A Redeeming Love - Chapter 6

A summer romance series, chronicling my love story

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

With all of my belongings in storage, I drove my white Ford Explorer up to Northern California where a new adventure was waiting for me.  I spent that summer working at a Christian camp as the Head of Staff for the women.  It was awesome!  I loved having this full time ministry position where I got to challenge and encourage college women daily as they shared Jesus with the campers.  I also loved being outdoors and getting to enjoy the majesty of God through His creation.  It’s impossible to go to Yosemite, see Half Dome, the falls and the meadows and not see God!

 I remember calling Roger here and there on the camp pay phone!  I didn’t want to call too much because we weren’t dating!  But I missed him.  Now that I had left Southern California, and my job at camp would come to an end in September, I had no idea if I’d see him again.

Camp came to a close and I was assured more and more that full time ministry with college students was what I wanted to do with my life.  The tough part was where?  I didn’t have any job leads when camp was over so I did what most young adults do at some point in their life – I went home.  I moved back in with my parents who were about to leave on a European vacation for several weeks and asked if I’d keep an eye on their business while they were gone.  Easy enough!  And it was during those weeks that I got the call for my next adventure.

A dear friend of mine was the road manager for a female Christian singing group and they were about to leave on their fall tour.  They needed someone to come along and sell merchandise at the concerts and Cliff thought of me.  All expenses paid, live on a tour bus and travel the country?  I’m in!  So once my parents returned from Europe I was once again on a plane, this time for Nashville Tennessee.

Before I left, a large manila envelope came in the mail.  Inside were many individual cards with the instructions to open one every couple of days on tour.  They were from Roger.  He missed me!

I touched down in Nashville, or Nashvegas as some call it!  And soon met up with my new road family in a Kroger grocery store parking lot at 11pm to board the bus.  We drove all night to our first city and I didn’t sleep a wink.  On a top bunk, third high to be exact, I heard the pounding rain on the roof and was certain that the driver was going to fall asleep at the wheel in this massive storm.  I felt it my duty to get up and sit and chat with him through the night to keep him awake!  It wasn’t long before I learned that these drivers were professionals and they slept all day while we worked!

The tour with Point of Grace took me through beautiful Midwestern and southern states and I loved watching the change of seasons through the fall.  Roger was going to be at a pastors’ conference in Texas the exact same time we were there, so I actually got to meet up with him for an afternoon!  It was really special to see him and thank him for all the special cards that only fueled my budding love for him.

When the bus stopped in Orlando for our gig, I got a phone call from my parents.  They had a surprise for me.  They wanted to fly me back to Los Angeles, just for the weekend, to take part in Malibu Presbyterian Church’s 50^th Anniversary celebration.  There was to be a wonderful celebration at David Foster’s house (yes, THE David Foster – music producer of the biggest and greatest) and my parents wanted me to be a part of it.  I was over the moon and got permission to leave tour for a few days and let me just say, the celebration of the church was nothing compared to the celebration in my heart because of what happened that weekend.