last weekend my friend katie from liberty drove down from colorado and then we drove to dallas to visit our friend erin. we stayed with her family and spent some time enjoying the city and visiting various churches in the area.
if you've never been to dallas, let me just say it's huge. HUGE. like, new york city is huge, yes, but there's just a lot of stuff there. in dallas everything is BIGGER. there were freeway interchanges that were so complex that there were plly 4-5 different levels of ramps. many major companies have their world headquarters in dallas. plus the city of ft. worth is just an hour away and with all the suburban life between the two cities, you never feel like you left town.
our first night there we went in the pool and i forgot i had my phone in my shorts pocket. needless to say...the phone died. so i have been without a phone since last friday...until today when the old phone madre sent me arrived in the mail.
we had a great time catching up on life and having some great profound conversations, staying up late and eating way too much unhealthy food (erin's mom is an amazing cook!), and watching movies.
on saturday erin's parents took us into dallas and we saw a memorial of the cattle drives from dallas to amarillo and the JFK memorial and where he was shot. there's a big X on the road right where he was when he got shot which is sorta creepy...then we went shopping cause katie needed a purse and i had a GAP jeans coupon that was about to expire (there is NO gap within 100 miles of odessa :/ ). between the store sale and my coupon i ended up getting 3 pairs of gap jeans for $90!!! pretty good considering they were originally $60 each! then on our way out we saw a Steve Madden store. Steve Madden is a shoe designer and i have always wanted a pair of his shoes but they're always really expensive. peeked in the store just for fun and ended up trying on a pair that was marked down from like $50 to $30. decided i would splurge cuz i really liked them and then found out they were marked down to $15!!!!! it was my lucky day!
saturday night we went to gateway church. gateway is most known for being the home church of Kari Jobe, a well-known worship leader and the original recording artist of the popular worship song, "Revelation Song". gateway also produces and publishes a great deal of original contemporary worship material. it could be considered a mega-church because it has several campuses and each campus has multiple sat/sun services, but the service we attended had probably only 500 - 600 people. and the building itself was not really that huge. kari jobe wasn't there when we went, but it was still very cool to see the church and be a part of the worship service there.
sunday morning we got up early and went to the first service at prestonwood. they are one of the largest southern baptist churches, known for their pastor, Jack Graham, for their resident musical arranger/composer, Bradley Knight, and for their choir which runs in the same circles as the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. Thomas Road Baptist Church in lynchburg is modeled very similar to prestonwood, especially in their worship style. when i was in the choir at TRBC we sang several pieces that originated out of prestonwood.
the prestonwood campus is HUGE. it looks like it could be a shopping mall - no exaggeration. erin said that since the dallas/fort worth airport is nearby, pilots are often told to use the church as a landmark from the sky - it's THAT big. she also said that the church could not put up one of their steeples because it would be so tall that it would be a hazard for the aircrafts in the area.
the prestonwood campus is HUGE. it looks like it could be a shopping mall - no exaggeration. erin said that since the dallas/fort worth airport is nearby, pilots are often told to use the church as a landmark from the sky - it's THAT big. she also said that the church could not put up one of their steeples because it would be so tall that it would be a hazard for the aircrafts in the area.
the service was good - not great. a little too stiff for me honestly. it was the middle of the summer so the choir was off, the senior pastor was off, their worship leader, Todd Bell was off, so it was Bradley Knight (which was cool) and the praise team/orchestra. what was really cool was that one of our classmates from LU who was interning there was singing on the praise team that week and actually sang a special music. we found her afterward and it was fun to surprise her.
after negotiating our way out of the prestonwood parking lot, we went across the street (literally) to erin's home church for the second service. bent tree bible fellowship was like a mini Willow Creek. there was so much creativity there that i couldn't help getting excited. erin took us to the visitor's desk afterward where they gave katie and i vouchers for free drinks from the coffee bar. i got a frappuccino-like drink with a shot of peppermint. mmmmmm! erin told us that the church does a lot with creative worship - you can tell just by looking in the lobby at all the art and the way the interior design is done. there is symbolism and meaning behind everything there. she also said the church was very very VERY mission-minded. they had short-term teams going out all over the world almost every week over the summer. i asked her if they were hiring lol. she said no, but they love mentoring people without paying them. sad day.
after church the 3 of us went back to erin's house, ate the rest of her mom's cabbage lasagna (soooooo good!) and toll house pie and were on our way. got back to odessa around 9pm and then i had to get up at 4:30 the next morning to get ready and leave for junior high camp in denton, tx...which is like an hour from erin's house lol. (in case you didn't know...it was a 7 hour drive from odessa to NW dallas lol).
camp was good. God showed up. more on that later ;)
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