You Want To Do What Today?

There I was, busy in front of the computer, working out the details for this weekend's speaking engagement, tonight's conference call, and July's summer camp for our Baptist Centers when my cell phone rang. It was my good friend Don Snipes, a construction coordinator for Operation NOAH Rebuild. After exchanging pleasantries , Don said, "I've got a team that whats to do a block party and I wanted to know about the block party trailer at BAGNO." "The trailer isn't quite ready yet because it needs some work" I explained. "When are they wanting to do the block party?" (Okay. Here's my thought process at this point. Although the trailer wasn't ready at that moment, we were scheduled to have it in order by the end of next week. Therefore, I figured the trailer would be available for them to use when they arrived on the field. Now back to reality.) "Uhhhh, today" Don said into the phone almost as if it were a question. I let out a chuckle of nervous laughter. Volunteers, God love them! Skipping some details, I learned from the team leader that what they really wanted to do was grill some burgers, play some music and hang out with folks in the neighborhood. I was relieved by this clarification since this type of event is much easier to put together last minute. So what did our intrepid team have to pull this off. Next to nothing. To their credit, they had the setup for their praise band which was some good lagniappe. We love live music. It took the better part of the day, but in the end the team had pieced together an impressive event. I had to leave before things got kicked off. I still had that conference call to make. I'm all the time telling teams about the need to be flexible when coming to the New Orleans area. Sometimes I have to practice what I preach.