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FROM BEING “LITTLE MISS TEXAS” TO MINISTERING THE GOOD NEWS IN POLAND
Sarah MacIntosh has come a long since winning her first beauty contest at the age of five

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

WISLA, POLAND  (ANS) -- When she was just five years old, Sarah Meeker (now Sarah MacIntosh) captured the judge’s attention with her curly hair and beautiful singing and was crowned “Little Miss Texas.” She was later a runner up in “Little Miss Universe.”

Since then she has become a well-respected and talented singer-songwriter in the Gospel music arena, has married talented guitarist Jonathan MacIntosh, and both are now in Poland with Jonathan’s dad, Mike MacIntosh, presenting the Good News through music during the unique Festival of Life in Wisla, Poland, July 14-18. (Pictured: Sarah MacIntosh performing in Wisla night spot).

On Wednesday night, they performed in a top night spot in Wisla and before taking the stage, Sarah, now 27, told me her story.

“My father’s father was a Southern Baptist minister from Texas,” she said. “On that side of the family, everybody sang – it wasn’t an option. But if you were really bad, you could play an instrument. We did a cappella singing mainly. My dad sang and played piano. So we grew up singing at every family function. Every day, we sang hymns and modern stuff. My Dad was a worship leader and I just grew singing. In fact, I thought that everyone grew up singing, but that’s not the truth.”

Talking about her “Little Miss Texas” award, she said, “I had long, curly hair and I think I was the only girl who could stay on pitch when I sang,” she laughed.

THE BEGINNING OF CHASING FURIES

She said that her brother Josh, had always been playing guitar and writing leading worship like their father, and she had sung backup.

“When I turned 18, I decided to write my own music and get on my own to get my feelings out and SO I went off with my little sister to coffee shop to sing to see if the stuff that I was writing was any good and people responded really well. So I invited my brother, who is an excellent guitarist, to come with me and my family and one thing led to another and we played at the 1997 Christian Artists Seminar in Estes Park, Colorado. There and a bunch of people from Christian labels saw it and before we knew it, we were signed to Sparrow to do our first record under the name of Chasing Furies.” (Pictured: Sarah performs with Jonanthan backing her on guitar).

The name, she says, comes from a combination of sources. The three siblings were fans of a band called Over The Rhine, and the “furies” part comes from a line in one of their songs. C.S. Lewis also wrote about the mythological “furies” in his book, Until We Have Faces, which is a favorite book of Sarah's. And the “chasing” part is a great description of how we are to be in this life: chasing and pursuing our dreams."

So the Chasing Furies produced an album called With Abandon. “That was our only record,” she said. “I wrote all of the tracks but two. My brother wrote those two and he also sang them on the record.

“Then we split up and then not long after that, Michael W. Smith called and I went on the road with him singing, but I also played acoustic guitar. It was a worship tour of all of his worship songs and so I sang the lead on a couple of songs and I also got to sing on his Worship Again record.

MEETING WITH JONATHAN

Her husband to be, Jonathan MacIntosh, had moved to Nashville from San Diego to pursue a career in playing guitar in the Christian music industry. His father had bought him his first guitar and he play with a band called Reality Check and then became a member of a band called Luna Halo which put out an album called Shimmer  (Pictured: Sarah (left) with Sandy and Mike MacIntosh and husband Jonathan).

“I met Jonathan through some mutual friends,” said Sarah. “It was love at first sight. That was in 1998 and then we got married on January 9, 1999, and we were married in a little old church in Nashville by Jonathan’s father, Mike.”

The couple is now in San Diego and lead worship at Horizon Christian Fellowship and have produced three worship CD’s called Sanctuary, Simple Praise and Fill Me. Sarah is now recording a CD of traditional hymns.

While in Poland, they have performed at a Lutheran Camp just outside of Wisla and at a night club in the town as well as on stage during the Festival.

They are both thousands of miles from home, but they believe this is what God has called them to do – to share the Gospel through music to many around the world and especially to those in Poland.

Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times). Wooding is also a syndicated columnist, and was for ten years a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 41 books, one of which is "Blind Faith" which he co-authored with his 93-year-old mother Anne Wooding, who was a pioneer missionary to the blind of Nigeria in the 1930s. Copies of this book are available from the ASSIST USA office at PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126. His writings are on the ASSIST Website at: http://www.assistnews.net/.

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