What a fun evening we had with a group of 850 women! My assistant, Vance (yes, she is a woman!), and I traveled up to the Memphis area so I could speak at a Ladies’ Night Out at the verrrrry large Bellevue Baptist Church. I realized as soon as I got there that this church knows how to have a good time!
Instead of a sedate cheese and crackers reception or some such thing, they turned the giant church’s courtyard into one big outdoor smoothie party! Let’s just say that I had one sugared-up group of ladies in the audience. I really enjoyed meeting Marge Lenow, the church’s women’s ministry director in this picture with me. She and her team clearly have such a wonderful heart for seeing changed lives in the women of their congregation, and really, the city. And it is always such a pleasure to see a team that has such excellence in their operation. They functioned like clockwork.
Too bad our credit card machine didn’t! For two years people have been pleading with us to take credit cards when we sell books after events. We finally arranged it. 
Vance spent months setting us up to be able to take credit cards, and came to this event precisely so she could oversee the process and make sure it worked well. Turned out it worked better in theory than in reality! The handheld machine supposedly works on cell signals but for some reason it just would not capture a signal well. Poor Vance had to wander all over the lobby trying to get “bars” on the machine. She’d get a signal that worked for a minute if she held it up at just the right angle . then the signal vanished. She’d move just a few feet away, get the “bars” again, then they’d vanish.and on and on. It really was kind of funny - later.
Despite that hitch, we had a great night and heard two stories in the booksigning line from tearful women who said that God had used ‘For Women Only’ as a turning point in saving their marriage. Every time I hear that, I start crying, too. There were some really funny stories as well .
Here’s a picture of one woman in the booksigning line who was a hoot and a half - she had me (and twenty others) laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes once again! We stayed until the last book had been signed and the church was waiting to close its doors for the night. Vance is fairly new on my team and she’dheard the stories of my crazy schedule on the road, but I don’t think she actually believed them until we were eating our dinner from a hamburger drive-through while sitting on the beds in our hotel room at what was (for us) midnight!