Oh my United...

Amazing. First of all, Joel Osteen's church is ginormous. That in itself was pretty incredible. The church bought and converted a pro basketball stadium. Wow. Unfortunately, it still feels a little stadium like, but it was great for the concert. I don't think I'd want to go there on Sunday mornings, but that's good since I kind of have a church home. ;) So the stadium was PACKED. An usher told one of our students that there were more than 20,000 people there. And most of them were teenagers or college students. I was cool with that though, sometimes I feel like I fit in better with that crowd. :)
I was supremely disappointed to not see Joel Osteen. I didn't expect him to speak or anything, but I did figure he'd do a welcome to our church kind of thing. I mean, come on, it's UNITED!! Maybe he was on vacation or something, but like I said, it's UNITED! Oh well. Maybe on one of our vacation Sundays we can go check it out, it's only about a forty minute drive.
So then the concert. Wow. These guys are just so talented. It was almost hard to worship, I was so enrapt in watching everything; the lighting, the video, the facial expressions of the singers. One of the guitar (pronounced gi-TAR when you live in TX) players looked so much like Matthew Fox from LOST - I found that a little distracting. But the music was amazing. They did a really good mix of old and new - which was good because I'd barely listened to their new album, simply because we don't have it yet. They did a lot of my favorites, but I was sad that 'One Way' wasn't in there and 'Jesus is my Best Friend.' details.
Speaking of details, I think I forgot to mention that we didn't wind up bringing our children, one of the ladies from the church volunteered to take them for the evening. Yay! So I really got to enjoy the evening.
We stopped at Whataburger on the way home - a Texas specialty. It's our second time eating there and it was really good. Like McDonald's french fries and Burger King burger. yummy.
Overall it was a great evening. I'm so excited about the way things are going with our group. We had eleven students show up for the trip, which was just an awesome turnout, so we are told. I feel like we are really connecting with them. Sunday School went awesomely yesterday and I am so excited to be teaching it. I love how we are such a team here, it makes everything so much more fun! Just really praising God this morning about all He's doing.