Old Fashioned Tent Meetin'

The sanctuary took in a lot of water.  It always takes in a lot of water in heavy rains--has since I lived here.  But typhoons are worse.  And when there is no power to suck up the water and clean the carpets and it just gets to sit for days....mold city.

Probably the first back up plan would have been to set up chairs in the kitchen area.  But when we were preparing for the youth retreat, we realized the air conditioner wouldn't work. I changed controls. I changed batteries.  I slapped the control a few times (because that works way more than you would think). We tripped the inside breaker. We tripped the outside breaker. Nada. It was not coming on. So the decision to have church under the canopy was made.  (FYI: I was being silly the next day at the end of the youth retreat. I said to the air con, "I command you to come on this instant." I clicked the control, and it came on. Just like that.  But the canopy was set up, church time had already been moved up so it would be cooler, and chairs carried over to the tent site.  Outside church for the win.

When I woke up on Sunday, it was pouring. This made me happy because there was a good chance it would be cool (as long as the pouring didn't stick around. Then it would be bad.) Sure enough, it was the most perfect Guam temperature one could get.  

Sure we had to do a little pre-service mopping from the rain.

But service was great!

Bonus: my sermon was about the Holy Spirit.  The Hebrew word for spirit ("ruach") and the Greek word for spirit ("pneuma") translates to wind.  Outdoors with the wind was a perfect sermon illustration

Our perfect Sunday was ruined by Monday.  The tent was found blown so far across the yard (you can see the yard it blew across in the first picture), flipped, and ripped. :(  At least it wasn't in the neighbors yard!