Christian music????

Gina, Mads and I went to one of our new favorite hangouts, Augustana Care Center on Friday night to bring some cheer to the oldies there. We went up and down the hallway recruiting people to come listen to some music with us. We rounded up about 15 oldies in the gathering area and we sang karoke to songs from the 50's and 60's ranging from Elivs to Franki Valie to Richie Vallens (sp?), The Who and Aretha Franklin. We weren't winning any best singer awards, but I think we entertained them at least (or at least some of them - we had a few grouches).

One really neat story was of a lady we met named Ruth Bartholemew (can a name be any cooler?) who was visiting her husband that evening. Both she and her husband were probably in their late 60's and her husbad had a stroke earlier in the year and was in very bad shape - he had no control of his body and his face was frozen in expressions beyond his control - very sad. When I went into their room so see if they wanted to go, I actually thought that Ruth was the person in the room, but when I peaked around the corner I saw she was the visitor. I asked if she wanted to come before I realized that, but then she very sweetly let me know probably not because her husband clearly was not mobile (he was in bed). Anyways, we started our singing without them and about 15 minutes into it Ruth came down and was watching us. I can't remember how it happened, but we found out that she was a singer, and she ended up singing a song from our CD. THEN about 10 minutes later, the nurses came rolling Ruth's husband in! He told them that he wanted to hear her sing! She ended up singing a song and after we called it a night we visited with her for a while and she told us he was dying and then we found out she goes to a church we are considering joining (United Methodist Church in Hastings). She told us she has done karoke for a long time (she has a beautiful voice) and now I think she's going to bring her karaoke songs and sing for everyone, including her husand. What an amazing blessing! Gina and I believe God used us to answer a prayer for Ruth and her husband!

Anyways, it was a wonderful night - again, there's probably nothing that we could have done that we would have blessed us more. We pretty much know most of them by name now, and they ask us when we will be back.