Back home!

I am back at home!! But we leave again tonight. We arrived at my house on Thursday night. It was really nice to be at home and to see my family. My bed also felt amazing! We recorded five of our songs to go on a Youth Encounter CD on Friday. That was kind of fun but I think we all think we could have done better. After recording we went to the Good Earth restaurant and got some really good smoothies and milkshakes. My team stayed here on Thursday night and on Friday night the acoustic international team girls spent the night here. The boys weren't too happy because they all had to sleep on a church floor. At one point on Saturday morning we had all of the three acoustic international teams in my house: Kindred, Crossfire, New Dawn and three 15 passenger vans and two trailers. It was a little crazy.

Last night we had fondue with my family for dinner. We had fun with that and it was really yummy. It was also nice to be able to spend time with both my team and my family. After dinner some of our friends from camp, Kristin, Darcy, Teo, Adam, Annie, Rachel, and my neighbor Sam came over and we played games. It was so good to see them again and we had a really fun time.

This morning we sang two songs at the 9:00 and 11:00 services at my church, Roseville Lutheran Church. We also did 40 minutes of music with the middle school and high school youth along with some of our friends from the area that came to listen. We were very well received and it felt so good to be back at my home church. At the 11:00 service they did the children's Christmas program. Those kids are so cute screaming out the words to the songs, waving to their parents, pushing each other over, and running out of the church when they have to go to the bathroom!

Tonight we will meet back up with the 7 other traveling teams and office staff to start mid-winter training. We will be at a camp in Alexandria, MN for the next week until we come back for break on December 16th. I will then have some time to spend with family and friends until January 2. I can not believe that the fall part of our year is already done. It went so fast!

Electric(uting) Bass and Play-doh!

I will be sleeping in my own bed again for a few nights in 3 days! We are now in Decatur, IL at First Evangelical Lutheran Church. We spent our day off here and just got back from dinner with our contact, Marty. We had some good long conversations with him in the last two days. He really likes talking with people and had a lot to share with us about his family and what's been going on in their church. He asked a lot of questions about how our team runs and it was fun to share some of that with him as his church is looking to try some form of team ministry within their church.

We did our last full worship service of our fall tour on Sunday at St. John Lutheran Church in Metropolis, IL. The time has flown by! We sang a few songs with both the children and the adult Sunday School classes. The kids seemed to really love the action songs and we even got a few of the older members to participate as well. The worship service also went well, although every time I touched the microphone my bass shocked me! It was pretty strong too...kind of crazy.

Last night we did our team affirmation time, which is a time that we are supposed to schedule every month to build each other up as a team. Most of our team thinks that this is cheesy but last night we had a lot of fun. We had one member of the team leave the room and the other four would then make something for them out of Play-doh. It was a lot of fun and we ended up doing this for a couple hours! Here's our final creations!


The fall portion of our year is wrapping up pretty quickly. We only have 2 more programs at two different churches and then some music at my church, Roseville Lutheran, on Sunday, before we head to mid-winter training. I can not believe how fast the time has gone and know that my time at home will go even faster. I look forward to seeing my family and some friends this next weekend, the first time in over 11 weeks!