Praise on the Hill 2015

As the remnants of Hurricane Patricia moved into our area, we were scheduled to take our youth group to “Praise on the Hill”, a free Christian music concert in a town about an hour away. The

weather was less than stellar on the day of the event.  It had rained for about 24 hours constantly and in our area it floods easily.  Despite the torrential rains, some flooding, and winds, we headed to this concert with had 7 students go with us. At one point, we were driving 25 mph on the freeway (speed limit is 75mph on this road normally) because of standing water and horrible visibility due to rain.  Some of the exits off the freeway were blocked and closed due to flooding. It was c-r-a-z-y!  When we finally got to the location, the parking lot had a lot of water in it too and we were a little concerned it might be worse when the concert would be over 6 hours later.  We got drenched getting from the parking lot to the arena but we made it safely and the kids were excited to see all the performers.  

There were several worship bands from local churches that did worship experiences prior to the headline shows. It was fun to get to worship with them and see their different styles of worship too.  The headline performers at this event were both popular Christian artists that are played on the local Christian radio station. We got to see Moriah Peters & her "fierce female band" first and they were great! Then the last performance was by the very popular group, For King & Country and they put on a phenomenal night of worship.  At one point, one of the lead singers walked through the stadium and he came and stood on the bleacher right in front of Wyatt and sang for about a minute right in front of us!  

(Moriah Peters)

(For King & Country) 

We especially loved how both Moriah Peters and For King & Country shared testimonies and encouraged those in attendance to remain pure until marriage and that love was worth waiting for. That is such a powerful lesson that students just don’t hear often enough from people other than their parents.  King & Country even taught the students that they were "priceless" and they even have a necklace you can buy for your child to remind them that they are "priceless" in God's eyes.  

We left the concert around 10:15pm and drove home and thankfully the rain had stopped about 3 hours into the concert so it was a much nicer ride home.  We got home around 11:15pm and were very exhausted but had a great time.  We praise God for His hand of protection over us while we traveled and for the opportunity to take our students to this great evening of worship.

The remnants of hurricane Patricia continued to roar through our area throughout the night and at one point during the night David & I woke up because we kept hearing a "bumping" noise but we never could figure out where it was coming from.  The next morning, we found the large tree at the end of our house had fell during the night from the winds.  The Lord truly had His hand of protection over our home and our children because the tree fell just in front of the house.  The branches were laying up on the kids bedroom (which is probably the bumping we had heard during the night..the wind blowing the branches around against the window).  If the tree had landed on the house it would have been right on the kids bedroom.  In the picture below you can see how it fell and the window you see is the kids bedroom window!  We live in the church's missions house for missionaries and it is SUCH a blessing for us and we thank God for how he spared our home and spared us any damage too.  God is good...and all the time...God is good!