Home

We left Cincinnati for Williamstown, Kentucky to visit the Ark Encounter. Can Pam was the mind and impetus behind the construction of this $102 million replica of Noah's Ark. Jonathan Smith called on our drive and told us that he wanted to meet us at the ark and hang out with us during the morning.

The first view of the Ark as we drove up the access road is breathtaking. The sheer size of the structure was hard to imagine. Before going into the ark our group watched a brief time lapse video of the two-year construction project.

Once inside it was fascinating to experience the sheer size of the ark. There are three levels of displays on the ark. It was interesting to see how artists and others imagined what might have been in terms of sleeping quarters, water collection, feeding troughs etc.

We ate lunch on Friday at Emzara's Kitchen restaurant just outside the ark. Apparently Emzara is the traditional name given to Moses' wife. One funny thing that happened is that there were animals everywhere around the ark, inside, outside, on the grounds you can you pick up, and inside the restaurant. As we entered the restaurant for our lunch, Rick Roe asked Carol Jo, "What is it with all these animals and the ark!?"

Before boarding the bus following the lunch, we had a group picture made in front of the ark. We had about a 4 Hour drive from Williamstown, Kentucky to Sevierville, Tennessee where we would be singing for the Smoky Mountain children's home on Friday evening at 6 PM. It was good to see the mountains as we got closer and closer to Sevierville.

Since we were slightly behind schedule, we had to hurry to get set up in time for the concert at 6 PM. Most of the children in attendance were teenagers. It felt like from the beginning that someone did not want this service to go well. We had rush to get in. Rushed to change clothes. And hurried along to get things set up.

Soon after our service began, we discovered that the electric keyboard we were using had been transposed down one and a half steps. Since the kids were singing, they knew immediately that all the songs were too low. Chris and I quickly stopped the musical and called a technical person at the children's home to find out how to reset the keyboard to standard pitch.

Although this was not our best presentation, there were many good things that happened during the service. Once we got back to the bus Andrew Robertson spoke to the bus and gave them an encouraging challenge to look at the bright side of things.

And we had a brief scare when we left the children's home with a lost cell phone. Lauren Sudduth was afraid she had missed placed her cell phone. Will begin a quick search of the children's home and located it inside the bus just before we left. Crisis averted!

The brief drive into Gatlinburg took us to our riverside hotel for the evening. Since we had not eaten supper, we allowed the kids to have a meal along the main street in Gatlinburg and stay in groups. We had a long but satisfying day of ministry to the children in Sevierville Tennessee