Anna and my 13-year-old son and I just got home late last night after a trip to San Antonio for the fifth annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. Anna and Pieter and I attended the first festival in 2004, which I wrote about for Homeschooling Today magazine, and it was a blessing to see how much SAICFF has grown over the past five years.

This year there were twice as many attendees as last year, and the first night Doug Phillips showed a clip of presenting the Best of Festival award each of the last five years. In the scene from the first year’s event, there was a glimpse of the crowd of attendees, a much smaller group than the 2200 who filled up the huge auditorium and its two balconies last week. Though there were some impressive entries that first year, the line-up of films has become more professional, and there were many more feature-length movies entered in the competition.

In 2004, Colin Gunn entered his documentary Shaky Town about the radical sodomite agenda in San Francisco, and it won the Best Political Documentary award. We knew some of the folks Colin interviewed, so Anna and Pieter and I met Colin and took him out to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant on the Riverwalk, Casa Rio. That friendship led to him generously including me in his documentary about feminism, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, which won the Best of Festival award last year. This year’s winner, The Widow’s Might, featured Colin in a very funny role, playing on his Scottish background and playing up his wonderful accent. (I will do a review of the movie after I watch it again with my family.) Providentially and appropriately, Colin and his sweet wife Emily, along with their many munchkins, were the first folks we ran into the first night we walked to the convention center.

I finally got to see the movie Fireproof at the film festival, and I was very moved by the story, and encouraged to be more mindful of selflessly loving my husband, even though we have such a marvelous marriage after 27 years. Steve hasn’t seen the movie yet, but he is an expert at continually wooing me; when he picked us up at the airport in Sacramento last night, he had left a red rose and a bar of dark chocolate on my seat in the car. I am spoiled.

Both Stephen Kendrick (screenwriter and producer of Fireproof) and Kirk Cameron (who played the lead role) spoke at the film festival. Both were humble men who shared a similar message of the importance of giving all the glory to God in the ministry of spreading His truth through the movies they are making. Each of them reminded aspiring filmmakers to not allow success in their profession to prevent them from maintaining the more important relationships with their wives and children, otherwise their witness to the world through those films would be meaningless. I was very touched as I listened to them discuss their love for their own families. And their movie has become a huge success. It is the top-grossing independent film of the year, making over $33 million, and The Love Dare book is at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list.

78-year-old actor Dean Jones was there, too. My children (in spite of some of the weird Buddhist undertones with Buddy Hackett) like The Love Bug, The Ugly Dachshund, That Darn Cat, and The Million Dollar Duck, so I eagerly listened to him explain the journey on which God took him to embrace Christianity late in life. Though he achieved quite an impressive record of worldly successes, he obviously considers it all loss compared to the gain of knowing Jesus as His Savior. He spoke of the emptiness in His life before His salvation. He has not given up acting but now uses his gifts and talents to God’s glory, and we watched a couple of the short films he has recently done, produced by Crown Financial Ministries, portraying the great patriarch Abraham. Those films are being shown in very poor countries to teach people there about God and present the gospel to them in an engaging but accurate way. Mr. Jones was presented with a lifetime achievement award for his work, and his long-time friend and fellow believer Ken Wales (producer of the TV series Christy, and the recent movie Amazing Grace) was on hand to introduce him.

Yes, there were some impressive people at this festival. What impressed me most, however, were the families who came to the festival. Some were there because they were interested in working together on movies. Others, like us, came because it was a special place to meet fellow Christian families and to be involved in encouraging those who are working so hard to further God’s kingdom by creatively portraying His truth, beauty, and goodness. We tried to talk to as many people we could; some we have met before (a few we have met in several states!), and others were new acquaintances. There were plenty of jumpers and floor-length skirts, and there were also jeans and wild haircuts. And there was a camaraderie borne of many fellow believers from many backgrounds coming together with a desire to please God and serve Him in every area of life.

The night of the awards, we arrived an hour early so that we could have a good seat and hopefully sit together, knowing it was going to be a big crowd. Waiting in the lobby outside the doors we talked with others around us as more people arrived and everyone was getting very cozy as we needed to press closer together to allow for the newcomers. The temperature rose but the tempers remained even, and while we were looking forward to a little more space when those doors would finally open, everyone had a cheerful disposition and kindly made way for those who needed to squeeze through. After some time, someone behind us struck up the song “Amazing Grace,” and everyone joined in, then “To God be the Glory.” Our spontaneous sing-a-long was a sweet time of fellowship.

I missed Crystal Paine, and JimBob and Amy Howard. We briefly saw Perry and Kim Coghlan, and Kelly and Andrea Reins and Jasmine Baucham and Karen Engstrom’s nice hubby and daughter, and even the amazing Duggar family (the first time I’ve ever told anyone that I have “only” ten children). I had some good talks with the Sprouls, Victoria and Elizabeth Botkin, Bryce’s sweetheart Sarah, dear Ruthanne Shepherd, and my friend Becky Morecraft, who is such an encouragement to me. And we ended up on the same flight to Dallas as Caleb Hayden, whom we met at that first film festival in 2004, enjoying some wonderful visits over the years with his family, so we chatted with him for a while before boarding our flight. How we wish we had been able to have longer conversations with so many, and how we look forward to those long talks in eternity with them all. And with you all.

Pictures coming…