EastLake Launched!

What a crazy weekend!! The team was so excited, a little stressed at times, on an adrenaline high, totally exhausted, amazed, humbled, emotional, and had brains that wouldn't turn off long enough to rest. What a weekend.
On Friday a group of 13, yes 13 people with real jobs, drove down from Wisconsin to be of whatever help they could this weekend. They were ready to do whatever was needed to help us pull our first service off. They were amazing. It was wonderful to be able to ask them questions since they are also in their first year of a launch.



Saturday the Portable Church guys arrived. We were to begin the set up process at 6:00pm as a dry run for Sunday morning. Well we took the above photo at like 2:00 in the afternoon after we heard they were in town and were too excited to wait another 4 hours to see the trailer. You can tell that a lot of months of preparation, anticipation, and waiting for this time have gone into this when we get excited to go look at a trailer! :) But there it is, the church in a trailer. Well, when your whole plan hinges on this trailer getting here, you tend to breathe a sigh of relief when you see that it did in fact arrive.
The night began around 5:00 for us as we started to prepare the school with the Portable Church guys showing us all of our cool equipment and ended around midnight with a trip to Walmart for a few outstanding items. At 1:30 that night/morning my mind was still in go-mode and I kept leaning over to Ryan and asking him questions as my brain began to process yet another part of the next morning that I wasn't sure we had thought of. He clearly has an on/off switch b/c with each question I would maybe get a "huh?" out of his slumberness. So jealous that he can do that.
Back to the school at 6:30am for more prep and then it happened. 9:00am came and volunteers were starting to show up, ready to make it happen. Just a word about the AWESOME volunteers that we have, they have never been to EastLake, didn't even know what EastLake was except through our measly words and they have been so committed to this vision. They were there until late on Saturday and there early on Sunday. Then as the 10:00 hour approached, people that we didn't know started coming in the doors! I realize this was the point but a surreal moment none the less. I just thought, "We've done all we know to do and now it is up to you, God." Kids were headed to the kid's rooms, people were grabbing coffee, the music started, and wow, it was happening! I took a few moments to step inside the auditorium to take it in and was overcome with emotion. It felt like EastLake.
Tear down went fast and soon followed sheer exhaustion by everyone on the team except that none of us could stop talking about the day. This went on for the rest of the day and I'm sure will continue for the next month until our next service on November 8th. I'm so honored that I was allowed to be a part of this. What a fantastically crazy weekend.