First night prayers were rife with phrases such as “multiply our rest” and “refresh us”. It had been a long day of travel and we had two worship services in the morning that were going to be longer than those to which we were accustomed.
The prayers were answered; at lest in my case. I did wake up feeling refreshed, and had a wonderful morning of worship. I knew that I was a ticking sleep bomb, though, so I stole away with a team returning to the hotel to grab more rest.
When I left the team at large, one of my best friends showed a bit of contrived disdain, as he was required to stay on site.
His comments, however, showed true friendship, because he admonished me not to work, rather to sleep.
After that, I was ready for a full night of work, and returned to bed around 8:30 the next morning.
My plan was to awake at 10:30 to get ready to go to the venue to grab video of one of the teams. This was not to be, as I slept through my phone alarm and barely heard the ring of the hotel phone an hour later. Now, I have had the same alarm on my phone for a year now, so I am fairly psychologically attuned to the sound, and it almost always wakes me up. Before today, I would have said that it always wakes me up.
I suppose that tells us both how tired I really was.
That’s probably how the trip will go: grab what sleep you can when you can. Pray for our team to know when those times are and to make the most of them.