North Carolina Trip - SINGING IN THE SMOKIES🎤🏔

 

The first weekend of July, five of us kids took a trip to North Carolina. There is a big Southern Gospel event that happens every year in the Smoky Mountains put on by the Inspirations Quartet. We had heard about it but never been before so this year we decided to go! We left at 4am Thursday morning(you can tell from the picture that some of us still wanted to be in bed😴😂), traveled straight through, and arrived around 5pm.

It was really beautiful to watch the sunrise!

Starting to see some mountains!

The event started at 6pm that night and we were able to check into our Airbnb first. It was on top of a mountain so that was interesting.😅

Singing in the Smokies, here we COME!!!!

It was really neat to see the former members of the Inspiration Quartet sing with the current group!

Jeff Tolbert and Primitive Road.

The Troy Burns Family.

The Inspirations Quartet! There were about 5-7 groups that sang each night so it was pretty much constant music from 6-10:30pm, and the Inspirations always finished the night out. It was glorious!😍 It was pretty amazing to be among hundreds of people who you knew were die hard Southern Gospel fans.😁

Relaxing that evening while watching some baseball highlights.😁 Go Yankees!⚾️

Friday morning: Happy July 4th! It was weird, we were so busy with our trip that it didn't even feel like the 4th of July.😄

There was some singing and devotional time that morning at the event. The Rogers Family brought the music.

Wyatt Austin, the Inspirations bass singer, brought the message from God's word.

And here is where our trip got crazy. We had gone to visit some friends in the area Friday afternoon and on the way back to our Airbnb, someone pulled out in front of us and Jared's truck was basically totaled. (The road it happened on was very curvy with a mountain on one side but, ironically, we had the accident on one of the few straight stretches.😄) God protected us in so many ways and we were all unhurt except for small cuts/bruises and whiplash. God also provided a rental truck so we could carry on with our plans for the weekend! It was going to take more than an accident to deter us from going to Singing in the Smokies!😉

   

It was really sad to see his truck go...it was a good truck with lots of memories.🥲

We were not able to get the rental until the next day, but our friends in the area graciously drove us to the event Friday night so we wouldn't have to miss it.

The Whisnant Family! I was really excited about hearing them!

We had some mountain views at our Airbnb!

It was really beautiful in the morning.😍

And we come to the last day - Saturday. We were excited to see the Kingsmen Quartet!

I cannot even begin to tell you how incredible the last night was. There was so much love going out from the audience to the Inspirations and from them back to us. It was quite overwhelming.❤️ The Lord has blessed these four young men in a powerful way and it's amazing to see their humble hearts carry out His work. All I can say is: if you haven't got your ticket for next year...get it and come with us!!😁

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Sunday morning we headed down to Georgia. There is a church in the Atlanta area that we knew of so we attended Sunday morning worship with them. 

The lead pastor also hosts a radio show(Wretched Radio) that we have listened to for several years so it was kinda like a dream come true to meet him.😁

I also got to meet a good friend of seven years for the first time! It was wonderful to visit with her and her family!❤️

We didn't drive into Atlanta(thankfully😅) but you can see it faintly in the background of this picture.

The truck we rented did not have a bed cover so when we ran into some rain, we had to pull over and get some trash bags to protect the things in the back! The craziness never ended on this trip.🤯😂

My face right here kinda describes the emotions by that time.🥺

But we were still able to laugh and get crazy!🤪

Back in Arkansas and...*confetti* flat lands!🥳🤩

And there you have it! It was a wild trip with many unexpected things but also many incredible things. You know...when the accident happened, I think we were all devastated at first because of so many reasons. We were 12 hours away from home with a totaled truck, it was a holiday weekend so no rentals were open, we still had two nights of Singing in the Smokies left + the GA stop and that might not happen now, and the list goes on. That accident seemed to disrupt all our perfect plans for the weekend, yet it never interrupted God's plans because it WAS His plan. Truly "A man's heart plans his way but the LORD directs his steps." -Proverbs 19:21 God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!

~Grace