No Shoes, Burnt Rubber, Black Ties

No Shoes, Burnt Rubber, Black Ties

Wow…I think I have about a weeks worth of items in the blog for just one day. What a truly incredible day it has been.

I got up early…or should I say 8, but hey it was the weekend and I was out at a club til 2a the night before. I hadn’t found a church as of yet, so I spotted one called Word of Life, with English services. I walk into this church and immediately, two Filipina girls try to ask who invited me. I guess walk ins, aren’t that common here. The worship was service going on and I tried to walk inside but I was stopped. They asked me to remove my shoes, which is an asian thing primarily. I did, as I wanted to be respectful, then I entered a tiny room crammed with people. It was certainly a charismatic group and very friendly. It was a mix of Filipinos, Sri Lankans, and Indians. Ummmm I kind of stood out…but that is ok with me. I got used to incredible worship and teaching from both Lakewood Church with Joel Osten and Steve Madsen at Conrnerstone fellowship in Livermore. I was spoiled.   The congregation were very friendly and so full of life. Their smiles just beamed joyfulness. If you want to see the existence of God, all you have to do is look on the faces of these people. Their eyes, will prove it to you. Where Christ dwells, there is life and life more abundantly. It doesn’t have to be an abundance of wealth, but its abundance nonetheless. As Christians, if we follow God’s ways… we will have “enough” and then some. I’ve found wherever I’ve been in life financially…whatever amount of money I make, I have a tendency to live just barely beyond my means. I think that might be a human nature thing. Hopefully, I’ll be able to change that trend. So these people in the church service…they didn’t have a lot of wealth monetarily, but they sure had wealth in their spirit. Im not sure if I’m going to make this my home church or not. I still have a few more that I need to visit. Apparently there are a lot of Christian and Catholic churches on the island. There is even a jewish synagogue. It’s a totally different lifestyle in Bahrain as opposed to Saudi Arabia.

I went the B.I.C. (race track) they were doing drag races. I wanted to get footage of the cars so we could include it on our demo tape, which hopefully we’ll make this week. The race was really interesting…and amazingly loud. I had to hold my hands over my hears, because the roar of the engines just simply hurt.

The highlight of the day was the Palm Association Banquet. This is where the black tie part comes in. I don’t own a tuxedo, but I think I need to invest in one. I have a hunch that I will be going to quite a few of these while I am here. I was hobnobbing with 400 of Bahrain’s elite of the elite. This was a veritable who’s who on the Island. I was fortunate enough to have my very first KSDI project premiere in front of this group. But more on that later. The Palm Association is a Bahraini charity run by “The Palm Princesses” Its headed up Nadiya, Khalifa’s daughter and it was founded by Nader’s (my boss) wife Kirstie, a lovely English woman that just had their third baby, and Tanya is also apart of it.  The Shaheen family has their fingers into a lot of pies. They are quite well known and accepted on the island. Its interesting with a country this small, its actually possible to get to know of almost the entire island. Its like when I was at College, at Evangel. We had a small enough student population that is was possible to get to know everyone one on a first name basis. Its kind of like that here, but only with a few more thousand people thrown in. They raise money for the impoverished of the country and they do a fabulous job of it. What they needed me for, was to create a music video extolling their members to donate. This kind of has become my specialty. When we showed it to all the volunteers…there wasn’t a dry eye in the house…Remember how much I like to make people cry…lol. But in front of the group, there was this quiet what best can be described as “Awe…” You could hear a pin drop afterwards.    Man that sounds really egotistical…but im just trying to report. But the best thing at the end of the video, we had the KSDI logo prominent. It was an incredible branding opportunity, that we just hit it out of the park. Immediately after the video, the live auction was under way. Tanya told me, because they were so moved by the video, they bid even more aggressively (its for a good cause) because they were emotionally inspired. For these types of events…if you can get people to cry…then its like dollar signs going down their cheeks. They gave and they gave and they gave.

I was able to meet some very important people there…contact wise. I know im walking according to God’s ways, so im finding amazing favor. Seated right next to me, quite by happenstance, was a guy by the name of Walter. Walter is an interesting and very funny guy. We started talking and connected immediately. He’s originally from Brazil, but lived for 15 years in the U.S. primarily, Alabama, Florida and New York. Turns out he’s a Christian and went to church when he was in the U.S. What are the odds of that happening two Christians on an island filled with Muslims just so happen to sit next to each other at a banquet …I believe it was a divine appointment. He’s a professional basketball coach, but he’s looking to expand his core business, which is being a consultant and marketing strategist for companies…(hey that’s exactly what we need. ) He doesn’t want to coach for too much longer…apparently the leagues over here and in Europe Asia…if you lose even a couple of games in a row…you are out, fired. They don’t have a lot of patience for rebuilding projects apparently. Walter had some great contacts which we can follow up on them. I’ll give you more details as they become more available. I also met the head of the F1 track (a very powerful man). I also met a bunch of others. By doing well on the film, I created “wasta” (good favor) for our current and future clients with this web video. I could go on and on, about the amazing people I met at the party and I probably will tomorrow. For today…im soooooo sleepy…I just hit the wall so I apologize for any errors.  Good night now...