Pappacito's, we saw some of our friends, Carl Cartee and his family, from home walking into the restaurant. We had not seen them in years and stopped to talk for a while. We found it so ironic that we were from the same town yet only tend to see each other on the road. Carl is a worship leader, so he and his wife travel as well. After visiting for a little while, we walked to our truck. We were parked in the lower parking lot right by the steps leading to the upper parking lot and restaurant. Brock clicked open the locks of the truck by his remote and I bounded down the stairs to the driver's side. I was anxious to get home and had already decided to drive us there since Brock was exhausted. I sat down behind the wheel of the truck and adjusted my seat. (I am 5'2" and Brock is 6'4"...much adjustment is needed.) Then, I went to program the gps to go home. "That's strange!" I said. I could not find the gps. Brock asked, "Do you think someone could have stolen it?" I looked in the backseat and my face grew very hot. Both of our bags were gone. When you travel, you carry everything with you in a bag. These bags have our "everything" in them. Passports, my camera, my wallet, my business and personal checkbooks, the ipad Brock got me for Christmas, Brock's laptop that we use to play our music for the show, the book that I was in the middle of (and I had just gotten to the good part), my Bible study book that I had just purchased at Women of Faith and had just begun, my overnight bag with all of my toilettries, priceless magic, magic tricks and dvd's Brock had just purchased from a conference from people from Europe and Canada that would be almost impossible to replace. The list just goes on and on. We called the police and waited a while for him to get there. In the meantime, we called the credit card companies and canceled my cards. Sometime during this, we saw that they had broken the lock on the door. We just had not noticed since we used the remote to open the door.

The police officer came up and we talked with him about everything that was taken and filed a report. Just as the officer was about to leave, the Cartees came down the stairs after eating their dinner. Brock asked Carl if he saw anything since he would have walked right by our truck to get up to the restaurant. He said, "Is this your truck?" He actually saw a guy sitting in the driver's seat of our truck and another guy sitting in a Chrysler right next to our truck. He was suspicious of them for some reason, but what was he to do? He didn't actually see him break into our truck and he had no idea it was our truck. He said that he double checked to see if his van was locked and escorted his family up to the restaurant. We stopped the cop from leaving and told him that we had an eye witness. Here was more irony that our friends were eye witnesses to the crime. We have had much theft in our day but never had we had a description of the thief. For some reason, this helped me. In the other cases (which you can read about here), our stuff was just gone! Now, I at least knew what had happened to a certain degree. Then, I realized something that made my skin crawl and my stomach churn. If the Cartees walked up on them and we were coming out of the restaurant at the same time, we would have walked up on them if we had not stopped to talk. I remembered how I ran up to the driver's door before Brock even reached the truck. I would have swung that door open coming eye to eye with the thief. I have no idea how desperate he would have been or what he would have done. He could have had a weapon or anything. Brock would have been walking to the other side of the truck only to come into contact with the accomplice in the car on the other side of the truck. Suddenly, having our stuff taken was not as big of a deal. God saved us from that one!

The Best and Worst Day

Saturday was the best and worst day. We began our day early in the morning in Macon, GA. We performed at the Georgia Youth Summit's Back to School Bash. There were hundreds of students gathered from all over Georgia for this event. I heard some wonderful motivational speakers. It made me want to be a better person. I heard stories from some that had risen up from such a hard life. One lady was homeless at age 13. I heard a teen mom's story who was so desperate that she was preparing to end her life as well as the life of her baby...until she heard one of the speakers, Gabe Salazar. When we took the stage, I looked out at all of the beautiful teens and my heart went out to them. In a room of about 1,000, there was a lot of hurt. However, I know the God who is the ultimate healer. I could not go to each individual person and ask them what was on their heart, but the Holy Spirit could. I prayed for every student in their and their future. God alone holds their futures anyway. The conference was not religious at all, but I felt the Holy Spirit move in ways that I had never felt before. It really was incredible! It was held at a church's sport's center. The lighting guy there said that he felt God in the place as well. He had goose bumps all throughout the day. It was such a great event for us. We left there on a high and went to celebrate at Papacito's in Atlanta. That's when my day took a turn for the worst...

Spontaneity

During premarital counseling, Brock and I took a personality test. It wasn't your typical test, it simply would tell you if you were off the charts in a certain area. For example, if you are OCD, that would show up as being extremely high in the organization department. Everybody has an area that they are abnormal in...we all have our "things."

Our counselor began telling Brock that he was exceptionally high in one area only and that was spontaneity. He began to explain that if I were really planned and regimented, we would have a difficult time of it. However, I was off the charts in one area only too. That would be "spontaneity."

Twelve years later, spontaneity is still coming into play. Yesterday, we were driving our rental car to the Little Rock airport. We were discussing how much we were dreading the 4 hour layover in Chicago and checking in all of our luggage especially since one of our suitcases had broken on this trip. Brock said, "It would be quicker to drive home." We both looked at each other. "Do you want to?" Brock asked. "Yes!" I replied. I booked our rental car to Nashville and canceled our flight which left in an hour. (I love Southwest by the way. It's the only airline where I could get away with that!) We were home 3 hours before our flight landed!