Sunburns, Sore Muscles, and Snowy Woods: a recap

Well... a lot has happened is the past few days. As the last post indicated, we were/are on tour, a VERY busy tour. So now, I'm sitting here in a lodge in the mountains of northern Virginia with a cup of Earl Grey tea and I thought I would just quickly recap where we were and what we have done.

We headed out a little over a week ago on Friday from Liberty, drove to Georgia, spent the night, continued on down to Haines City, Florida, and set up.  I was very excited to find a Meyer sound system, my personal favorite. that night the guys went bowling with our new friends Mark, Maleah, etc. while the girls decided not to answer their phones :). The next day we played at the church (which was awesome) and then scrambled to drive 4 hours down to Miami for a concert that night which also went very well.  

The next day (Monday) we played at 2 schools and then traveled to Coco Beach, Florida where we spent the night, but not before going to the beach late at night and then hitting up a 24 hour Ron Jon surf shop.  Tuesday we played at a school and then we had the rest of the day off so we hit the beach (hence the sunburn part of the title), and then drove up to Orlando for the night and were treated to an awesome dinner at Red Lobster by the Department of Ministry teams.  

Wednesday (another busy day) we played at a school in Orlando and then drove up to Savannah, GA to Kevin's church.  We did a super fun concert there and afterwards went out for my personal favorite, SUSHI!  Thursday we played at a big school there, went to lunch with some people from the church, and then headed back to Lynchburg, VA for the night. We all really loved our time in Savannah.  -Side note: a girl from that church got saved after having a text message conversation with the youth pastor after the concert.  Who says God doesn't adopt his ways to new technology.-

It's time for another concert so more to come in a little bit...

We Comin' Miami!

Hang tight, readers. I'm sure a lot of mishaps and great stories are on the way (as well as a little bit of sunburn..) 'cuz we're heading down to MIAMI, FLORIDA.. Here are all of the places we're heading to:

• 3/8 North Ridge Church [Gaines City, FL]
• 3/9 Dade Christian School [Miami, FL]
• 3/9 Summit Christian School [West Palm Beach, FL]
• 3/10 Merritt Island Christian School [Merritt Island, FL]
• 3/11 First Baptist Church of the Island [Savannah, GA]
• 3/11 Central Florida Christian Academy [Orlando, FL]
• 3/12 Calvary Day School [Savannah, GA]
• 3/13-3/15 Mount Vernon Baptist Church [Glen Alen, VA]

Yeah, I know that 3/11 doesn't make too much sense.. But that's what is down on the schedule.. Ha-ha, I guess we'll go back to FL after a huge drive. Okay, so correction will probably be made there. We're excited! Mount Vernon, it'll be good to see you again.. 

Get-Cha-Bite!

I speak on behalf of the team.. We are WORN OUT from the road! But first thing's first, "Get-Cha-Bite!" Thank you, First Baptist Church of Whitesville, Kentucky! You guys made us feel so incredibly welcomed in your church. The Youth there was a lot of fun! They taught us how they talked ("taw-lked") up there in the mountains. I don't think I've met such 'at-home' folks in all my life.. It kind of made me want to stick around.. But hey, rumor is that they'll try to have us back in their church this up-and-coming Fall. So, look out, First Baptist!

The boys of LIGHT always get excited when we are all in the same house for housing.. We stayed with the Waddles. They were such an awesome family.. We enjoyed trying to figure out Jack's puzzles at the Soda Bar.. Ha-ha, Matt was determined to conquer all of them! Marshall played Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End on the Nintendo Wii while I fell asleep on a very comfortable lazy boy.. Sam was out from the get-go! We had a very good time, and Jack (the father) actually stayed up until 2:30 AM with all of us!

Luckily, we got to sleep in a little (being that we didn't need to be at the church until about 10:00 AM). Altogether, the fellowship at First Baptist Whitesville was incredible.. Thank you to all that made us feel at home.

NOW.. For the ride home, the 'Gypsy' (what we have named our GPS after numerous misleadings..) told us to take a LEFT on a particularly narrow road. This 'road' turned into a driveway that was too narrow to turn around on. We decided to follow it to it's end.. A dead end..

So, Kevin and Sam agreed that I would be the man for the backing up job.. I have to be honest, we had encountered some pretty tight turning in the Baltimore area, but this was going to be a 1st place prize if we made it out of this frying pan. The picture above will explain the hardship! The road was very narrow and took a lot of patience. Imagine a football field and a half of this road, BACKING UP ONLY! Yeah, a bit frustrating..! There were several obstacles (one that includes an over-heated engine from pushing the 2 tons on our backs), and overall, this ordeal added 2 hours to our trip.

I know you'll never read this blog, but THANK YOU, CLIFF for the antifreeze and the t0w-job. Man, you saved us. Here's to no-more dirt roads!

Thank You, Drivers

And hey, since I am up at 1:04 AM and can't really sleep.. Thank you, Kevin K. and Matt S. for sharing the driving responsibility with me. I had the best 3 hours of sleep on the bus today that I've ever had on a bus.

Drivers:

Matt Steeper

Kevin Klingmeyer

Jamie Joyce

Over the River and Through the Woods..

What a drive! We left Liberty around 8:00 AM yesterday and drove N on 501. It definitely pegs our 'windiest road traveled.. We were soon to approach a bridge that passed over the James River, and as Sam so often does, he suggested that we took a stroll out of the bridge so for a photo op. We agreed, here's a picture from the bridge.

From there, we continued into West Virginia. They claim it's "Wild and Wonderful", at least, that's what all the signs say. I'll agree with the roads being wild..! There was snow everywhere and the roads were still very curvy. We had a few near-deaths, but no fear, Light's still alive. : D

We stopped at a gas station, and I introduced the team to 'potted meat' and crackers. They had never heard of such a thing! Sam liked, Erin liked, but Amanda..? Not so much!

After a solid 2 hours of driving through slush and snow (very slowly), we stopped for lunch at KFC, Wendy's, and Taco Bell. This is what the van looked like!

We're in Westerville, Ohio this weekend at Genoa Baptist Church. So far, it's been great for all of us as we've set up our gear for tomorrow morning's concert and we are all now hanging out at the host homes. Again, what a blessing it is to meet such incredible people that open their homes to us repeatedly.. Dave, Kevin, and myself are staying at a house together, and we have been dominated by a 3 year old and a 6 year old in Wii Tennis. We've had an awesome time with the family so far.. Sometimes, you don't want to leave! The people are just too good and hospitable. Mia, their adopted Asian 3 year old said, "I want you boys to stay with us for 5 days." Ha-ha, and she's too cute for words.. How cool is it that we cannot even compare the things that we love and admire so much in this life to the way that God feels towards us!? If you could take all of the fuzzy-feelings in the world and combine them into a perfect love and adoration, then God has captured it all and has lavished it on us. WOW. And as we adore the beauty of people and of life, God adores us even greater.

We're looking forward to an awesome time of worship with Genoa Baptist Church tomorrow morning. We also look forward to meeting and hanging out with the Youth Group.. (And me personally, I'm looking forward to rushing back to Lynchburg to watch the Steelers stomp the Cardinals in the Superbowl.. Go Pittsburgh!)

Audition Time

Jamie, Dave, Erin, myself, and various members of other groups are spending our evening listening to roughly 10 hours of instrumental auditions for students here on campus to fill next years openings on the school's 5 teams.  Why am I posting a blog entry on this you may ask... It is because I have been here for 9 hours already and am getting a little bored. :)

-Sam

Massages and Milkshakes

We were treated as princes and princesses this past weekend!

At least.. I was, ha-ha! Sam touched a little on what day one was like, and I am going to touch on day two. You'll have to excuse Sam.. He misses some blissful moments sometimes (ha, kidding, bud).

So, filling some holes.. Last night, I was blown away when Gary dropped me off at the wrong host home. I say, "Hey, Gary.. Am I staying with you, or what?" His plan was to drop me off at the house of the Massage Therapist - - who was housing Sam. It circulated that my back was out of commission for the whole evening (even though.. we didn't do ANY work that night). It must've been that brutal 2 1/2 hours of driving that I had to endure. So, Gary insisted that I let her work out the kinks in my back.. So I did.

HOLY SMOKES it was legit. We're talking oils and a heated message bed. I was down in silence for a good 30 minutes, partly guilt-stricken for accepting, and partly basking in the gifts of God. : )

That's the thing about a lot of Christians. There's a tendency to feel bad about any receiving.. Sometimes, life becomes about giving, giving, giving. And although we give (and should never stop it), we must learn to accept giving as well. Imagine if you felt the urge of the Lord to slip a $20 into the hand of a college student and that person refused your offer..? Wouldn't that rob you of your blessing of giving? I'll never forget the words of my Youth Pastor. I told him that I felt guilty because my Grandmother often bought me suits and I felt that I had nothing that I could return to her. His response was very neat.. He said, "Some people are teachers, some are encouragers, some are givers.. We all have different ways of blessing people." In part, he told me that my Grandmother's way of blessing me was to give me things that I couldn't afford. He compared it to my sacrifice of time to lead others in song and worship.

That was the neat thing about Fort Lee. The people there bent over backwards and went way out of their ways to make us feel comfortable and welcome! They recognized that we had come to bless them, and in return, they wanted to bless us in any way they could. Whether it was massages, or last-second milkshakes.. They wanted us to be blessed.

Thank you, Fort Lee! We'll miss you.