Something the devil tried to destroy, God turned it for good – a broken speaker was upgraded by the manufacturer for a fraction of the cost to buy it new!

“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.” Isaiah 61:3

The past few weeks have been a real trial. Some might say we’ve had a streak of “bad luck” lately. If I even believed in luck, I would have to say it wasn’t just bad but almost non-existent.

One of the “highlights” of our week was this past Friday night. We were at GIG Coffeehouse in Uniontown. We’ve been going there every 3 months for the past 4 years or so and have never had as much trouble with our sound as we did that night. In fact at the start of the concert, we didn’t have any sound at all. Not that we didn’t try it out before the concert started, we just didn’t have the whole group do a sound check because there were so many people there already. (When we’re at GIG, we typically do a first song as the sound check and only have to set the volumes.)

As we began to sing, there just was no sound at all coming through the speakers.

The guys were busy trying to find out what the problem was so I started to talk to the crowd to take up the time. I started telling those in attendance of my “bad luck” stuff. It had been feeling to me like the devil was a bulldog with his jaw clasped about my leg, his teeth sunk deep into my muscles, and not letting go until I bled to death! I started to share about how we need to persevere through the trials because “greater is HE that is in ME than he that is in the world.”

At one point the screen from the sliding glass doors crashed to the ground outside and I heard someone say that the devil sure made a quick escape from the premises that night!

Shortly thereafter the guys were able to get some sound going. It wasn’t “right” but we were able to make do. It truly felt as the devil had left the building. We continued to sing.

But when the devil couldn’t stop us from singing he tried to stop the live broadcast on the internet. The computer shut down. We kept singing.

At the break I set up the broadcast again; I sent a quick posting on Facebook and asked any prayer warriors to pray.

The second half began. Shortly after, the computer crashed again and shut down the broadcast. I don’t know why it waited till we were singing to do that – it had nothing to do with the sound problems. It had been running for 15 minutes fine. Then the worse part happened! One of our speaker columns stopped working totally. There was no power getting to the unit. We finished the program with only 1 speaker unit.

I felt defeated. I went home embarrassed and upset about the whole situation.

The next day we had a puppet show and things were not any better. Mapquest underestimated travel time to West Virginia, we took a wrong turn and were 20 miles off course, arrived late, sound problems again, couldn’t find the disk with the puppet songs, and so on. Still persevered through and had a great program!

Monday morning I called a repair shop for the speaker. We were in a pinch since Chalice had another gig the following Saturday. I found out that repairing our speaker wasn’t going to be easy as Bose, the manufacturer, was not too reliable or prompt for unauthorized service centers and there wasn’t an authorized service center in our area. The service guy I talked to estimated at least $300 (shipping extra) for the problem IF it was what he thought it might be, based on my description and trouble shooting. And he said it might take 4 weeks or more to fix. He suggested I call Bose direct and see if they could help.

Bose offered us a flat fee of $250 for repairing the speaker but with shipping it could have been another $150 bucks! And it would take a few weeks especially with shipping the unit back and forth. Then they offered us a “trade-up” special. We send ours back with a thousand dollars and they send us the brand new model 2 system including a $500 upgraded gadget. (Brand new this system costs about $3000.00.) And it included free shipping for both the new model and to turn in our old one!

What the devil meant for bad, God turned into beauty for us!

And the best part…they shipped the new unit before they expected me to send back the old one. It arrived safe and sound today, in plenty of time for our service on Saturday!

We are surely going to sing HIS praises!

God gave us “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness … that HE might be glorified!”