Sharathon day 3 - Post 3 - Miracle Baby

Little baby "DJ". There is an amazing story about this little girl. She wasn't supposed to survive. None of the doctors believed she would. She is now around six months old, and is as healthy as any baby! Don't tell me God doesn't do miracles!

Sleep tight, little one...

Sharathon day 2 - Post 2 - The rally hats are on!

Today's themed attire was our new softball shirts and hats. While I didn't remember to get any pics of them myself, I found pics that others took so you could see them. The money kept coming in, and all I can say is how awesome our God is! I heard people saying "We're doing it, we're doing it!", but all I could say to myself was "No, WE'RE doing nothing but witnessing what GOD is doing." It's been amazing so far, just as it has been in years past. Even with the issues we've had. I've just said that I can wait to see what God will do through it all!

The volunteers have been amazing as well. Pouring in by the dozens every few hours! Again, if you can grasp it...we need one THOUSAND volunteers to make this a success, and we got every one! It's mind-blowing! This station is like no other radio station I have ever known. The pride this city takes in "their" station, is humbling. What better city to be in for a station like this, than in "Humble", Texas. (even though it's pronounced "UMBLE" (no "H" sound).

Any way, here are some more pics:

Sharathon day 2 - Post 1 - First pics

No comments on any of my posts from yesterday, so we're no closer to me putting up any sort of shout out to my peeps back home (or across the interweb!).

Day two started out rough, but better than yesterday. I had to drive 40+ miles to get some jerseys/hats for some of our employees, since it's the theme of the day. On the way back I got a flat tire. If that wasn't bad enough, after changing the tire, I put the jack down and my spare tire was TOTALLY flat. SO, I changed back to the original tire that was flat, but still "decent" enough to drive the last five miles to work. It was too early to get it into a store, so I prayed it would keep enough air (since it seemed to be a slow leak) and hurry and get it to some place in another hour or so. Well, once at work, I got pulled in a ton of directions and never made it out. In steps my angels...my wife and her folks! They took it to a shop right across from the station, since by now it was too flat to take it to the original place I got it fixed last year. Time for angel/miracle #2...the flat was from a nail. They took out the nail, fixed the leak, filled up the spare (since it was just out of air from being used previously), and then only charged $10! ROCK ON! Through it all, I was still to work early...praying for little to no issues today. So far, so good. Some little things have popped up, but that's the norm with so many people coming in and out this time of the year.

Here are some pics of Sharathon this year so far...forgive the bad quality, as they're from my phone (and also, notice the last one is of Israel Houghton!):

Our President & General Manager, Tim McDermott trying to show off our current totals, but the TV was just too bright to come through on my phone.

Sharathon day 1 - Post 2 - THE CONTEST!!!

It's 5:07pm (an hour and a half-ish before I am scheduled to take off), and things have quieted down a little for me. I thought they had after my last post, but I was then called upon by many a person right after that. I guess that's what I get for bragging about how during Sharathon it's really easy for us IT-folks (since we do 99% of our work before the event). Anyway, so again with it quieting down and no one needing any IT support, I again crept to my office to have some peace and quiet for a second. It's so awesome to be in the middle of it all in "phone central", but after almost 12 hours in it, I'm needing some down time.

So far, I haven't eaten horribly yet. I have, however, drank two Red Bulls, two Monster energy drinks, and a double tall white mocha. My stomach is feeling nasty, so now I'm trying to chug a few 20 oz waters, and get some food in my stomach. I know it's bad, but the only food I could find that would do anything was some donuts. Not my first choice, but it was either that or grapes, and fruit upsets my stomach if I'm really hungry like I was. We'll have some sandwiches ready in a little bit, so I'll grab one of those too. Either way, day one is almost done, and my calories have been liquid for the most part. I consider that a moderate success, since I know I'll gain weight this week instead of losing it, and liquid calories melt away faster than food ones do (at least in my head! HA!).

It's about ready to pour outside from the looks of it, and Avery has soccer camp tonight. Hopefully it holds off so he can do that, or maybe God's got it planned so that when B's folks get in town, they won't have to immediately run there.

(I hear over the speakers that they're doing a "phone blitz" right now to try and get all the phones going and in less than 20 seconds they did it! Wow...amazing...seriously!)

You all need to get on www.ksbj.org and listen/watch via the web if you're not in our radio audience. And you know what? I'll make the deal sweet for you...if I can get enough people to say they're watching the streaming video online...I'll put a note in front of the camera at a specific time that says "HI TO ALL THE PEOPLE LISTENING IN IOWA!!!" (or something like that) Let's see who all will comment on here and let me know they'll do it! Pass the word to friends and family! I'll put a number to it...if I can get at least 10 people back home saying they'll be watching, I'll do it! "IF" I get that commitment, I'll put a time/date on here to tune back to the web for my message to you all. So there you go...a challenge to all my readers online...can you do it??? We'll see!

Sharathon day 1 - Post 1 - IT BEGINS!

Hey all, it's Sharathon - our yearly time when we come to our audience and ask for monetary gifts - time of year. We are a 100% listener supported station, so this time is absolutely critical for keeping us off the air and commercial free. That's also one of the best things about our station...being that it's commercial free. Sharathon is a HUGE production to put on. We have 48 phones staffed 24 hrs a day (well it gets down to half that overnight, since we don't get as many calls then), which makes us need upwards of ONE THOUSAND volunteers to come in and take calls, do security, etc. We plan for months for this, and it all comes down to today, tomorrow, and Friday.

Today is day ONE of our three day Sharathon, and with it being the first day, we experienced the usual start-up-issues that we have had every year I've been here. Usually though, the issues we have are decent sized, but ones we can normally not affect the production. Not this year though. Things started smooth, and then the phones stopped working. Let me clarify that...the first 12 phones had no issues, but any calls past that would work until the volunteer picked up the phone. Once they did, they lost connection to the caller. After what seemed like eternity, we were able to get one of our phone guys in and found that the issue was caused by a few different things that I won't bore you with the details about. From then, it's been the usual "Hey, we need this to do that...that to do this..." etc, etc, etc type of issues to resolve. Now though, it's 2:45 (I came in at 5:30am), and things have seemed to calm down. I sneeked away to my office for a minute of calm and quiet since I needed it, and since my caffeine high is coming down. I'm working from 8:30am-6:30pm, but with it being a crucial time of the year for us, and with it being so much fun (not to mention, such an amazing thing to be around and be a part of each year), that I usually end up working more hours than that.

I'll try to update at least once a day on here, showing how we're doing with our goals and where we are currently...throw some pics on here, etc...but to hear and see what's going on, hop onto www.ksbj.org . You can listen to the webstream and/or watch the webcam that we have up that shows only a portion of "phone central". If you are listening or watching, drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

On a side note, Belinda's folks are coming in this evening, and her brother, Tanner, is getting in town tomorrow or Friday. It stinks that I will miss spending more time with them, so I'm praying that things run smoothly while I'm away to negate the need for me to come in more.

Sharathon 2007

This past Wednesday through Friday was "Sharathon", our yearly pledge drive. We had some very lofty goals, but the leadership believed they were attainable. Last year we broke the record of most money raised by a Christian fundraiser in three days. This year, we broke our own record. The totals aren't final, but for the second straight year, God blessed us through our givers...over five million dollars! How great is our God?! The old Andre Crouch song "My Tribute", has been the station's "song" for all of the 25 years it's been around, but with it being such a dated song, they wanted to update it. First person the leadership had in mind to redo the song...Israel Houghton and The New Breed. It was debuted during the last day of Sharathon and he did a phenomenal job with the remake, including a small snippet of Chris Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God" at the end. It was a perfect song to end the three days, and the excitement of seeing God bless us again. These three days are our most stressful, yet exciting, of the whole year. So many things depend on Brent and I getting them right, and making sure that if something goes wrong, that we get on top of it and get it taken care of. We had so many things actually go wrong right before it started that we were probably all close to heart attacks! Our webserver crashed the around midnight...six hours before it was all to start. That server housed all of our online donation taking ability, our webcams we set up, and our main Sharathon website. Our entire phone system went down around 3am...three hours before it was about to begin. And then a host of other smaller things popped up. PC monitors blacking out. PC's not starting up. Various other websites not opening because of coding issues. Etc etc etc. All of the major issues were fixed before or shortly after we began this year's Sharathon, and nothing major happened during. All of the minor issues were very minor, and we had enough equipment to handle it all. I think God was testing us. We were stressing something fierce...especially us engineering/IT guys...but everything worked amazingly well once we got going. The monetary amounts didn't look like they were going to be reached at one point. I remember how fast we made our goals last year, and how we had so much time left in our three days of fundraising to raise money for our "Above and beyond" funds, and thinking about how there's no way we can hit that mark this year. We hit it early evening on Friday (the last day), and still were able to raise around $250,000 more! I'll be shocked if we don't get the raise we were telling them we want.

All in all though, I think God was trying to let us know that we worry too much...to sit back and let the blessings He was about to give us really sink in...to show us how much He is in control, and that even if things go down, He'll still get accomplished what He wants to accomplish. Here is a video, and then some pics of all the fun! The video was just uploaded at 2pm (Sunday the 24th), so it might take a bit for it to be fully ready to go on youtube.