Near the end of the tour, I was asked two questions. Troy Hauser-Brydon, the associate pastor at our home church (St. Simons Presbyterian), asked me, "Has it been everything you hoped for and more?" Ah, no. And my brother Bart asked, "Has it been financially profitable?" Uh, no. But those were the wrong questions. The right questions are: Was it worthwhile? Was it fruitful? Was it successful? And those questions I can answer with an emphatic and unequivocal, "YES!"
We called this the “Joyful Noise” tour, after Psalm 100: 1-2: “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.” However, it could have been called “The Tour that Almost Wasn’t,” because we almost didn’t go.
Just before we left, I had to have a root canal and a crown, which cost just over $2500. We don’t have any credit cards, so we had to pay this out of our savings. It took almost everything we had; it left us broke. And I mean broke, as in how-are-we-going-to-pay-our-bills broke.
We were scared to death. We thought about the tour. How could we possibly go? If we couldn’t pay our bills at home, how could we risk being on the road? But there was the money we’d raised for the tour – almost $1800. If we weren’t going, we had to give that money back. But how could we do that when we’d spent a chunk of it already, on campsite reservations, food for the trip, the camper rental. We couldn’t afford to go, and we couldn’t afford to stay.
We were at our wits’ end, filled with despair. I remember throwing myself on our bed, despondent, crying my eyes out, worried sick, Tim beside me in the same distraught state. We wondered if this was God’s way of telling us to stay home.
Then we got a call from our church, saying there was a check for the rest of the love offering from our congregation. We figured it was probably a couple hundred dollars. When we found out how much it actually was, we were stunned and overwhelmed. Almost $3000 - so much more than we’d ever imagined! It bowled us over. It was absolutely enough for us to go ahead with the tour. Talk about answered prayer! So the tour was back on.
We almost didn’t get out on the day we’d planned to leave. The night before our scheduled departure date, we’d had a late gig in Savannah. So we started packing later and packed slower (a LOT slower), than we’d planned. We’d hoped to be able to leave after lunch, but it was after 7pm when we finally pulled out of the driveway. We were determined to start the tour as scheduled, so we hauled ourselves all the way…to Blythe Island (about a whopping 8 miles from our house).
By the time we got to the campsite it was dark, we were tired and hungry, and the kids were over-the-top excited. Now you have to remember, we’d never been camping together before; this was our virgin camping experience as a family. So there we were, in the dark, trying to get set up. We popped us as best we could, scrounged leftovers for dinner, and then went to bed, the kids on one end of the camper, Tim and me on the other. Nighty night!
And everything was fine, until the middle of the night, when we heard a loud CRACK! from just beneath Tim and me. Not good. But we were too tired to get up and check it out. We were tilted, but still upright, so we decided the problem could wait until morning.
We surveyed the damage first thing upon arising. It was not a pretty sight. The right front end of the camper had broken open (we found out later that we’d braced it incorrectly. Duh). It was clear that we couldn’t go on with the camper like this. It was also clear that we couldn’t do the tour without the camper. It had to be repaired, but we were worried about the cost. We had enough money to take care of our expenses during the tour, but no more. If the repair was expensive then we’d be worse off than before – no tour, no money and no way to pay people back. And if it was too expensive to fix, the tour had to be canceled. We again began to question whether this tour was really God’s plan and wondered if this was His way of telling us not to go.
But we moved forward anyway. The campground folks gave us the phone numbers for some people who do camper repair and we started dialing. One man was no longer in business; the second never even answered his phone. When we finally reached the third man he said he wouldn’t be able to even look at the camper for at least a day and a half, and there was no telling whether he would be able to fix it. We packed up our stuff and dragged ourselves home, back to the pit of despair.
When we got home, on a whim, Tim suggested I call the RV place that’s about a mile from our house. “Why, yes,” the man on the phone said, “We do pop-up repair. Bring it over right now, we’ll take a look.”
To make a long story a little less long, they repaired the camper in about two hours, and it only cost $229. And while Tim was at the RV place, the mail came, and would you believe it, there was a check in the mail for $198! The net result was that the repair cost us almost nothing in time or money, and that very afternoon we were on our way again. More answered prayers!
And that was the worst the tour ever got; it was all pretty smooth sailing from there. We were prayed over by many people before we left, and felt surrounded by prayers throughout our journey. We found out that we camp together well as a family. We kept our health. Our voices stayed strong. We had fabulous weather, never had to pop up or down in the rain. We never experienced a bit of car trouble, or any further camper trouble. We had everything we needed as we needed it.
The money that we received for our tour and our music ministry helped us perform at 6 church concerts (for 5 denominations), 3 home concerts, and 3 campsite concerts over the 6 weeks. It gave us the opportunity to drop off our CD at churches along our route, to introduce ourselves to their congregations for future performances. It brought us to Nashville, where we got professional feedback about our songs and a mentoring session at the Nashville Songwriters Association International. It brought us to the National Quartet Convention, where we learned an amazing amount about how to move our music ministry forward.
Our music was well received. People listened to our songs and our story and were blessed. One man who was at two of our church performances told us that he uses our song “Slide Over Some” as the ringtone for his alarm. After hearing us sing at a campsite, a couple introduced themselves, and that’s how we met Mark and his wife, a homeless couple that do mission work in New Orleans. After one of the home concerts, one man tearfully shared with Tim that he hadn’t been to church in almost 50 years, but he felt like he had been to church that night. We didn’t preach, we just sang what was in our hearts and let the Holy Spirit have some room to work.
Was this tour God’s plan for us? We believe so. The only way this tour could have happened was because it was His idea in the first place, and through His power, not ours.
Will we do another tour? Absolutely. It was an amazing and wonderful time for our family and our ministry. We learned so much about our calling, our family, and God’s power. We learned that we are called to worship God, not just on Sunday, but every day, not just in church, but everywhere.
And we learned what happens when we step forward in faith, trusting that when we answer His call, He will provide. Our deepest thanks to all of you who heard - and answered - His call to support us in our music ministry. We are humbled and honored by your faith.
