sherryrichrdsgmailcom
sherryrichrdsgmailcom
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
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| Member | Mar 4, 2018 (8 years) |
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Bio
Hellow, My name is Sherry Richards. Since I was a very young child, I have been an avid lover of southern gospel music. My Family began traveling and singing gospel music when I was eight years old and my parents were gospel music promoters, hosting most every national and regional artist on the East coast at our home church as well as a venue called Holy Land, USA in Bedford, VA, so I have been involved in the Southern Gospel Music industry almost my entire life. I remember vividly the big buses of The Hoppers, The Dixie Melody Boys, The Hemphills, The Kingsmen, The Rex Nelon Singers and so many others pulling onto the parking lot and being so star struck as the group members jumped off and began to load in. There are many people from that time in my life who stand out, but Connie Hopper was and still is the one who made the biggest impression on me. I remember one day as Ms. Connie was looking around the “barn” at Holy Land, USA, getting to spend time with her and sharing a picture of the two of us taken a few years prior. She was so attentive and gracious to me as a young child. And never do I remember ever seeing her after that to this day, that she didn’t speak to me and call me by name and that also made such a big impression on me.
One of my biggest dreams in life was to one day sing with the Hoppers and The Rex Nelon Singers.
Many years later, in 1984, I married my husband, Eddie, who was, at that time, singing with a group called the Singing Nippers from Pulaski, VA. (No they weren’t alcoholics. That was their last name! LOL!!!) My family quit traveling then and three years later, I began singing with the Nippers as well.
Over the next 30 years, Eddie and I sang with several other groups including the Jack Saul Singers, The Sounds of Victory, Southern Gold and most recently, Greater Love. Before, between and since those groups, we have, off and on, sang on our own, sometimes having other members with us, sometimes not.
Though we have been through many seasons and many groups during our years in gospel music, including God fulfilling my dream sing with the Hoppers when I was asked to fill in for Ms. Connie, the one thing that was always consistent for Eddie and for me was that both of us knew that ministering in music was a calling on our lives. And though we always had the desire to travel and minister full time, so often we became weary and tired of the struggle and tried to quit and just go to church like normal people. It was never long though before we found ourselves unhappy doing that too. And then someone would call and ask us to come sing and we would get our excitement back and hit the road again.
Though several of the groups we were part of began to receive some national recognition and see our territory expand, it never seemed to be long before something happened and we were back to starting over again. We could never understand why, with all the years we had been on the road, we could never seem to get that break others had gotten. Eddie tells that he had almost gotten to a point of anger, and would even question God why others were seeing success in the industry and we weren’t.
THAT'S WHEN GOD STEPS IN
The last week of January, 2016, as Eddie would tell it, God answered him saying, “Let’s just see how bad you REALLY want this” and with less than 24 hours notice, he lost his job of almost 15 years, a six figure salary, company car, computer, phone, insurance, credit card and everything else company. And to boot, this was our sole household income as I had quite public work and was a Care Minister at our church on a voluntary basis. Now any other time in our lives, we would have both had a mental breakdown and panicked at such news, but we didn't, and never did. You see, by this time, we had enough experience with God to know that He had always been our source and He would continue to be just that.
Eddie was on his way to work on Wednesday, the last week of January, 2016, when he got the call from his boss saying they were doing away with Eddie's position. Eddie said a peace came over him that he had never experienced before. He called to tell me about the conversation with his boss, who had nothing to do with the decision, by the way, and said that his boss was coming to town to pick up his car, computer, phone, etc., that evening.
As I sat and prayed asking God to show us what we were supposed to do now, a thought came to me that maybe it was time for Eddie to sing full time with some quartet. So I didn't something I hadn't done in probably 7-8 years...I went on the Singing News website to look for a quartet who might be looking for a lead singer. See God, even with that, was guiding me because when I went on the website looking for one thing, he showed me another. There were no ads for a lead singer at that time but what was there was an ad for something I NEVER remember seeing before in all my years of subscribing to Singing News Magazine. It was an ad for a "Southern Gospel Female Vocalist". Think about it...most of the females in SG music are either the wife, daughter or mother of someone in the group. It is rare that you see a female (especially a married female) traveling with a group unless there are other females in the group, unless she is related to one of them, and rightfully so.
Anyway, here was this ad for a SG female vocalist. It was at a dinner theater in Pigeon Forge, TN. I told Eddie about the ad and he encouraged me to reply and check it out, stating he could get a job there as easy as anywhere else if they didn't want both of us. So I emailed the ad and in no time, I received a response from the GM at the theater asking if I could call him. I told him about our ministry and experience in gospel music and expressed to him that Eddie and I had always sung together but his response was that he had already hired all of his male vocalists and didn't have a position for Eddie but that they would help him find a job if this all worked out. He asked if we could come down to audition the next day (Thursday, January 28) as they were starting rehearsals on Monday, February 1st and in the meantime, could I email him some video and audio recordings with a photo. We arranged to meet at noon the next day and I emailed all that he asked for which of course had both Eddie and me on it.
That night, I went on to church as usual, saying nothing to anyone about Eddie losing his job or us going to Pigeon Forge because it was all so new and we didn't know whether this would even work out or not. And it hadn't really occurred to me that we might be moving to another state and leaving our home, our friends and the church we had been long time members of. It just wasn't reality to me at that point.
When I returned home from church, I had an email from the GM at the theater that simply said, "Bring tracks for your husband to audition as well". That's all it said. No explanation. Eddie and I looked at each other and agreed that maybe this was God working something out.
Early the next morning, we headed to PF and upon arrival, met with the GM and the theater's owner. They showed us around the theater and told us a little about what they do and what they were looking for. It was then that they explained that they typically use a cast of 3 men and 3 women. However, after reviewing the demos I had sent, the owner had asked the GM if he couldn't make the shows work with 2 women and 4 men instead of 3 and 3. See they actually had 2 female positions still open (can you say God Thing). After reviewing the three shows they were planning to do that year, GM had figured out how to make that happen. (So I guess one could say, Eddie was our 3rd woman!!! LOL)
After talking a while and hearing their plans, they auditioned the both of us and offered both of us jobs. Of course, with theater being a whole new ballgame for us, we told them we needed to talk about it, and definitely pray about it. So they bought us dinner and put us up in a hotel that this same man owned and asked us to meet with them the next morning to discuss contracts. Once they were gone, Eddie asked me what I thought. I remember it like it was yesterday. I said, "I think I am scared to death". Eddie said, "me too". I went in the restroom and sat in the stall praying. I said "Lord, if this is you and this is what you are guiding us in to, please show me something that I will have not doubt." As I walked back to the table, I noticed the owner had come back in and was telling Eddie for us to go back to the theater after eating, that he had worked out a way to pay us a little more money. BAMMMM!!! I knew without a doubt that this was God showing me it was Him. And I proceeded to tell Eddie about my prayer. The next morning, we both signed contracts to begin work on Monday February 1 (3 days from that day). We were contracted for six days a week every week until until December 31, 2016. The GM handed us a pile of scripts and song lyrics, a handful of CD's and DVDs and said, "See ya Monday".
Well, we went home, picked up the brand new camper we had purchased at a New Years Day sale less than 30 days prior (which we had tried to get the dealership to buy back after Eddie lost his job). We loaded it up with just what we needed to get buy in the short term and on Sunday morning, January 31, we moved to Pigeon Forge, TN to start the next phase of our lives.
We put our house on the market the following Monday and had a solid contract in 2 weeks within $2,000 of our asking price and there were 5 other houses for sale in our Neighborhood that had been on the market, some, for 2 years and hadn't sold. This was just one of MANY things that happened like that which confirmed to us again that this was all in God's plan. Many of our friends and family said to us that maybe this was just a stepping stone to something bigger. I didn't tell them this, but all the time, I was thinking they were crazy, this was it. We were singing gospel music and ministering full time for a living, which was what we had always envisioned, just not in a theater.
REMEMBER THAT STEPPING STONE????
Well, knowing we had to either sign another contract or resign from the theater the first of December that year, we began praying again about what God's will was for us. You see, in that year that we were at the theater, we had met so many wonderful people, some of which turned out to be great Christian friends who just happened to be also be full time RVers. We had initially met them at the campground that God parked us in and then they came to the theater to see our show. After the show, they had commented to us that we needed to be on the road ministering to a larger territory, and those words kept coming back to us as we were nearing time to make the decision of going or staying at the theater.
After a couple months of praying and seeking God for guidance, we had our answer. We sold our camper and bought a motor home that we could live in, sold our big SUV and bought a smaller vehicle that we could pull behind the RV and resigned from the theater to go back on the road with our ministry, only this time, as full time RVers.
In the time since making this move, we have seen God do some miraculous things in our ministry. We have learned the in's and out's of living full time in an RV in hot and cold weather. We have sung in places we had never sung before. And we have learned about workamping which we do when we are not booked to minister somewhere to supplement our income, as we now live on MUCH less income than before.
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