From the Road by New Attitude Tour Manager Andrew Garfield

I watch the tears run down their faces. I hear their voices crying out to God—some meeting Him for the first time, others making a renewed commitment to follow Him. "This," I think to myself, "is what it's all about."

The scene has been played out many times since I started traveling with New Attitude. Yes, New Attitude is not just a cool magazine, in fact, it's a really cool conference, too. My name is Andrew Garfield and I work as the tour manager, flight attendant, body guard, and right-and left-hand man for Josh. At each city we've visited, we've seen God faithfully meet the people at the conference and change their lives.

The tour name, "Fellowship of the Burning Heart," comes from the writings of author and pastor A. W. Tozer. The name captures the purpose of the tour—to challenge young people to rise up consecrated and fully committed to Jesus Christ.

In January we kicked off the spring tour in Ft. Bragg, California. The conference was held in an old grade school auditorium that had stage lights and curtains. Our host's husband was a ranger, so we had the unique experience of staying in a state park surrounded by Redwoods.

Our next stop, Atlanta, Georgia, was unforgettable. Attendance at this conference was quite low; in fact, no one was there! We had to postpone the conference due to ice. But the host team rallied together and in less than three hours we had made over four hundred phone calls to alert people about the cancellation. Unfortunately, a few people had already left. One youth group from Alabama made the long drive only to be stuck at a hotel. Josh and I were able to drop in for a few minutes to talk and pray with the kids. We left their hotel just in time. The roads were slippery as we drove to our host's home. We learned the next day that we had narrowly missed a thirty car pile-up by five minutes.

Our next conference in Virginia was pleasantly uneventful in the weather department. But I goofed during the conference when I announced that it was great to be in Richmond, Virginia. This would have been fine except that we were in Virginia Beach. Oops! After the conference we drove to Fredericksburg for a youth rally and a Christian school assembly. It was all I could do to keep Josh calm—it was his first time in a school where the students weren't his siblings.

Then it was on to Pennsylvania. The conference set two milestones for New Attitude, the first being that we held it in a basketball arena and the second being that it was our biggest conference ever with over 2,500 people. The scariest moment of the day occurred when a young boy nodded off during Josh's message and fell six feet off the end of the bleachers. Fortunately, he was quite all right and, needless to say, quite awake the rest of the day! The highlight of the day was seeing over 100 people respond to the altar call.

We wrapped up the spring leg of the tour in Nashville, Tennessee. Now we're gearing up to reinvade Atlanta as well as two new cities, Wichita and El Paso.

Many of you have written asking what's involved in bringing a New Attitude event to your town. If you're seriously interested, write us and we'll send you an info packet. As we plan for next year, we're looking for churches and teams of families to host conferences and youth rallies.

If you have the vision and means by which to organize a dedicated team of hard-working volunteers, we'd love to hear from you.

Keep us in your prayers. I hope that we'll see you on the road.