Music In Worship

Here is a video i put together over break, I hope you enjoy. Its a low quality so i could fit it on the blog, but its still worth it. -TaCo

One more week!

Greetings from Greenville, IL! We are hanging out here at Greenville College where Christian's older brother, Luke, attends college. Two days ago, we were in Taco's hometown for the third time, and tomorrow, we'll be back in St. Louis for the second time. It's always nice to make stops in places where it's familiar.

Well, our Winter tour is slowly coming to a close. We will be heading back to Willmar in less than a week after being on the road for 13 weeks. Being out on the road, especially for this long, is a unique experience. In times of weariness, we somehow need to figure out how to reenergize, to fuel up, to fight the routine, to take one day at a time, to take one venue at a time, to take one person at a time. It takes a TON of perseverance, but in order to get there, it takes a little bit more...

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Romans 5:1-5

Those are my thoughts for the week. I hope that you are encouraged!

to my team

Untitled.

Greetings from the beautiful state of New York! We are currently housed with the Russels, who's daughter- Beth, was a part of a CTI team in 2005. It's always great to be housed with alumni (or the families of alumni).

Stanley, Laura, Aaron, Taco, Micaela, Ken and I all sincerely apologize for the extreme lack of blogage. We don't purposely let it go so long with out an update.. It just sort of happens. We promise you that from here on out, we'll be better.

Since the last time we updated, we have been continuing our climb of the east coast. We have made stops in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and now we're in New York. We've been so blessed I can't even begin to explain it to you. The amount of love that flows from these people who willingly let us stay in their homes and eat their food is incredible. It's so great to be able to see how God works through these people and how He continually proves His faithfulness.

It's insane to think about how much time has gone by since the beginning of this tour. It seems like it's been such a long time since we rolled out of Willmar back in January, but at the same time I think we can all agree that it's going way too fast. Our time together as a team is growing short. I thank God everyday for my team members- they are the coolest cats ever. I wouldn't rather be spending this year with anybody else.

Speaking of the team, we are sort of falling apart as far as health goes. Mr. Stanlers has been sick for about an eternity now, and Ken hit rock bottom this morning at church. On Friday I decided to play a game of basketball against two of the kids that went to the highschool we had just performed for. This was such a wonderful idea, seeing as how I'm incredibly athletic. To make a short story even shorter, I damaged my foot and now I'm on crutches. This proves to be more difficult that I thought it would, but the team is being great about it.

So yes, keep our team's health in your prayers please! Also pray that we continue to have safe travels and as we come to a close with this tour, my prayer is that we won't lose sight of why we are doing what we are doing. Pray that we will continue to grow together and build relationships with our hosts and contacts.

Until next time, peace out homies!

In Christ,
Christian.



PS: Pictures to come soon!

She just coughs.

I cough a lot. Some of you are very aware of this and others may not quite appreciate what I mean when I say I cough a lot. When I say this, I mean I pretty much just cough insescently for about two months at a time. As a result, those who happen to be around me on a regular basis just learn to ignore it. Those who are not around me on a regular basis become extremely concerned and ask questions like, "Are you okay?" "Are you choking?" "Are you dying?" or my personal favorite, "What is your malfunction?" I also get offered a lot of cough drops. It's become a bad habit to collect them. See, the problem is not in my throat. It's a latened bronchial infection. That means that it's an issue in my lungs. It's not a tickle in my throat or a cold. There's nothing wrong that a cough drop will fix. However, when I begin coughing in the middle of a Sunday morning church service, and five minutes later, when I'm still coughing, someone is kind enough to get up and bring me a cough drop, I often do not take the time to explain the situation. I just accept the gift and smile gratefully amidst the hacking. I usually just write it off and try to avoid having one in my mouth when I have to sing. But in the last couple days I've been bombarded with medicinal offerings. In the last two concerts alone I was offered 18 cough drops, two jolly ranchers, a package of sweetharts to suck on, and an entire bag of lemon Ricola lozenges. Throw in the 6 cups of water that were offered, and that is definitely a record number for me. As I was sitting at the sound board counting all of that up last night, I found that I was a little overwhelmed by the feeling of gratitude I felt towards those who had offered them all. Here we are playing concerts for strangers- people we had never seen until 5 minutes before the show started- and here they are offering me anything and everything they have in their purses/wallets/pockets/car/etc. for the sake of my lungs. I've seen more people go out of their way to make sure I'm comfortable than I could ever have hoped or imagined. It's tremendously humbling. It's embarrassing at times, and usually a little uncomfortable. I know I don't deserve any of it and I also know that I should be doing the same for the people around me. How many times are there people in need around me that I just don't notice? How often to I empty my pockets/backpack/etc. for the sake of those around me? I guess I'd just like to say thank you to those who have shown me that kind of love in the last few weeks. Thank you to those who just pat me on the back and smile as I cough on them. Thank you for the reminder of what it means to serve, and the example of what I should be doing in the lives of those around me.

And I really do just cough a lot. I'm okay. I promise. :)

My name is Taco

Hey its el the taco..havent been able to get my account to work, so im posting on micaela's. (smilie face)(smilie face). Its been an incredible past couple weeks. One sweet kickin thing we got to do was take some time off on a free day to just jam out and worship. We endud up putting together a redention of the song "freedom" by the band Full Frontal Sunshine! <-which i will be posting a sweet video of that i put together :D. We also had the opportunity to go to the Kennedy Space Station for free! A generous gift of a host family. So we spent the day there learning about the history of NASA and the craziness of actually getting INTO space. One of my favorite parts of the last weeks was the time we spent at aarons house out in the middle of Georgia. He happens to have acres and acres of woods surrounding his house, so i spent a good amount of time exploring and going on adventures in the woods climbing hills, going through creeks, and around lakes, and up trees. An amazing time getting to walk through the glorious untouched creation of God himself. Sometimes its just healthy to take some time and just stop and think, to just be in awe of Him.

Hooome sweet home!

Adding on to Ken's previous post, we were in my hometown just a week ago which was pretty awesome. I'm sure some of us can agree that it's always nice to be back home while on tour. While we were there, we held a concert for my church. If anyone from my church is reading this, thanks to all of you who came out and supported us! It meant ALOT to me. I don't really have that much to say about it except that it made me miss worshipping with y'all and leading ya'll into worship.

Currently, we are in Aaron's hometown in Columbus, Georgia where wrestling wildlife is a sport AND probably a means for survival. Something that stuck out to me this week was this marquee in front of a church we passed by while driving to one of our venues. It said, "Our need is not for God to prove His faithfulness, but it is for us to show our own faithfulness to Him. (poorly paraphrased, sorry)." I'm the type of person that needs something proved to me before I actually follow through and do it. Many times, it's easy for me to walk around with that type of mentality towards God. "Show me how powerful You are, first!" In reality, He's already shown His faithfulness towards us and shown us what He is able to do. Jesus walked on water, healed the sick, fed thousands, conquered death, and those things aren't good enough for me?? All He wants from me is to be faithful to Him in all that I do. Anyway, that was something that encouraged me this week.

Psalm 115:1
Not to us, O LORD, not to us
but to your name be the glory,
because of your love and faithfulness.