First campaign of the year

Last night we joined almost 40 Americans on the first night of the first campaign of the new year. The group is made up of teams from four different churches--two in California, one in Kentucky and one in North Carolina. A large group of Salvadorans gathered at the church at 4:00 p.m. and waited for the "gringos" to come. By 4:30 we found out that they were late getting to the hotel from the airport so they would meet us at the campaign location. Two vans and a very packed small bus headed to a neighborhood in Lourdes. By the time we set up the inflatable and movie in a rather large traffic circle, the team had arrived. Unfortunately, we didn't get to meet anyone because the giant inflatable slide had already attracted a long line of kids.

Normally, we keep the inflatable going for about a hour, stopping it around 6:30 (actually it's when Jeff tells us to stop) when the team is back from door-to-door canvasing. Last night about 6:15 the generator shut down. Of course, the lights went off, the inflatable started deflating and all the movie equipment powered down. I don't know what they did, but in about 30 seconds we were back in business--6:30 came and went, though, and the line at the inflatable was still going strong. The movie finally started about 6:50. Later we found out that the DVD player completely locked up when the power went off. It wouldn't power back on and it wouldn't eject the DVD. Jeff had to dismantle it to get the DVD out and send someone from the church in Lourdes to get a new player!

With the power and technical problems behind us, the rest of the evening went well. The youth drama, "Everything" was powerful and, as usual, the very large crowd drew in closer so they could see. "Pastor Phil" Neighbors, from Bakersfield, CA, gave the message and the response was awesome. We won't know the actual number of decisions until this evening, but we are confident that many people made professions of faith--the follow-up will start tomorrow night.

The team will join us for church at the hotel this morning. We will even get to hear "Pastor Phil" preach in English! Service should wrap up by 12:45 when we will rush home to see the Chief's game.

It's great to be back home and about our Father's business.