8-24-2001

1:15 AM

Well, as you can tell by the time stamp, it’s been a VERY long day.

After we returned and I wrote the above notes, Francis and everyone returned from their outing to the Christian Radio Station.
Francis got a call to let him know that a township had set up a service tonight and planned for us to come and play…did I mention that our gear still had not arrived? They figured us to use their system and instruments and Francis said we would. That was at 2:00 PM…the service starts at 5:30…there were still 2 other meetings to happen before this…Long story shorter than not, we did our meetings, they ran long, we got back to the Lodge around 5:25 and found that Fed Ex had delivered our shipment! “Billy, go snag our guitars, and let’s tune up" and fly across town. We were in motion. Never in my many years of playing have I seen that kind of action and tuning in mere moments. We stuffed into 3 vehicles and took off for the church. Got to the church by 6:15 or so and walked into a worship service in progress. 105+ dB, more than likely and all that was available was 2nd row seating. No sooner had we moved into our seats then we were asked to go up on stage and be ready to play. We played our first song and the place came unglued with enthusiasm, very cool, but they tapered off during the 2nd and 3rd songs. We did a 4th song and finished. I played lead, Junar and Billy were on acoustics and vocals, Matt on bass and Travis pounding out the drums. There no monitors of any kind and we only knew where we were by Travis. The preacher followed us and that would have been about 6:40…the service concluded at 9:30, after one attempted demon exorcism and 4 or 5 slayings in the Spirit, so to speak. Our demon possessed gal was being restrained by 4 or 5 men, but still managed to ram me, as I was sitting 2nd row, isle seat…lesson learned…no more center seating, window seats only, thank you.
She was a kinda big gal too; the men were not having an easy time. Know that I believe that the authenticity of these kinds of manifestations and occurrences is not for me to judge, condemn or call. As uncomfortable as I was, I know the supernatural to be limitless and our minds to be quite limited. A well-known Satanist/Priestess showed up after we had begun loading into our vans and trucks and Francis went and stopped her from reaching us. He kept her at bay until we had loaded and then got in and drove us out.

The enemy is well aware of our presence here.

We got back to the lodge and unpacked the rest of our equipment. I am breathing a sigh of relief for that, at least, but I must admit that inside me someplace I had hoped to hear that the shipment was refused and we would have to cancel and go home…It is difficult for me to keep my head in the game with so many facets happening in so many realms at once. I am somewhat spun, which I shared with the band guys tonight.

Billy apparently killed a spider in our room…a body the size of a silver dollar, legs the size of fingers…(not kidding) before I got to the room…upon hearing this, I shared my innermost feelings using an expletive.
Bed netting is a good thing.
And I came here willingly…?

Tomorrow, (later today, actually) we play the dust bowl and it appears the sound company has made amendments to the system requirements we had agreed on and we are paying the same price for a system a bit smaller (1/3 the size we requested). We will make do, but it will be tough. 2000 people are expected tomorrow, tonight was a couple hundred, give or take a few demons and such…

Maybe tomorrow morning I will get this off to you and you can send it in this form or abbreviated form to the prayer chain folks and anyone who wants to know what is happening here in Zambia.

It’s 1:52 AM, time to see if I can sleep.
I love you.