A Dream Come True

Dreams! For me, dreams are difficult to explain. Sometimes, i feel like the whole point of dreaming is to envision things that are unattainable. And then there are those few special moments in life when you witness, before your very eyes, dreams becoming a reality.

A few of my “dream-come-true” moments:

Getting a BMX when I was 5yrs old
Playing drums and touring the east-coast with Paul Rogers + Band.
Honoring my mother @ her funeral
Hosting concerts for Reuben Morgan (Oct 2005 – Montreal),
Starfield (Sept 2007 – Montreal), and Paul Baloche (May 2009 – Brantford)

Getting married to the girl of my dreams (follow her)
Being in full-time ministry and allowing God to use my family to love people.

This past Friday, another one of those “dream-come-true” moments occurred.
…Enter the LOT PARTY:

September 26, 2009 was our first attempt at an annual (Parking) Lot Party. It was obvious that we were going to learn a lot from this pilot project. What we were envisioning was a FREE outdoor party for all High School students from Brantford and the surrounding areas. We wanted to have inflatable games, a dunk tank, pizza, pop, and an amazing concert.

I know what you’re thinking: That’s all fine and dandy, but would there be a catch to this “FREE” event held in a church parking lot? Would there be this typical bait and switch kind of thing where everybody comes for an advertised party and then in a magical twist, we make them feel like sinners and then invite them to get “saved”? The answer was and still is: NO!

Well, September 26, 2009 proved to be a rainy and cold day. We moved the party inside. We canceled the dunk tank. There were 2 high school deaths the night before. the youth from my own church said the concert was too loud, and so they hung out in the main foyer. the total attendance didn’t exceed 100.

I wasn’t left with much of a dream after the “launch” of our Lot Party except that the bands we hired rocked and that the Lot Part could only go UP (in other words, it couldn’t get worse).

Fast forward to 2010:

January: We have a meeting and decide to give the Lot Party another try and move the date up to June 18, 2010
February: Valentine’s Bake Sale “Show Some Sweet Love”
March: St Patrick’s Day Bake Sale
April: Easter Bake Sale // Modesty Fashion Show
May: Family Movie Night // Car Wash

That’s a load of fundraisers … all in the span of a few months (February-May).

This past Friday, I realized that God can resurrect some of those dreams that we were ready to bury and abandon. With a few short sentences and pics, I’ll try to sum it all up:

the weather was a perfect 27˚C with barely any clouds in the sky.