Rapid City, SD - October 20-21, 2008

The Chicago Staff Band had the privilege of traveling to Rapid City, SD to help celebrate 100 years of Salvation Army service in Rapid City and the Black Hills area. Our hosts for the weekend were Majors Robert and Audrey McClintock who have been serving in this beautiful area of the country for the last six years.

We flew out of O'Hare on a direct flight to Rapid City. The flight was delayed leaving O'Hare so of course it was late getting into Rapid City. One of our members didn't get her bag on our arrival in Rapid City and in fact it didn't catch up to her until late Monday night... that's another whole story. But we got there in plenty of time to grab a quick lunch and then head out to see Mount Rushmore before returning to the civic center to set up, take a quick formal photograph and then run through a few things.

Saturday night we played a concert at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. It was a beautiful hall and they had a very good crowd especially considering the population of the city is about 67,000 people. Plus, there was a three day dog show taking place in the same venue... just for competition. Here's a link to the Black Hills FOX News web report of the concert.

Sunday morning there was a community wide worship service back in the same venue. The services celebrated God's faithfulness through the 100 years in Rapid City.

Following the service we had a quick lunch, headed back to the airport and flew back to Chicago via Denver.

It was a great weekend and we were richer for being allowed to take part in this celebration of service in Rapid City. Special thanks go out to Majors Dawn & Merle Heatwole (divisional leaders), Majors McClintock (corps officers), Majors Mike & Judith Mills (Sioux Falls corps officers) and Bob & Connie Herbert (equipment truck driver & spouse)!

Back on the air...

After a year of not doing much blogging about the activities of the Chicago Staff Band it is time to get back to it. Rather than hosting it on Salvation Army servers I decided it would be easier to deal with if I just put it out here on blogspot.com.

So, hopefully those of you who are interested in what the Chicago Staff Band is up to will create a new bookmark or include this blog in your RSS feed. And, I hope to hear your comments too!

Stay tuned for more from "The Band With A Sacred Message".