One

Chapter One

It all started when I was bored one day and started watching a gospel music program on television. The show had a gospel quartet with four males singing and they were called The Gospel Quartet.

They were singing the old time gospel songs that I grew up with. They were fantastic and had such great harmony.

     My name is Julia Mayer and I am a single, twenty-two year old and live in Richmond, VA.

My sister Jessie and I had sung in Church for years and I even sang a lot of solos from the time I was a teenager.

I had not sung in a while since I had moved to the city for work. I did recently do a couple of videos for fun on YouTube.

I began to watch every show and video I could find on The Gospel Quartet.

I especially liked the young tenor singer. His name was David Archer and I watched every video on him also.

I fell in love with his voice from the moment I first heard him. I even read every article on the Internet I could find on David. I found out that he was single, twenty-five and had started with The Gospel Quartet a couple of years earlier.

     I loved the entire group so much that I wanted to go to one of their concerts.

They were having a three-day concert in Tennessee, but I did not have the money to pay for the ticket or the trip there.

I told my sister about it and she said maybe one day I would get to go.

My sister decided to send a copy of my videos to the leader of The Gospel Quartet and he contacted Jessie and said he wanted to send her tickets for her and I to come to their concert in Tennessee and that he wanted me to sing at the show. He was going to even pay for the flight and hotel with meals included.

     Jessie told me that she had contacted him and that he wanted to send us the tickets.

“Oh sure he does.” I said.

“No joke,” she replied.

I was ecstatic, but confused why he would do something for a total stranger.

Jessie said, “He just does that sometimes”.

She did not want to tell me about the videos she had sent and about him wanting me to sing at the show for fear that I would not go.

I was so happy that I was going to get to go that I didn’t question it any more and figured it was just one of God’s miracles.

I had plenty of vacation time available so I went ahead and asked to be off. It was February and the concert was not until May, so I knew I had given plenty of notice.

My vacation was approved so I decided to go ahead and make the rest of the arrangements for my trip.

I needed to arrange for someone to keep an eye on my apartment, so I called my best friend Janet and she agreed to stop by at least twice and check on everything.

The tickets and a letter with the information of where we were staying arrived and it stated that the hotel was for an entire week.

We had accommodations for two days before the show through two days after at a hotel that was right across the street from the Convention Center where the show was taking place.

I wondered why he had paid for so many days, but once again I decided not to question it and just enjoy the trip.

Luckily I had asked for an entire week off from work.