What's going on this week?

It seems that after spending the long weekend doing absolutely nothing productive, I find myself in a position where I have too many things that need to be completed and not enough time to complete them. Oh well, old habits die hard.

Just working on a few guitar and bass tabs for when our worship team leads singing on November 28. We will be playing "Every Move I Make", "Prince of Peace", and "I Surrender All". It's been a long time since we've sang "I Surrender All" at church. I think there are so many older hymns that have such powerful melodies and words that a lot of the contemporary stuff lacks. This is definitely one of them.

http://members.tripod.com/~Synergy_2/lyrics/surrend.html

It's way too warm outside for the middle of November. There's absolutely no snow on the ground! I'm even thinking about wearing shorts to school tomorrow. This is bad news for all the skiers and snowboarders out there. I plan to do a ton of snowboarding over the winter break but it looks like we'll be lucky to have a white Christmas.

The long walk home. 

Hold 'em 

...and later... 

Getting late... 

Balderdash... 

Scott serenades us with a tune. 

Studying in Scurfield... 

Success!

Woot! I finally got my USB cable to work with my cell so I can frequently backup my data, save my pics, and modify my ringtones and programs for free. I found this program called "mobile PhoneTools" that works for virtually any Motorola phone with USB, serial, Bluetooth, or even infrared connectivity. It can be found here:

http://www.bvrp.com/


I'm excited for my Geology class, can't you tell?

EAC Worship Band

At this point in my life, sometimes I wish I could just forget about school and the other hassles of life and make music all day, everyday. It's like my happy place (sans penguins) that I retreat to and for those moments everything seems wonderful again.

I played the piano for many years when I was younger. During those years I absolutely hated it; the lessons, the exams, the theory, the competitions, and the fact that the time lost could have been better spent playing video games. Finally, as my rebellious nature would have it, I decided to quit. I basically told my parents, "Give me liberty, or give me death". And so to avoid further conflict my parents agreed to the end of my piano lessons.

But that was not the end of music in my life. I began to serve as an accompanist in our church in junior high. At that point in time I did it because of the encouragement I received from the church as well as the fact that I saw it as a challenge to see if I could still play after recently deciding to quit. It turned out to be the turning point as it instilled a love for music. As I grew older, I fell in love with praise music and it became my favorite aspect of worship.

In the last few years, I have been blessed with the opportunity to serve more and more in the song leading department. I began to experiment with the acoustic guitar my uncle had lent me a while back with the hopes of possibly incorporating it into our church. Until then, we had almost exclusively used a piano accompaniment for all of our church services. As a small church we never had the resources or the need to expand that. That was, until the some of our young people began to step up in service to God.

We began as a small group with Wally on the bass guitar, Gilbert and Greg on the keyboard, and myself on the guitar and vocals. It was tough going at first. Wally had just gotten his electric bass and I was still trying to get the chords down. It was also tough to figure out parts for everyone and make it sound good together. But we managed and began to put it together in the summer of 2003. We went through a few growing pains. Our church has always been conservative and this was a definite change in the gameplan. But we took the criticism and suggestions and kept our heads up. After a few times of leading it actually began to work out. Things went well and in the spring of 2004 my little brother Michael was included as one of pianists to help Gilbert out while Greg was away in Shanghai.

During the summer of 2004 our band encountered more changes. Pastor Rebekah began to help out with the vocals and added a much needed singing voice to our group. We finally were able to incorporate James, who had been taking guitar lessons for years, as a lead guitarist. Greg had gotten a drum set just before leaving for Shanghai and with his return in July we had replaced a pianist with a trained drummer. However, we were saddened to see Wally to depart with his family as they moved on from Evangel Alliance to First Alliance Church. It was really tough for me to let go of one of the original members of our group but we knew that God had a greater plan than Wally or myself could fathom.

And so our band stands today: 6 members and counting. We hope to add a bass and maybe even a violin from within our youth group in the near future and we are always on the lookout for more vocalists and anyone who wants to serve God by leading the church in worship through song.


The EAC Worship Band as of October 31, 2004 


Wally, our former electric bass player. We miss ya man :)


James on Lead Guitar 


Greg on Drums 


Gilbert on the Piano 


My bro Mike on the Piano 


Pastor R, our female vocalist 


Myself on Rhythm Guitar and vocals.