Marathon album launch

On Saturday, March 2nd, God answered my oldest childhood dream, which was to release my own album, by allowing my Christian debut album Marathon to be released at Lakewood Church. I was invited to lead Worship at Lakewood Church every Saturday in the month of March as my mentor Jesse Cooper teaches on his series "Actionable You", so we decided to correlate the physical launch of the album with the first date of the series.

We ordered 2500 copies to begin with from Disc Makers, going thru the usual channels that everyone goes thru, and on Friday, March 1, I sat at home waiting for the UPS truck to deliver all of the boxes. When the truck finally pulled up out front (after what seemed like the longest wait ever), I walked out to help the driver unload all of the boxes, and then headed out to a meeting across town.

Come launch day, I had a meeting with my dear friend Nathalie Farinola, from Fiat/Ferrari, who is putting together a European tour for Marathon to Italy, Spain, and France, this summer. We met at Coffee & Cars, an expo they have monthly here in Houston at Victory Park off 249 and Louetta, where luxury and vintage car owners gather and talk cars, while literally hundreds of spectators line up outside to take pics of the vehicles.  After leaving the Coffee & Cars expo, I met Nathalie at Lamborghini Houston, where I met the entire team there and was proposed the idea to tie my tour in Italy to the 50th anniversary of Lamborghini in Bologna, Italy, to which I readily agreed, as it is a huge branding opportunity for me and an honor, as Italy is not normally a country that hosts Gospel music. After taking some dope pics with the various staff and various cars, I headed out.

After running to Sharpstown Mall to get a quick haircut and to the mall to grab a fly outfit, it was time to run home, where I barely had enough time to greet my sister Shana, my mom, Pastor Patricia Dorsey, my youngest brother Miguel, and my nieces and nephew who had all driven in from Shreveport to support me at Lakewood, before loading up my family and heading to church.

We arrived at Lakewood 15 minutes before 8, while Pastor Joel was up preaching in the main sanctuary, and headed to the Loft to set up the table and for what we believed to be a sound check before Worship. We had no sound guy, so we ended up starting the first song, "Marathon", with the sound horribly low, to the point where I couldn't hear the backing tracks. My wife Shaunta ended up running over to the sound booth to tell someone to turn the music up once she realized that I was off due to not hearing the music, and they turned it up just in time for Jeremy McCraw, who is on the Lakewood Worship Team, and I to sing "Chasing After You", our duet on my debut album Marathon. The Anointing fell, and the song was incredible! Afterwards, the speaker, my big bro Jesse Cooper, called me over to share my testimony about the Grammy win and everything that God has done since I was homeless over 11 years ago...I began to share my testimony and was overcome with emotion...tears began to flow, and before I knew it, most of the room was wiping tears from their eyes right along with me. God has brought JayTel and I thru so much to get here...and we're HERE now. It still feels unreal to think about it. Grammy winners...Dove winners...Stellar winners...#1 albums...so much just since I started this blog, but all of it was promised by God, and all of it, He has kept.

My wife, my mom, and my Aunt Sheila sat at the table where the Marathon album was for sale, and every time I looked over, people were lined up in front of the table buying copies of the album. Two of my friends, Dr. David and Melise Hannaford from Australia here visiting the Osteens, bought 6 copies and then gave us 5 back, saying that they wanted us to give them to some troubled youth who may be blessed by the album. God blessed us to sell a significant number of copies just that first night, but even more importantly, the responses of impact from those in attendance were powerful and immediate. God used the first night of Actionable You to touch those who were there, to provide a fitting launch for this project. To God be the glory!