"Shout for joy to the Lord .…Come before Him with joyful songs," -Psalms 100

 

It all started with a little girl, Linda JOY Reid who loved her mother and the beautiful gospel music that she played and sang at the piano. She had already asked Jesus into her heart and loved Him very much. At five years old Linda was allowed to start her first piano lessons, a journey that would take her clear through her Bachelor of Arts in Music, emphasizing piano. As Linda grew in the Lord and in her music she desired to minister God’s love and life through her music. In high school she started writing songs and also started teaching piano lessons.

During her first year of college, her horizons were broadened with a new church and a new partnership. Accompanied by her guitar-playing friend, Elliott Landau - a Messianic Jew, she sang her songs at Christian coffee houses and at church.
Through her church, Linda met the love of her life and married Steve Odom. (Years later when their children looked at old pictures and said she must have been a “hippy”, she countered with, “No. We were “JESUS PEOPLE”!)

Steve and Linda Odom moved on to other churches as Linda pursued a career goal of being a church organist. They eventually lost contact with Elliott and for a while Linda couldn’t use her songs because she didn’t know how to play by ear and accompany herself in a chordal style. Through the help of her brother-in-law and a church bassist she started to develop her own style. Years later when playing for her new pastor on the spur of the moment – songs she didn’t even know – the Lord supernaturally expanded her ability to play by ear and before long her fingers could “dance” on the keys while she played the song of the Lord. Eventually the church organ career was replaced by voluntary service to God at the piano and as an assistant worship leader. The worship team insisted that she modernize with electric piano.

She wanted her songs of the Lord to magnify Him rather than herself so she didn’t want to put her name on choruses to be sung in church. Yet she wanted people to be able to trace the songs back to her if they were to record them professionally. God helped her resolve this by taking on a pseudonym: JoySong Ministries. Years went by and Linda and Steve continued to sing the JoySongs at their church. Meanwhile Linda’s “day job” of school teaching absorbed much of her time. Steve’s ministry also included being a church elder, a sheriff’s chaplain and a volunteer fire chief for the community.

In spite of the busyness, through God’s grace, she wrote and taped onto cassettes and copy-righted volumes of songs. Yet she was very frustrated to see them sit there so unused in notebooks - only sung occasionally in their small church. Linda languished in discouragement, but the Lord surprised her with an encourager. In 2005 guitarist, Elliott Landau, tracked down his old friends, Linda and Steve, and encouraged Linda to record her songs. Meanwhile the Lord was leading her to make a CD. The opportunity came when God supernaturally provided her with some software that would record on her own computer. By the miracles of modern technology, Elliott could electronically record a guitar part for a ‘JoySong’ from his Florida home and email an MP3 of it to Linda and Steve’s California home. Then Linda would add vocals and other instruments. She had a blast learning and arranging as she went. She expanded by putting in other friends on the vocals. By 2006 the first album, Holy One of Israel, was complete.  Linda gradually continued with other projects recording Look For Him in the Storm.  And yes the storms of life did come! Her mother, who had helped her with the painting on the album cover of Holy One of Israel, became ill with cancer and passed away.  Linda found her mom’s last painting – a beautiful storm scene – she had started an album cover for the Look For Him in the Storm album but never finished. Being with her mother at her home going inspired the song “Alive in Christ.”

 

The storm also attacked the laptop Linda recorded on, but the Lord showed her how to make it work by charging its battery with a twin laptop that had crashed – limiting recording sessions to about an hour and a half per session!! 

Other deaths slowed her momentum as she also lost her big sister to a bizarre accident and her step mama to a fast moving cancer.  Between those two deaths was the illness and death of their pastor of 20 years, Pastor Lee Stryhanyn.  One of his favorites of Linda’s songs was “Look For Him In the Storm”  God helped Linda at this point to put together a slideshow for it to be on Youtube.  This gave encouragement to his family.

The homegoing of their pastor threw a new spin on their lives as Steve stepped in to be the new pastor of Zion Mountain Christian Center in Squaw Valley California.  He and Linda were both ordained for ministry by Pastor Tom Tiemens and Victory Ministries International, based in Fresno, California. Presently Steve preaches amazing messages and Linda leads worship with her faithful and loyal worship team.

This summer of 2013 the Lord inspired Linda to FINALLY complete the Look for Him in the Storm album.  So with God’s help and inspiration the final two songs are now ready for the producer, Rick Dettman of Fresno.  THANK YOU Rick!!! It should be finished in October sometime.

 

Grateful thanks is also due to my nephew, Nick Harrington for taking the old dinosaur Joysongministries.com website and making it beautiful with his graphic art and computer talents.  THANK YOU Nick!!! 

 

Special thanks to my very patient, loving and supportive husband, Steve Odom – a man of God.

 

Highest thanks and praises to our LORD JESUS CHRIST, my SAVIOR and LORD!!!

Now, dear friend, please join in our songs of joy by listening and singing along. Join us in worship and shout and sing to our God! If you are a singer you might even want to help expand the vision by taking a song out with you to minister to other people. Please contact us if you are interested. You can write us:  Steve and Linda Odom P.O. Box 8061 Squaw Valley, Ca. 93675

 

Glory to God! Amen.