Friday we left around noon to go to the Oklahoma Fellowship of Cowboy Churches first annual meeting. It was held at the Embassy Suites in Norman, OK. Now I
have stayed in some pretty nice hotels in my time, but this one has to rank right up there as one of the best ever! And EVERYTHING was paid for by the
Fellowship ![]()
We had our meetings, a catered dinner, and then after dinner the guys all started pulling out their guitars, banjos, mandolins, and even a bantar - for a night of pickin' and grinnin' that had even the other hotel guests joining in! We were in one of the lobby/dining areas, so people felt okay to join - what a WONDERFUL time of ministry and fun! I could tell so many, many inspiriing stories of all that happened in those short two days, but I'll limit myself to three short ones....
1) One of the guys sitting at the bar in the lobby asked the bartender if that was a hotel group singing and playing - bartender said no, that's some
church group, they wouldn't want you over there. The guy responded that if they were truly Christian, then they would want/accept anyone - of
course he was right, and so he joined us ![]()
2) A small downs-syndrome boy ran up from out of no where and began hugging all the cowboys - a very embarrassed father wasn't far behind trying to
corral his enthusiastic son. But Sam was insistent that they stay ans listen to the music. We told the father to just let the son be who he was, that he
wasn't going to bother any of us! He ended up sitting on various "cowboy laps", singing and grinning from ear to ear all night. The dad went up
and got the two other siblings and mom and the entire family just blessed us all with their presence and love. It turned out that they were there for Sam's
birthday - so we sang Happy Birthday and made him the center of attention ![]()
3) Saturday morning we were all coming down for breakfast in the dining room, there were at least five tables of cowboys at the breakfast buffet and one
little waitress was there tending to us and watching over all our needs - she was quiet and unobtrusive, but ever attentive. At one point, Jim Nance, one of
the pastors there went around and took up a collection for a tip for our wonderful little waitress. Well, you may know the generosity of a cowboy - then
combine that with mostly cowboy preachers/evangelists
there
was a wad of bills, mostly 20's, 10's and 5's that would choke a horse - we never counted it, but I'd guess there was 500 there if there was a
dime. Jim called Tonya over and presented her with the tip and saying what an awesome job she had done. She broke down and tears and left to compose
herself.
She came back a few minutes later and thanked each of us, saying that only that morning she had been faced with some mounting expenses for one of her kids and she had prayed to God that it was all in His hands, because she'd done all she could do. God sure took care of that one, huh?
I could go on and on - it was a truly magical weekend
So now I'm off to teach a Dwight IHS Production Data class, but will be back later to catch up on the board!
