Shrek the Musical

And now for the fabulous follow up from our adventure to see Shrek the Musical.  Can I just say...that show was fan.tas.tic!  We loved every minute of it!!  If you've seen any Shrek movies, it's everything you love about the movies but better because of really great music and added fun little story lines along the way.  The set was magical and really impressive, and the actors were amazing! The kids really enjoyed it as well.  And the Houston Hobby Center is quite the venue! You can go outside and hang out on these balconies surrounded by beautiful downtown scenes. And I totally took pics in the theater, which you were not really supposed to do.  But it's not like any of them turned out, so it doesn't really matter :) Enjoy the picture recap!

Photo op with the musical poster and cute souvenir ears...Cadence's ears actually have a little tiara on them, but you really can't see in the pics.  Cute kiddos, if I do say so myself :)

Some pics of the lobby at the Hobby- so cool!

Taking in the town while we wait...don't know if that city skyline will ever get old to us! Especially with the twinkling lights at night. Can't wait to see this city at Christmas time!!

 

We got really great seats on the floor in the center section! The swamp was all set up when we walked in

 Waiting with excitement!

 This was probably totally illegal...but you can't even see anything anyway! This was the finale with the whole cast on stage.

Fun times for the Pates.  We have had an eventful Halloween weekend, but I'm going to save that for a separate post hopefully tomorrow. Oops, I said I wasn't going to give you any more time frames...oh well.

Peace out from the very tired Pate house.

Excited.

We're excited because we're going to be here tonight:

Our first Broadway experience in Houston. Our thanks to "T" for the tickets!  The Hobby Center looks like quite the fabulous venue, so you can be expecting pictures to ensue. Of course, I suppose you would expect that from me anyway, right? :)  I'm not going to tell you when though, because I'm turning myself into quite the cyberspace liar, making you promises about coming here and then standing you up. So you'll see the pics when you see them I guess...

Peace out from the Pate house.

One Note at at Time

"You will ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty; they come unsummoned, directly, indirectly,--I could seize them with my hands,--out in the open air; in the woods; while walking; in the silence of the nights; early in the morning; incited by moods, which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."

These rich words come from Beethoven upon the subject of his inspiration. One picture that is evoked from these words is the fact that inspiration is everywhere all around, and it's always in motion. Ideas, thoughts, emotions, and words are constantly swirling around and a genius like Beethoven will pull down just the right combination to put together a masterpiece that makes men marvel.


I suppose we write our lives in a similar manner. Our final selection a culmination of our choices. Once written it cannot be erased.  I don't know if I have the capacity for a masterpiece.  That is a weight I don't think I could bear under the faultiness of my own emotion, thoughts, ideas, and choices. 


But I do believe my song has already been penned with such beauty and perfection my human understanding cannot even imagine it.


So I guess my job is to know the Creator, because His song is my song. Then the choices I make out of the swirling countless possibilities will be pulled down from the heavens themselves, their divine nature overriding my own faulty humanity. And that will be a masterpiece.  


And so we are composing our life song, one note at a time.  We should write it well. 


*(And you can thank the tag line to my blog, the quote I came across, and the general fog that is Monday for the random subterranean post today.)

48 part deux.

Well, I guess it's been a little more than a week.  Sorry about that.  We've been in the post-event fog/hangover (as predicted), so I would not have had two intelligible sentences to string together for you. Still don't, but I'm going to try because I don't want to lag behind on the Chronicles of the Pate family :)

So the event went off pretty well.  We had people blitzing the campus Tues/Wed/Thurs pretty much all day long.  They were using an evangelism tool called the God Test, which is basically just a survey that gets a conversation going. The first question is "Do you believe in God?", then depending on how the person answers there are two different paths to go down.  This is not the cheesy outdated gospel track method of evangelism, but rather an engaging and relevant discussion with people about religion. Our generation really does like to talk, especially about what they think they know. And I wish I could share just some of the stories we had from people.  Let's just say that U of H is not largely Christian. Religious, maybe, but I don't know if I'd even go that far. There was a lot of answering "yes" to believing in God, but aside from that not much actual correct Biblical understanding at all.  Not to mention they met and visited with many atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Muslims (lots of those), and others. The responses were pretty typical of our post-modern universalistic society- i.e. all streams lead to the same ocean, just be a good person and accept everyone type philosophy. There were many great opportunities with this one on one interaction, and then they were also invited to the evening events we had with the food and giveaways.

The really cool part was the fact that over the two evenings we registered 117 students that came and were able to hear about Jesus. And those were all new people they had just met that day or day before, most of them not saved.  It wasn't like they met a lot of other good little Christian kids that wanted to come to a Jesus rally- most of these students came probably because they wanted a chance to win an iPad. All of these students left with more than what they came for, even if it's just the thought planted that wasn't there before. It was really a beautiful thing. Honestly it's very refreshing being around people hearing about the legit truth of the gospel as perhaps they've never heard it. The gospel works. You can have a bunch of fanfare and tricks to get them there (which we certainly and shamelessly did), but there doesn't have to be fanfare and hype with the gospel. Good news is good news, especially if you're really needing some good news. And what made the scene even more beautiful was the overwhelming support and turnout of our church there to be a part of it all and serve those students. We are so thankful to have a group of people that truly value this generation and are passionate about reaching the campus.

Only time will reveal the fruit of this event, but for us now the real work begins. Getting these students connected into the campus ministry, and hopefully some ultimately into the church. There were many that spoke with Jermaine and seemed genuinely interested and excited about the weekly meeting on campus.  At the end of the day events don't really mean that much unless there is some real disciple making and connecting people afterwards.  It was every bit as stressful and chaotic as I predicted it to be.  There were those small details that didn't work out, and big details and circumstances out of our control but it all worked out in the end. I wish I had some better pictures to share with you, but I don't.  My camera is just okay. And we had somebody with a better camera taking pics, but he only took them the first night when it was a much smaller gathering and the church wasn't there.  But I guess you can get the idea from the few I have. It was a great week, and we're looking forward to seeing what God continues to do out of it.

We had our meeting in this open underground lounge- there were people all along the back walls also.

Worship team, doing our thing- with freaky eyes. (couldn't edit those out for some reason)

And Rice Broocks doing his thing. The gospel thing.  He actually went on campus doing the God tests, too which was really cool.  He did a great job.

That's all I got.  There's plenty more to share about it, but my brain checked out a long time ago tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for the obligatory birthday post :) Peace out from the Pate house.

This Time Next Week...

I will have already been running around, feeding five guests in our home breakfast and probably checking to make sure everything else is going okay.

I (we) will be exhausted but running on event-type adrenalin so I probably won't feel it much. That and the gallon of coffee I'll be drinking. And when it's over and everyone leaves and I will collapse.

I will be creatively calling school for that day "College and career day" where we will even get to take a field trip to the campus and see a real live college.  I'll figure out some way to make it educational. And don't worry- we won't fall behind :)

We will be making sure the food will be ready, every detail from lanyards to layout is in order, giveaways packaged up, worship team equipment ready, and everything in place for the evening.

I will probably be more concerned than I need to be about the small details, one of which I am certain will not go as planned along the way.

I will be a little bit anxious but mostly excited to meet and spend time with one of the founders of Every Nation, Rice Broocks, and watch God do His thing through the undeniable gift of evangelism He has gifted Rice with. And still amazed like I am today at how it all happened and somehow he is coming to this.

We will be praying, like we are this week.  Praying, praying. That the spirit of God would flood this campus so much and a great awakening would begin to take place.

Because a week from today, (actually Wednesday and Thursday) we have our first big outreach to the University of Houston happening. It's called 48 (48 hours to turn the campus upside down). It's the first outreach of its kind (so we are gladly the guinea pig, if you will), gathering campus ministers from all over Texas to channel their amazing energy and heart for the campus into one concentrated place for two days. They will literally blitz the campus talking with as many students as they can, using an evangelism tool EN has created called the God Test and just getting to know students. And inviting them to come to the event at night where we will have free food, big giveaways (like iPad big), followed by praise and worship and then Rice speaking.

We have pretty much hit the pre-event ramp up already, starting to get really busy with the details and admin. end of it. It's one of those things that feels so overwhelming and big you have no choice but to trust God with it. U of H is a massive campus. It's extremely overwhelming to think that you could actually make a dent in a place like that (which we feel about Houston in general!), and yet God has ordered all of these little steps and details to make this happen.  With us only being here a few short months, there are a lot of reasons why we feel like we might not be ready, or if we just had this or that or more time...But you know what? None of that matters, because it's happening. God has a plan for this outreach, and we are just working our little tails off to make sure everything is in line for Him to execute that plan. We really do have a heart for the campus, and we believe that if God can use us to help disciple students on campus, we can literally be changing the world. These are tomorrow's leaders, movers and shakers, and influencers of the world as we will come to know it then. And the enemy is out for their souls. But so is God, and His army, His power, and His great love is unstoppable. We are just amazed that we get to take a small part in that.

So, pray for us would ya? I don't even have anything specific to ask you to pray for, because if you can think of any possible detail and area involved in an event like that we need prayer for it! We are so excited. And so thankful that many campus ministers and students are giving of their time, energy, resources, and giftings to come and partner with us on this, including some of our dear friends from Abilene so it's an extra treat to see them for this :)  You might not hear much from me between now and then, but I will keep you posted.

Peace (prayer for the peace part, please :) out from the Pate house.