A family that works together..................

All of us worked when we were on the field. When we got to a church on a Saturday, everyone had a job to do. Dad set up the outside of the motor home, electric, water, “gray water” etc…. Mom set up the inside of the motor home, beds, pantry, fridge etc.  The kids set up the tape table, I think we had the best job. It was the easiest by far. The pastor would tell us where to set up, sometimes we were in the foyer, sometimes we were in hallways, or the back of the sanctuary or anywhere in between. We would pull out the maroon velvet table cloth with the gold tassel trim that had “Lift Jesus Higher Ministries Evangelist Sam Austin” in gold block letters in an arch on the front. We worked for quite a while to make sure that the letters were centered just right on the 6 foot table provided by the church. We would find the closest plug in and plug up the tape duplicator, which a must have for any traveling evangelist in the 80’s. Ours could duplicate an hour long sermon on 3 tapes front and back in about 60 seconds. It weighed no less than 65 pounds which was about 10 pounds more than our little sister, so picking it up and getting it on the table, was an adventure.  Then we would lay out the books, preaching series and the ever coveted tape “The Austin Girls Sing” featuring songs like “Jesus is alive and well” , “He’s still working on me”, “We’re not home yet children”, “When Jesus returns for His own” and many more!!  I know that there are some of you are thinking, “HEY!!! I want one of those!!!”, well, they were only available for a limited time.   So I am sorry to tell you, that we have sold out and they are no longer in circulation. 

After we had worked our marketing magic on the tape table, placing the books and tapes in just the right places to catch the revival attending, holy spirit seeking, shopper’s eye, Dad would come in and we would “help” set up the sound system. Dad would always bring in his own sound system, he liked to be loud, and if someone else controlled the knobs they turned him down the louder he got.  He would run the mic check. We would run through our song that we were planning on singing for Sunday morning. Then we were all set to begin the week’s services.

Then during the week we had work to do too. One job that was always needed was, cleaning the spit screen of dad’s mic. Dad’s one of those holler and walk the aisle kind of preachers. So every night he would have to have the spit screen cleaned out, because trust me you don’t want to be near a spit screen that has not been cleaned with soap and water after a week of preaching.

Another one of our during the week jobs was cleaning old tapes. Every night dad taped his sermons. Then sometime around the beginning to middle of the altar time, he would stop the recording and give one of mom the tape. It was usually mom’s job to go make 3-6 copies (only because often we forgot to load the Master tape in the top left slot. If you put a blank tape in that spot and the master tape in the top right, the blank records white nothingness over the master and you get a grumpy daddy.) At the end of the week sometimes we had tapes didn’t sell, and we needed to reuse them. So it was our job to clean them. First we ran them through a magnetic eraser. The old “master” tapes were written on with sharpie, so we had this one chemical that we would put on a cotton ball and it would wipe the sharpie off with a few swipes. But the ones with the labels on were harder to get off. So we had to put another other chemical on them. I am not sure how wise it was to allow us to handle these chemicals, I just know we weren’t allowed to smoke around them. I don’t know what chemicals these were, but I am wondering now if they might be what ruined my short term memory. I don’t know what chemicals these were, but I am wondering now if they might be what ruined my short term memory. 

Friday nights, after service, mom would at some point begin to sing “I feel like traveling on” and we would start the tear down process.  Packing everything back in the boxes that we took them out of last Saturday, I will say, that most of the time we would be missing one sister. She was rather famous for figuring out ways to get out of the manual labor type work.  Dad would back the trailer, motor home, truck, van, car, or whatever we were driving at the time up to the doors of the church and we would load it up and drive to the next church and do it all over again.

We loved what we did, didn’t know any different. I swear, I thought everyone went to church 7 times a week, knew how to set up a sound board,  knew how to duplicate tapes and how to pack a trailer with 2 speakers and 13 boxes and old suitcases by the time they were 10!! I laugh now when I am at ladies events and something goes haywire, with the audio or projector stuff and  the first thing they all do is yell “go get a man in here so they can fix this” or “go get someone to push play on this DVD player for us” or “there is no sound coming from this soundboard whatever shall we do” and I feel great sense of accomplishment when I can go over and say “we don’t need a man, I got this” and push play on the dvd, player, set up the surround sound better than George Lucas himself could have done it and all without breaking a nail!! I love the life lessons I learned on the field and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!!

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