gomertopia

You Might Be a Third Day Gomer If . . .

From time to time, since Gomer time began, threads pop up on the boards wherein everyone posts their ideas for "You might be a Third Day Gomer if you . . . do such and such." But with new technology comes new ways to play the game. Tonight, we took it to the next level and played on Twitter. Here are some of the ones the Gomers on Twitter came up with. (Thanks to everyone who played on Twitter tonight!)

Let these inspire you and post some of your own. If we get more than ten different responses, I'll give out a prize (randomly of course). Contest ends Friday, August 14th, at noon Central Time.

• marmoo68 You might be a @Thirdday @3dgomers if you walk up to perfect strangers dressed in orange and talk like you have known each other always
  
  
• gray_amyliz You might be a @thirdday @3dgomers if you know that "Gomer" does not refer to the Andy Griffith Show. :)

Get Your Official Gomer Shirt While They Last!!!

We've waited a long time, and they are finally back! The official orange Gomer shirts are in the ThirdDay.com store! And not just shirts, but hoodies and other stuff, too!

Not only that, but THEY ARE ON SALE! You can get your official orange Gomer shirt for just $10! (Regular price is $25, you save more than half the price!) The brown Gomer hoodie, which I personally love to wear all winter long because it's so comfy and cool, is on sale for $25, that's $20 off the regular price!

Check out all the Gomer stuff in the ThirdDay.com store and show you support Third Day as a member of their fan family.

But don't think about it long. At these prices, they will go fast!

(And the bottom of the page says they won't be re-ordered. When they are gone, they are gone.)

Why Do You Love Being a Gomer?

Thank you all for your beautiful comments about why you love being a Gomer. They are too lovely to lose. I want to start a new page on this site full of people saying why they love being a Gomer. If you have any thoughts on the matter, please post them here! I want to share them with the world!

Miss the Fun Last Night? Listen Here Now!

Last night's interview on ObscureGenius.com was great! Thank you to everyone who called and wrote in with questions, and to all of you who supported me with your prayers. I'm always nervous about interviews, but once we get going, it's a lot of fun!

If you missed the interview you can listen to it here or just click below. (When the window opens, right click and do "Save As..." That will download the MP3 to your computer.)

Stream or Download a recent 1 hour phone interveiw with Mama Gomer on ObscureGenius.com

Be sure to visit ObscureGenius.com to listen to their other interviews. They have a lot of good ones archived and some interesting ones coming up on the schedule.

Take Part in a Live Online Gomer Party!

Don't forget to go to ObscureGenius.com and sign up on their email list, so you can participate in the Live Interactive Online Event tomorrow night!

I told you about this earlier here. It's a call-in show with me, and we can talk about Third Day, Gomers, GMA Week, anything you'd like (within reason, of course.) I think it's going to be a Gomer party! I hope lots of you will listen and call in!

Info from the ObscureGenius.com website:
EVENT: Corrine aka Mama Gomer - Live Interactive Interview
DATE & TIME: Thursday, May 14th at 9:30pm Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT, SIGN UP ON THE MAILING LIST

Hear you there!

Happy 8th Anniversary Gomer Family!

It was eight years ago today that our little family of Third Day fans started. Happy anniversary fellow  Gomers! I think that since this is our anniversary, a present is in order! So in a comment below this post, tell me what you like about being a Gomer to enter. I'll give a random commenter the prize package in the photo: a copy of Third Day's CD Revelation and an autographed copy of their DVD/CD Live Revelations!

Deadline for entry is noon Central Time, Friday, May 15, 2009. One winner will be picked at random, using a random number picker. Only your first comment will count as a contest entry. The winner will be chosen on Friday, May 15, after noon. Comments must be posted on this page, under this particular blog post. No others will be counted as entries. You must include your email address in filling out the comment form in order for me to notify you of your win. If no email address is given, and I don't happen to know that person's email address, another winner will be chosen. Your information will not be shared with anyone else. If you have won a prize from Gomers.net in the past 6 months, you are not eligible to win, to give others a chance. But please post your comment anyway. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

The contest is now closed.

Upcoming Interview on ObscureGenius.com

I'm being interviewed on ObscureGenius.com a week from today, Thursday, May 14, at 9:30 PM Eastern Time. It's an interactive interview, meaning you can call in and ask me questions. To be eligible to participate, you much sign up on the website's email list. Sign up and read more here. They've interviewed some really cool people like Kevin Max, Phil Joel, Audio Adrenaline, Ginny Owens, Bob Smiley, and former Third Day keyboardist Billy Wilkins. You can an listen live online or on your phone! Hope to hear you there!

(And if you wouldn't mind, say a pray for me. I tend to stutter when I get nervous! Thanks!)

Mark Lee’s Fav Third Day Shows

In this post on the Third Day blog, Mark talks about his top ten Third Day shows. He lists the 2004 Great Gomer Gathering in Houston, Texas, as his third favorite show. I started to put my comment there, but it started to get a little lengthy, so I decided this would be a better place.

That "sea of orange" in the audience was quite a sight! I'll never, ever forget it. I sent KSBJ email after email telling them that this was going to be the first Great Gomer Gathering, and could they help us surprise Third Day with a "sea of orange" by having everyone, all 14,000+ audience members, wear orange. How awesome that would be!!! Third Day would take the stage and be totally amazed at the love and support from the audience. It had been my fantasy for years (still is) that there would be tons of people at every show wearing Gomer shirts. This idea was just an exaggeration of that fantasy. I had no idea it could be as awesome as it was! At the concert, Dan and I walked all around the Pavilion, up on the grass hill, just looking at 12,000 or so people dressed in orange (there were about 2,000 hold outs). This may sound silly, but I cried. It was so beautiful! There was so much love poured out to this band I loved, our chance to give back a little of the love Third Day had given to us for so many years. Later, Third Day's manager told me that when Tai exited the stage he told her, "It don't get no better than this." Mission accomplished!

Of course, now I have the problem of trying to figure out what the Gomers can do to top that! Any ideas?

Happy Anniversay Gomers!

Wow, has it really been seven years since we started our Gomer family? Time flies when you are having fun! Our official anniversary is May 8, but I wanted to get the party started now! And what a party!

We have the new Third Day CD we can be listening to now, three months before it even hits the stores! (Just go to the online store at ThirdDay.com, pre-order, and you can listen now! When you do, you will also get bonus track that you can't get anywhere else called "Shake".) We have a brand new ThirdDay.com, with all kinds of fun new things to do!

And a brand new online community at Gomertopia! (Read about it here.) If you like Facebook, MySpace, or any of those other online communities, or even if you've never ventured into anything like that, you've got to come check out the new Gomertopia! This is a place for you to have your very own webspace and to get together with other Gomer friends. Sign up today and let's get this Gomer anniversary party going on Gomertopia!

The other exciting thing is that presale tickets for Third Day's big Music Builds Tour, with Switchfoot, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, and Jars of Clay go on sale to WIRED members the day after our Gomer anniversary, May 9th, at 10 AM locally (locally meaning at 10 AM in whatever time zone the city of the show is). You'll need to be a member of Third Day's fan club to get in on that presale. You can get more information here: www.ThirdDayWired.com

So with all this going on, let's put on our Gomer shirts and orange party hats and celebrate! Woo hoo!!! Orange cake anyone?

Happy 7th Anniversary Gomers!!!

Come On Home, Gomers!

I told you all about the new Gomertopia before it was opened. The time is here to come join! We have a lot of your friends and fellow Gomers on there already! So come join at www.ThirdDay.com/Gomer ! We're waiting for you! (Even if you don't consider yourself a "Gomer", come join us anyway! We'd love to have you!)

New Photo Album! Orange Elves at the Christmas Offerings Concerts

Third Day just finished touring with Jars of Clay on the Christmas Offerings tour. The shows were wonderful! And we Gomers, always showing our support for Third Day, wore orange Santa hats to the shows, to celebrate the season Gomer style! To the left, you will find a new photo album full of pictures of the Gomer festivities during the tour.

If you have photos of Gomers gatherings during the Christmas Offerings tour, especially photos of Gomers in orange Santa hats, please email them to me, so I can add them to the album. (Most of the Gomers in the photos must be wearing orange.)

Mama Gomer Interviews on HearItFirst.com!

Find out what I have to say about Third Day's Gomers in this video here.

Welcome to the New Gomers.net!

If you've been to Gomers.net in the past months, you probably have been wondering why the home page still advertises tickets for the fall tour from last year. I have just not been able to update the site. Well, technically I could have, but there were things in the way. This is what happened. Last fall, I got a new laptop. Problem was that I never found the disk on which I burned my downloaded copy of my website building software, and I wasn't too keen on buying the new version. So today, I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the new version and finally get the site updated. (It was getting really embarrassing being so far behind the times!)

As I was looking at the software, and finding out that the version I had been using was so antiquated that my site would not have translated into it, but that it was okay, because I could buy the version before that for a hundred dollars less, and my site could be opened in that version (take a breath, it's a long sentence), I had a flash of brilliance! Or at least a better, much easier idea dawned on me. (Thank You, Lord.)

Happy Anniversary Gomers!!!

Today is the sixth anniversary of the day Third Day 's Gomer fan family was initiated. We started on the Third Day message boards on May 8, 2001. Propelled by a nudge from God, I started a little thread called "What Are We?" in which I asked what we, as Third Day fans, should call ourselves. Actually, I thought it would just be a name for us as Third Day board members. The hundred or so of us that gathered there every day had grown quiet close, and we really did (do) feel like a family. Other bands and TV shows and such had fanbase names, so I thought we should have one, too. We just wanted to have a way to identify ourselves as a group. We never realized it would become a huge worldwide family of 30,000 Gomers, many of whom have never even been to the message boards!

When this started, our ultimate Gomer fantasy was that we'd be at a Third Day concert, and the band would say, "We want to say hello to all the Gomers out there!" That was it! And we thought that was a long shot at best. We never dreamed that the Gomers would become an official part of the Third Day website, that we'd be on their DVD's, that there would be Gomer gatherings all over the world, or even that the band members themselves would become Gomers! We had no idea that God would use us to raise thousands of dollars to help His people through organizations like World Vision and Habitat for Humanity. All that has happened in the last six years, we could never have even dreamed of any of it. And this is just the outside of it all, the part everyone can see.

The inside is the important part. The heart of the Gomers is the real blessing. God has indeed given us a worldwide family. There is a real love here. So many relationships have formed, friendships, marriages, even babies being born, within the Gomer family. And all this has shown us the love of God through His people. He has bonded us together, and the seed of this is the music and ministry of Third Day. Without their loving and giving nature, we would have none of this. So today, on our anniversary, we need to stop and thank the men who gave us this family. Third Day allowed us to form and to grow. They continue to bless us with their interaction, their gifts, and the tools we need to grow and prosper as a family. Today especially, let us come before the Lord and ask Him to doubly bless the men of Third Day and their families.

Happy Anniversary Gomers!!! (For more about the history of the Gomers, go to the History pages of Gomers.net)

Do You Have Any Questions?

We are doing an interesting thread in The Zone on the boards. It's a chance to ask the Moderators anything you've ever wanted to know about the Third Day message boards and how it is run. We're getting some interesting questions. It made me think that maybe you have some questions about Gomer things you've been wondering about, like how do you sign up for a Gomer name, what does "yesly" mean, why do we wear orange, and things like that. So fire away! Ask your questions, and I'll answer them right here in separate posts. I look forward to your questions!

Join us for the GuluWalk worldwide or sponsor our team!

Saturday, October 21, 2006 is the date of the worldwide GuluWalk. This walk is to raise awareness about what is happening to the children in Uganda. It is also a fundraiser.

Quote:

Originally Posted on www.GuluWalk.com Our goal is to have 10,000 people each raise or donate $100 by Saturday, October 21 — GuluWalk Day. Reaching our goal will mean $1-million for the children of war-torn northern Uganda.

You know that the crisis in Uganda is very close to the hearts of Third Day. They have been talking about it all year at their concerts. Tai went there to see for himself what the children are going through, and it broke his heart. You can read more about Third Day's involvement with this on the advocacy page.

On October 21, as part of our Gomer Gathering in Houston,

Gomers as Ambassadors

Sometimes as I'm reading the Bible, things hit me that could be for the Gomers, as well as for Christians in general. Today I found a couple of verses that really hit the nail on the head. This is the first.

2 Corinthians 5:20a (NKJV) - Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us

It says we are ambassadors for Christ. I found two definitions for the word ambassador on dictionary.com that I think apply to us. The first I think speaks more to us as ambassadors for Christ, and it blows me away. It says: a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to another as its resident representative. Put yourself into that definition. Say to yourself, "I am a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by God to live in this place as His representative." Wow. God put me here to represent Him, and I am to let Him live and love people through me, as though Christ Himself were here doing it. That's heavy.

The definition that better suits the Gomers is much simpler: an authorized messenger or representative. When we attend a concert or a Gomer gathering, we Gomers represent Third Day as their official fan family. Listen to this little bit of an interview with Tai Anderson. The interview is about the benefit concert Third Day did in Houston with KSBJ in September of 2005, to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. What he says is something we've discussed many times, that the Gomers are ambassadors for Third Day, and they would like us to reach out and touch audience members that they themselves cannot reach. Download tai_on_ksbj_91205_shortened.mp3 (It's small. 41 seconds, 408 KB)

Now of course, when we reach out to people with love, we are ultimately ambassadors

Making Friends

I feel I need to amend the prior post. In it, I said, "Once you find people you have things in common with, and start talking to them regularly, you will find yourself making friends." I'm afraid that sentence doesn't take into account the fact that it may take some time and effort to truly make friends on the boards. It's not something that happens as soon as you start posting. I want to make this clear, because we have had people come on, post a few times, and then get their feelings hurt and leave because they think no one likes them or pays them enough attention. So let me give you a quick primer on how to make friends on a message board.

Love is all you need, part II: Putting It into Practice

The Third Day message boards is a unique community. Relationships are made there that span the world. People meet and get to know each other by talking about everything from the temporary to eternity. There are deep discussions about serious subjects, and silly chats about nothing. With the variety of forums, it's very easy to find a subject you are interested in discussing, and others who want to discuss it with you. Once you find people you have things in common with, and start talking to them regularly, you will find yourself making friends.

People are developing close, lasting friendships on the boards every day. And not only friendships, we have also had three couples who have met on the boards and gotten married, and three more engaged!

Board friends are traveling to meet each other and spend time together in "real life" (usually somewhere where there is a Third Day concert). Because we know each other so well already, it's not like meeting for the first time. When we get together, it's more like a family reunion.

The Gomer family began on the boards, and it's where we grow to love one another.

Which brings me back to the prior post, about training ourselves to love others as Jesus did. The boards are the perfect place for that.