My First Share: The Final Day

I was going to write about the last day of Share on Saturday - but by Friday night I was absolutely EXHAUSTED and I didn't want to cheat the story of the last day.

Friday was our last day, and it was scheduled to end around noon, so we all came in at 5:45 in the morning.

Our buddy Silas (remember him?) had other obligations on Friday, so he sent his stand-in. Isn't this a scream?
Apparently several years ago, during Sheryl's first Share, someone told her on the last day, it was pajama day. She almost believed it, too! So as a joke, this year, she and Jeri came in their jammie pants...

Lynne took a shift on the phones. Or talking to volunteers while sitting at a phone. No - for real - she was logged in to take calls.

Sheryl brought me some cake, but no fork. That was some GOOD cake. (Or rather, some good icing. For me, cake is merely a vehicle for the icing, remember?)

Mac Powell...in the jammies. LOL!!

This moment was one of my most pivotal. I talked about it in the weekly recap. We'd been trying to raise $30,000 in one hour and with 9 minutes to go, we were still $10,000 short. But it came in at the very last second. This moment was when they announced that on the air and everyone clapped. Very moving.

The final Mid-Morning hour of Share - Ross, Lynne, Ron and me. This would be right before I had my on-air meltdown. I was struggling anyway, and then somehow thought it would be a good idea to try to read a really moving email. Bad.I.Dea.

Busy busy phone room. It was crazy busy all day - even past noon, when they decided to keep it running!

By about 3:30, I was back on the phones myself, and I wrote this note. Hard to read, but it says "I'd like to report a rare phenomenon: I'm tired of talking."

The phone company that set up our extra lines for Share had contracted with us to keep them open until 4 pm. So we'd been warned that when the lines cut, they'd just go dead, even if we were in mid-conversation. My phone rang, and I thought for sure I'd switched it off the headset mode, so I picked up the receiver. Nothing. So I grabbed the headset. Nothing. So I had them both up to my ear, saying "HELLO!?!?! HELLO!?!?!" Phil was my seatmate at that time and was so cracked up by the entire show that he started grabbing staplers and Clorox jars to say hello into all of them. I laughed until I cried.

In the end, we came in pretty close to our goal - not quite there, but pretty close. It was a neat moment to be in the studio all together as a staff and share with the listeners what had happened and pray together.

First Share...in the history books....and it was a good one.