Every winter, Wimauma, Florida is flooded with gospel music artists and fans alike for the annual Bill Baily Winter Gospel Music Convention, a week-long convention chock full of music, fellowship, and praise to our awesome God. We had no plans of staying past the free Saturday night early-bird celebration with the Down East Boys, however, God had other plans...thus the reason I was completely absent from the blog for quite awhile.
We pulled into the convention center early on Saturday afternoon and enjoyed relaxing for a few hours at the church park, letting the kiddos and doggos burn some energy. An hour or so before doors opened, we joined the fast-growing line and made our first friend of the week. (Hello Mr. Doug!!)
It was so much fun to get to see these Down East guys in concert again, especially since we were thinking it might be the last time we catch them in Florida. (That may or may not be true now, as some of our other plans and routes have been changed.) No matter how many times we've seen their concerts, their music never gets old...plus you never know what's going to happen. So we'll keep catching up with them on the road as many times as their itinerary and our's allow us to cross paths.
This was the first time we heard the Down East Boys perform the song Beautiful Shining Happy Golden Shore (apparently the songwriter couldn't come up with a shorter name, LOL)
although we'd heard it by another group at the Mount Dora concert. Kayden and Alex proved you can have fun while singing as they attempted to one-up each other throughout the song:)
A few days after the Mount Dora concert, I was Googling Alex's twin brother, who also sings with a Gospel quartet. In the process, I came across an old video from 2017 of Alex singing one of our family's favorite Christian country songs...Long Black Train by Josh Turner. So guess what we asked Ricky at this concert?? Alex was such a good sport about it...especially considering he knew beforehand that we had requested something of him but the other guys wouldn't tell him what exactly. What a fun evening!
The next morning, we decided to attend worship service at Happy Gospel Church before heading further down the coast toward the Florida Everglades. One of the gospel groups that was scheduled to sing at the convention later that week performed during the church service. The Erwin family, made up of four siblings, was a lot of fun and full of Biblical truth.
After church ended, we sat down in the RV and had a serious discussion...young people really wanted to stay for the whole week, but would it work with the schedule? It would mean re-ordering what direction we went when, but it could be done! So we called Pastor Bill, the convention organizer, to find out about ticketing and if there were group or family discounts or kid prices, etc... He told us they were delighted to have young people interested in Southern Gospel Music and a family that wanted to be there, so we should just "come on down" to the ticket booth and they would take care of us. He gave us free passes to get into everything all week long and told us to just make love offering donations to the music groups as we felt led by God. We also originally planned to just dry-dock in the parking lot, but they ended up placing us in the on-site campground with full hookups - for free! For a whole week Ya'l! Wow! What unexpected blessings for which we are still thanking God!
Thus began a fantastic and fun-filled week! Most of the time, we were the only young people surrounded by a sea of retired snowbirds...which I was just fine with. As I told Mom, I'm much happier in a crowd of what the Christian world refers to as 'senior saints' from whom I can learn life wisdom than a group of young people my own age. I love and enjoy my same-age peers, but I love G-mas and G-pas better. :) Of course, many wanted to hear our story - who we were and why we were there. And they were always excited to hear how much we are loving southern gospel music.
I've only included photos and videos of a few of our favorite groups, but over a very intense week, we saw around 25 gospel groups in concert.
(Honestly, I wasn't quite sure how to format all of this into one post without going too much into detail or including an overwhelming amount of pictures/videos. So, I'm just including some of our favorite groups, and then pictures and stories with some of the many friends we made. )
Every morning started with free donuts, fellowship, and chapel. With preaching from incredible evangelists Randy Perry, Dell Hyssong, Dennis Erwin, and Josh Franks, it was a sweet way to start each morning. Right after chapel, it was time for some of us to get in line for the afternoon matinee while others returned to the RV to care for the canines and grab a bite to eat. The afternoon matinees were so much fun, especially since there was no reserved seating and we could move up closer to the front. After the matinees, we enjoyed an hour at the RV, usually spent walking dogs and packing supper. Then it was time to get in line for the evening performance that ran from about 6:00-10:00pm and featured 4-5 groups. So we ran a very tight schedule, not wanting to miss anything, but it was an absolute blast! (So much so that the big kids have already been trying to convince Mom and Dad to take us back next year! Lol...)
Whenever people heard we were from Minnesota, but had just moved to Iowa, they continually told us we needed to meet the Browns... a talented family group of three siblings from Le Mars, Iowa who are also the founders of The Brown's Century Theater in their hometown. They turned out to be one of our family favorite groups of the week with their fun music, incredible violin skills, and humorous family dynamics.
Andrew proved to be the family goofball and bundle of energy!
During one of the evening concerts, we got a small taste of gospel bluegrass with the Little Roy and Lizzie Show. Unaffected by age (82 years old), Little Roy and crew displayed incredible skill and dexterity on their instruments. In a crowd-favorite song, Little Roy demonstrated his ability to play every instrument onstage...except the fiddle. According to Lizzie, it sounds like a cat hanging by its nails from a clothesline when LIttle Roy tries to fiddle, LOL.
Pastor Bill Bailey organized several reunions of old quartets...including the beloved Original Dove Brothers Quartet. Additionally, the next generation of Dove Brothers, lead singer Mcray Dove's sons, made their debut...imparting profound truths through mesmerizing harmonies. It was really neat to see these young men beginning to take on the responsibility of carrying on the quartet's legacy.
Having grown up on Christian contemporary music, we loved hearing how Triumphant Quartet merged gospel harmonies with contemporary music we were familiar with. Favorites such as Anne Wilson's My Jesus and Zach Williams Chain Breaker.
Tenor singer David Sutton also proved to be an accomplished harmonica player!
We were super excited when Triumphant performed Long Black Train, featuring their awesome bass singer...with a planned harmonica solo that turned into an unplanned, skillful vocal solo when the tiny instrument fell under the stage!
Our family wore matching shirts most of the week because it makes it easy to spot each other in the crowd...plus people came to expect it, LOL. One dear lady we became friends with (Hello Ruth!!) insisted that she wanted to buy us a set of matching shirts. So after scoping out merchandise tables for several days, we settled on Triumphant's blue I See the Evidence of your Goodness in my Life' t-shirt. Ironically, we were one-shirt short of being able to match all week...so thanks to Ruth, we were able to finish out the week in our awesome new shirts!
After the conference ended on Friday, we used Saturday as a catch-up day and then attended Happy Gospel Church again on Sunday. They hosted one of the convention's earlier groups for a concert that evening. We enjoyed seeing Tribute Quartet one more time. Afterward, it was fun to chat with the guys and learn a little bit more about their group. A great way to end a full week of Gospel music.
Here are a few more groups we enjoyed over the week, along with numerous others I haven't mentioned!
Outside of Pastor Bill Bailey, there were several other people we first came in contact with at Mount Dora - some we recognized and others who recognized us... Apparently, when eight people are wearing matching shirts, 6 of whom are young in an otherwise 'mature' demographic' you aren't easily forgotten, LOL.
We are so grateful to Pastor Bill for everything he did to help make this week possible for everyone, and for blessing our family with free passes!
We first heard this skilled young pianist perform at Mount Dora, where he freakily reminded Maleah and I of an old theater friend. He and his mother were helping Pastor Bailey throughout the week, and he also performed a few times as well. We learned from them that if we don't want to immediately be labeled as Yanks when in Mississippi, we need to correct our pronunciation of the state's name. To the natives, there is no fourth syllable...too inefficient. It's Missippi, not Mississippi. This led to an ongoing debate with Jack, who made it his mission to convert us. Much to our delight, we did manage to get him to pronounce it the Yankee way once when he was distracted - score one for us!
Over the week, we were blessed in so many ways by people we didn't know wanting to just love on us in a variety of ways. One gentleman left broasted chickens at our RV to have for lunch. He also brought us breakfast from McDonald's one morning. Another gentleman bought us a bunch of artist CD's. Another gal bought us several artist CD's and books. Ruth bought our entire family matching t-shirts. Another couple showed up at our dinner table with 8 large pieces of cake they had purchased from concessions. A gentleman brought us a big box of his fresh-picked garden tomatoes. (That was particularly fun because you don't get fresh-picked tomatoes in the Midwest in February!) Someone gave us a huge fancy cake to take back to the RV on convention closing night. There were many other gifts I won't detail here, but suffice it to say... Christians are generous, and we were overwhelmed to be in this environment where we were treated as royalty simply because we showed up as a family. It was sad when Friday came and we had to say farewell to so many precious and giving people we had come to share a special kind of joy with.
In an unplanned reunion, some old friends of ours we haven't seen in years showed up for the week-long convention. They moved to Florida a year ago, and Mom was planning to reach out to them when we got closer to their new home in southern Florida. Imagine our delight when they showed up at the Gospel Convention. What a great God we have to plan such wonderful surprises!
We walked away from that week with 21 music CD's of various groups...both those who performed this week and classic gospel artists from times past, such as the Cathedrals and George Jones. I've already downloaded a number of my favorites onto my computer. I love listening to them while I sort photos and/or write.
All that to say, God opened the door for the D-Team to experience an unexpected, life-changing week in a small Florida town. Day after day, through song and sermon, we heard His goodness proclaimed while experiencing the love of Jesus through many brothers and sisters in the faith. To God be the glory!
The week will remain fondly in our memories and, who knows? Maybe we'll be able to attend the Bill Bailey Winter Gospel Music Convention again sometime in the future. (We were also excited to learn some of these groups (and others still new to us) occasionally come to sing at events in a couple of different towns less than an hour from our new Iowa home. So more Southern Gospel Music is definitely in our future, Lord willing!
Congratulations if you made it through all of that. I promise my next post won't be nearly as long or scatter-brained. ;)
Until next time, God bless!
That looks like so much fun!
When the Browns played the violin together, they actually played a song??!?