It was 1:30 a.m., and many of the Maxwells were outside their hotel rooms, coughing and choking. If you were watching, you would have wondered what was happening?! Well, we were waiting for our “Sani-Guard†to dissolve from the air. Since we’ve thought that some of the colds/flu we catch on the road are possibly from the hotel rooms we stay in, we invested in some “Sani-Guard†spray bottles to try using on this trip. You place the bottle in the room, press the trigger to set the spray off, and hurry out, leaving it for at least 15 minutes before re-entering the room. So far, we’ve been able to just drop our luggage in the room and go to the church, but this time, we needed to go into the rooms soon because it was bedtime. We waited 15 minutes, but the air smelled quite strongly of, well, something that was hard to describe (chemicals?!!). It was almost 2 a.m. before we finally were settled and going to sleep 🙂 .
The Jonesboro conference went very well. The coordinators had provided a homemade dinner, which was delicious. The children had some time to practice music before the session. Except for occasional practice in the bus, we haven’t been able to do much. Hearts were receptive to the message, and we enjoyed our fellowship time with those who attended. Many people helped us pack up afterward, which was another blessing. We had decided to drive to our hotel in Millington, TN (outside of Memphis) yet that night, and we were all very tired by the time we arrived around 1 a.m., thus the story at the beginning of the post 🙂 .
Set up went smoothly for the Memphis conference. Joseph, John, Anna, Jesse, and Mary are incredible with their teamwork of the book tables and music set up. We had a few snags in our music session, namely our sound going out in the middle of a song (What happened? We found that one of us had accidentally tripped the cord to the speaker). One mom said she enjoyed watching how we interacted and worked through the issues 🙂 .
Several families drove 4+ hours to come to the conference. Thank you for making such an effort to attend! The group who hosted this weekend graciously provided all of our food. They even sent us away with dinner (pizza). That turned out as a wonderful blessing, because we started out our drive to Huntsville on extremely twisty tree-lined roads, on which some of us can feel not-so-well with empty stomachs (or being tired).
We will be spending a few days with my mom’s sister, and then we’ll be doing our next conference near Huntsville, Alabama, Monday evening!
Serving Jesus,
Sarah for all the rest
My family and I attended your conference in Jonesboro, AR, on September 18th. We were all so blessed by the whole experience, and I wanted to say, “Thank you!” The week before had been an unusually stressful one, and by Thursday afternoon I was feeling ready to throw my hands in the air and surrender! I jokingly commented to another lady as we arrived at the conference that evening that I REALLY needed to be there after the week I had had. Well, it was no joke, and it was no mistake that my family and I were there that night. God knew that I needed to hear the encouraging words that were spoken! I have been reading your website for years, but somehow, seeing you all and hearing it in person made an even greater impact on me. I left that night with my toes a little bit sore, because they were definitely “stepped on”! But I also left with a renewed spirit and an encouraged heart. I just wanted to say THANK YOU, and I pray that God will bless you and keep you as you continue in this ministry.
Your willingness to sacrifice the comfort of your own beds, sleep, and windy road trips, for the sake of many other families, is an example to us of living 24/7 for the Lord. It’s so encouraging to read the ongoing testimony of a family such as yours who is living out the gospel within the borders of our own country.
Just a thought about getting rid of germs…years ago when I worked in an office before my first child was born, a friend that I worked with would bring a can of Lysol Disinfectant to work. She would spray everything down with that especially the phones which we all shared. It seemed to help hold down the colds and flu.. maybe you could do that and just spray everything down..not so many fumes that way. 🙂