In July we had a good time leaving the Arizona heat behind and going to our bi-annual gathering in Ft. Collins, Colorado. We had seven days of great speakers both from within Cru and from without. You can go to cru15.cru.org/archive to watch almost all of the speakers’ presentations.
While we were there we went white-water rafting. That was a blast.
Another highlight of this year’s conference was spending time with Jim Munroe of The Maze. The Maze is an evangelistic magic show based on the outreach performance model which Andre pioneered. What made this special is how Jim credits Andre Kole for his being where he is and doing what he does today.
Jim gave a performance for a the Cru Staff and their families one evening, and during one of his effects he gets a volunteer from the audience to come up and hold a prop for him. This night he asked Andre to come up and help. He gave the prop to Andre to hold on to, and after stepping away he turned to Andre and told him “a little higher, please”. Those few of us in the relatively young audience who were in the know nearly fell out of our seats laughing. If you have seen Andre’s program you may remember a routine he does where he has several children from the audience come up and help him. He gives one of these helpers a handkerchief and asks him to hold it up by two corners. Throughout this five minute effect he turns to this one child several times and encourages him to hold the handkerchief “a little higher, please”. At the end of the routine Andre takes the hankie from the child and wipes his hands. A very funny bit when Andre does it, and a very funny bit when someone else does it to Andre. Below is a photo of Jim and Andre on stage, just before Jim publicly, and very sincerely, expresses his gratitude to Andre for his many years of magical ministry and for being the example for so many others to do the same – including himself.
A bonus treat was when Sheila was randomly selected to come on stage and help with the show’s finale.
