Thunderstruck III

Tonight was the last night of the Gainesville edition of Summer Xtreme Nights, also called "Thunderstruck."  We had a great night, and a great time afterwards with the classic "water day" event outside.  There we had all these waterslides and squirt gun fights and so on.  The event inside was big, with games, great worship sets, an uplifting message, the Storm Cats videos, and of course the skit too.

Maddie was here for this one too, helping out, and getting caught up in the chaos outside with the squirt guns and water buckets.  If you ever went outside tonight at the church, you were getting soaked!

One interesting moment tonight was a mistake from the sound booth that resulted in something unexpected:

Just a random story, but tonight the sound team in the MAIN SANCTUARY apparently had no idea they had the volume turned up so incredibly loud upstairs on the 360, our sound effect device.  So, at one point, the Narrator let everyone in the audience know that suddenly there was a loud noise on stage.  Obviously, the set-up was for the sound of thunder, although I had scripted a fart sound as the joke, because the kids all know Nerdo has bad gas and that sort of thing happens a lot with him.  The Narrator gets mad at Nerdo, and then they go on to the “real” sound effect, thunder.  Just a quick little fart on stage, ha-ha. 

ANYWAY, so as Narrator, I said, “Then there was a loud sound!”  And at that point, there was easily the loudest fart sound ever in the heard throughout the history of the world.  I don’t think I’m going out on much of a limb by saying that.  Our main sanctuary team upstairs had things turned up ALL THE WAY for that one fart sound, and it was a really long one that you could easily hear outside, and probably down in Tifton.  I asked, and yes, people heard it downstairs for sure.  It was explosive.  It measured somewhere over 100db, according to one person in the sound booth.  It took all of us a few moments to recover, mainly from laughing.  Actors on stage went down as if there was shrapnel firing off all around.  I was backstage with Lance, and I was supposed to talk next, and I was having a hard time finding my voice.  I can’t fully explain how loud this was, as this fart rattled my soul.

I don’t think there’s really a point to this.  Other than, there are just these small moments that make life so much better, and that was one of them. 

Anyway, despite any missteps along the way, it really was a great three days.  Tonight the event started at Gwinnett, and will go on until Friday.  Also Friday is the Cumming event.  Next week is Braselton, Spartanburg and Orange County.  I'll be going to two of those to help out a little.  But this one was a success.  We had a few minor bumps, but overall it was a great success.  Kids had a splendid time, and we came away thinking this wasn't so bad after all - in regards to the numbers.  We were a bit worried last week.  But it's all okay, and the kids really did have a fantastic time.

We got home later, and boy, I'm wiped out.  I had just enough energy to read a bit to Maddie, and then we said our prayers... and then I was off to sleep.