Serving others is super important to me. Serving with my new husband is equally important, which is why Michael and I signed up (actually I signed us up and hoped he would oblige) for serving at cityfest. Which in all honestly wasn't why I signed up. I really wanted the free t-shirt and was willing to serve to get it.
I had signed us up for serving at the Merchandise Counter. Yes, I now realize that Chris Tomlin wouldn't actually be at the counter selling his own merchandise which I was really hopeful about, but none the less, I wanted to sell some cool stuff and maybe, just maybe, out of my great duty I would get to meet the artist, or at least a free t-shirt, hopefully, maybe, probably signed by them.
So my mom and Michael met me at my office today around 4:30. Somehow I had managed to talk my co-worker Kami to go with us to the cityfest. My mom wasn't registered to serve and she needed a friend and her & Kami were buddies. So Kami went; continually shouting "Praise Jesus" (a phrase I had never heard her say before in the two years I have worked with her) about every 10 minutes. She started to debate whether or not we could ride the streetcar without paying for a ticket because if we were approached by an authority, she would simply shout "Praise Jesus" and jump off of the car. We ended up deciding against that and set off on foot the mile down the Willamette River to the cityfest.
At some point we decided we needed to eat dinner and although all of us were thinking Chinese and we were in China Town, we ended up at Old Town Pizza. Now if you have not been to Old Town Pizza it is an experience in itself. The writing on the bathroom wall is absurd and can cause a smile out of the grumpiest person just by the craziness of the sayings. But our pizza was tasty and our antipasti was yummy. After finishing our gossip about everything we each knew, we started toward the festival again.
When we got to the festival, Michael and I went to the volunteer check-in counter where we went to the E-I list and let them know Graves was here. The woman behind the list was in her mid forty's, had short hair, and small frames around her eyes that looked like glasses but not quite big enough that they would actually be effective. She looked up at us and saw that we were in merchandise and promptly said, "They're overstaffed but you can stay and take care of the garage at the end of the festival." I smiled and started to comment about how well the place was staffed because there were no lines anywhere and everything seemed to be running smoothly at which she must have been offended because she said, "It'll get busier later." Michael and I took our t-shirts and knew immediately that neither one of us wanted to stick around for 4 hours to take out garbage just because they didn't have anything else for us to do.
So, after saying a brief prayer that we wouldn't immediately go to hell for signing up to serve at a Luis Palau event and then taking the free shirt and not serving, we decided to hear Luis talk about salvation. Luis got on the stage and gave a message to the crowd on God being a father to the fatherless. It was a good message and had a lot of truth to it. Even though at this time I don't feel like I have an earthly father, I have never felt fatherless. God has always been my father and it was nice to hear Luis talk about that.
Michael and I walked around and his phone rang. It was my mom. Apparently her and kami had skipped out on the message and were baskin and robins when kami realized that neither of us had the access code to get into our office building after hours where our purses were. So, we headed back. We eventually got into the building and got our purses. Kami was especially relieved because her purse contained her car and house key which would have made a long weekend if she couldn't get into either of those.
After kami and my mom left, Michael and I drove around downtown with the top of the mustang down, enjoying the late night. We stopped at Alotto Gelato on 23rd. We each got some gelato and remembered our time spent in Italy a few months ago. As I was sitting there I realized how happy I was to be with my husband on a beautiful night, enjoying ice cream, and imagining our future together.
Our night had turned out so differently than it's original plan to serve at a festival and ended up with the two of us sitting at a table serving each other in life. It was an awesome night.
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