Hi, I cloned your site so that I could make changes and experiment. Something is definitely fishy. I am referring this to QA for evaluation, and they will then open a ticket on this based on their finding.
BTW - one small fix to your code (which has no bearing on your problem)…
This line:
$item(“#eventsLoadingText”).hide();
should be:
$w(“#eventsLoadingText”).hide();
This is because the message is not contained within the Repeater.