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.

Houston Texas, home of Stanley Tso, and 1421 (for the next day and a half). This is our second week on winter tour, we left Willmar on the 3rd and spent a few day's in Bushnell IL at Taco's home church. Then we went to Chicago and spent several days with Laura's family. After Chicago we went to St Louis were we stayed three nights with Kim's family, Kim has done cti summer three summers in a row so it was fun to see her :) From St Louis we drove all day to Dallas were we spent one night, then we drove to Austin and played a concert and stayed the night. Today we left Austin and drove to Houston were we are staying with Stanley's family, we will play at his church tomorrow.
Needless to say we have traveled a long way, and we have had a lot of great times. God is using us in truly unique ways and that is a wonderful thing to be a part of. We would appreciate your prayers as we travel and thank you for your support... and for reading our blogs :)

Here are some pics from our trip so far, these are from all over so I'm not even going to try labeling them all. Yes we went to the Zoo :)

On The Road Again

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you're doing well. We're off again and enjoying the first few days of our 13 week tour, in which we will be traveling in IL, TX, FL, and the rest of the East coast. So far we've been hanging out in Colin's hometown (Bushnell, IL), where we've played at his church, and soon the camp that he loves so much. Today we spent our day off at Fun City playing laser tag, bowling, go-carting, and playing tons of games. It was AWESOME. Yesterday was Colin's birthday too, so that made this particular stop that much more enjoyable. There was cake and ice cream galore! Not a bad way to spend the first weekend out, if you ask me.

Beyond all that, I'm so grateful to be back. There's nothing like a nice, long, relaxing break to remind me of what it is I'm called to do this year. While it was wonderful to be at home, to spend time with friends and family, and to catch up on some sleep, I must admit that I missed our team, our nasty van (though we have a few more weeks before it really gets all that nasty), the many host homes we've been privileged to stay with, and the music we all love so much. There is a feeling of utter contentment I get every time I'm on stage (or back at the board)- knowing that I am doing exactly what I was created to do. It's a remarkable feeling, and I can only pray that I can be aware enough of God's calling in my life to be in this state all the time. While I realize that I will not always be called to be traveling with CTI, I know that God has a plan for my life, and only by following Him into that willingly will I ever recieve the kind of peace and joy that comes from fulfilling that purpose that God has in my life. I pray this for all of you as well.

Here's a few pictures from our time so far...







These are Stanley wearing Ken's new specs, Colin wearing the apron he got for his brithday, a host brother wearing the Macki cover, and Micaela and Aaron bowling.


Ta ta for now!

Partnership Drive

Ok, as I see it, there are three major blights on modern society; here they are in increasing order of irksomeness: third – people who talk in the theater, second – those who start honking the instant the light turns green, and first and most terrible – Telemarketers (need I say more).
In light of this, can you imagine how I felt when I got the details on what “partnership drive” actually is? I’m not one of the technologically savvy members of the information generation, no, I’m a face-to-face sort of guy. I don’t spend much time on the phone with friends and family so the thought of calling a complete stranger at home…not a fun thought!
I do, however, love this ministry more than I loath the phoning prospect, therefore I decided to tackle this project with zeal and a “good attitude”. Before we started the calling process Joe (VanderArk that is, development director) told us, regarding negative calls, “Don’t take it personal, they don’t know you, so it can’t be personal.” This became my mantra. I geared myself up, grabbed a calling list, and sat down to make my first call. I got a machine: second, third, etc… all machines or no answers for the first page. I sort of fell into a groove until I got a real live person on the other end of the line (bum bum buhhhmmm). Awkwardly I stumbled through the script as best I could; obviously I was not charming nor charismatic enough and they declined my offer to partner with us in the coming year.
Then followed a string of what I perceived as failures. Answering machines, no answers, exasperated sighs followed by hang ups or begrudging half-hearted participation in the first bit of the conversation only to end in “I’m not interested.” Then there is this countries current economic whatever it is which has a good percentage of our supporters out of work or “just scrapping by” and I felt horribly insensitive for even mentioning money in most of the calls I made.
There was, however, a second and far more admirable portion to our calls, we were taking prayer requests, and even praying for people right on the spot. No matter how bad it got with the partnership spiel there was always prayer, and I love praying. I would trudge through the bits with which I was uncomfortable then with joy and genuine concern ask if they had any specific prayer requests. This seemed to change people’s attitudes toward me; some people were touched, some were indifferent yet nicer, but some (and this I just don’t get) got annoyed! Sort of a “how dare you presume to pray for me!” Then they would hang up angry and I would sit there slightly confused, and (don’t tell them) pray for them anyway. But redemption did come in spite of all the indifference and apparent anger.
There were those calls that had some sort of divine purpose. For instance, a man I talked to; He seem a bit overwhelmed and I could hear his kids in the background. He said he was unable to support us this year (which is no problem) and started to hang up when I asked if there was anything I could pray for him and his family about. His tone softened, “actually yeah there is” he said and went on to tell me they just found out his daughter has a brain tumor. He did not go into any detail , but I could hear the pain and love and concern for his daughter in his voice. I felt a lump in my throat and the heat of tears welling behind my eyes as I asked if I could pray for him right then. I finished praying and said amen; there was no whaling or gnashing of teeth (sorry to be anti-climatic) he just said thanks and hung up the phone. But I got the privilege of being in his life for a moment and I got to share my life with him; I hope he felt how much I care about him and his family and I want him to know that his daughter is in my prayers every day.
After that conversation I started looking at the moments in every conversation where we (the supporter and I) were real and honest. I had more genuine moments with people, I was even asked if I had any prayer requests and then prayed for on the phone by this man who was just straight up nice all around. He was interested in the ministry and what we were doing, and wanted to know about the whole team; he asked if he could pray for me and for the team, and I’m not going to say no to that!
It was because of willingness like his to engage in conversation or prayer that we all persevered and pushed through the negative calls. It’s basically a willingness to share life with one another that helped this bothersome, draining task transcend obligatory duty into a legitimately enjoyable ministry opportunity.
Essentially we (the supporters and the ministry at large) are one community, one body, and by reaching out through this phone drive are offering part of our community, part of our life, part of who we are. Those who accept our extension of life were and are, hopefully, blessed, because I know they blessed me. Well, that’s all I have to say about that. Okbye.
-Aaron

a break from touring.

hey guys! on the second of december we drove into willmar from madison wisconsin. this marked the end of our fall tour, which lasted one month. many great times were had and countless memories were made. we got to experience canada (for many of us, it was our first) and all of the wonders that canada entails. now that we are back in our "home town", we will be hanging out here for the first couple weeks of this month contributing in cti's annual campaign drive. this means we call people (many of them), and chat with them about maybe donating to cti. my favorite part about this whole thing is that we take prayer requests from the folks that we call and then before we beginning calling the next day we lift all of those requests up to God. it really is an awesome experience being able to get a glimpse into the lives of people from all over the world and being able to pray for them. these next two weeks will be long and hard, so i ask that you keep all of us in your prayers. ask that God would grant us the energy to be on the phone for four hours at a time and that we could truly minister to these people that we are calling.

thank you guys all for your support and caring enough to read our blog posts!
it means a lot, really really really.

-christian.

Snow????

hey everybody! as many of y'all know from our profiles on the CTI website, Aaron and I are from the south (Georgia and Texas, respectively). therefore, i'm sure many of you can guess that for the past month, we've been FREEZING our butts off up here. we have not seen THIS much snow in YEARS! so today at Christian's hometown, there was a blizzard (our definition of a blizzard)! I was so excited that I asked Micaela to take pictures of me standing in the snow. according to the following video, that photoshoot did not go down as I had planned...

Taco's Taiwan Video

Canada Tour

coming soon....

So, for all of you who are loyally reading our blog, we recognize that you've probably been dissapointed. We hereby apologize for the lack of blogging. Colin has been trying tirelessly to post his "Back from Taiwan" video, and Micaela is writing one as we speak (or, in your case, read). Either way, we promise that something will be posted soon. :) If nothing else, mother always said that waiting is good for you. It builds character! :) Think of how much character you'll have by the time you get the next post. Heheh. Seriously though, we'll have something up SOON. In the meantime, let us know how we can be praying for you. Leave us a comment under this post with prayer requests and we'll get on it. Thanks guys! And happy (almost) Thanksgiving!!!

howdy y'all this is Aaron...so how's it going? we're doing good getting into the swing of things here in the state and it's going well. we've been in Iowa and Illinois and Indiana and Michigan ,yep all the I states (we'll work backwards to the G state no worries), we have had some great opportunities to play in Christian schools and churches, and as displayed in the picture to the left, this place called Mel Trotter ministries. Mel Trotter was amazing, we played for a group of at risk women and some children. So, as it turns out I am really bad at this "blogging" thing, but I hope I've hit some of the highlights. I want to say hey to all my host home families in Willmar and across the states, well from Iowa to Michigan anywho. not to mention a shout out to my family and friends back home... okbye.

hey all!

we are back from Taiwan and let me tell you it is quite a change to be in the states again. Less than two weeks ago we were in an apartment in Asia, and now we are at host homes in Iowa. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm sure after about a few days on the road I'll get back into the state side swing.
Anyway, a word on Taiwan, we stayed in a city called Don Shwei, it's about a half hour away from the capital, Taipei, really the whole area is like one big city. We played all over the Don Shwei/ Taipei area at all sorts of different venues. We got to tell many people the good news of Jesus and even though we weren't there for the harvest, we were used by the spirit to plant seeds.
Well thank you all so much for your support, and prayer, bye

-Ken

1421 departs for fall tour!

1421 pulls out of the driveway on their way to Iowa to start their fall tour.

Be sure to check out their booking schedule to see if they are coming to a town near you!

Team 1421 arrives home safely!

Team 1421 arrived home safely today with al of their equipment! Check their blog soon for updates on their trip!

Update the Third (bum bum bumhmmm)

(Courtesy of Jeffrey Aaron Stephens, Esquire; and The Honorable Christian Wade Harger, RTB. Title provided by none other than The Terrific Tish Schuh [also known as Laura])



Greetings and salutations to all,

Things are going swimmingly in Taiwan, though we regret to inform you that we will be departing this splendiferous island all too soon. Early in the AM of this the 20th of October the year of our Lord 2008, we performed our final engagement. It was a glorious worship experience meeting with our brothers and sisters who are a part of YWAM, Taiwan.

Now, working retrospectively, we will regail you with tales of our past adventures. Since last we "spoke," we have had the privilege of ministering in a myriad of environments, ranging from orphanages and churches, to schools and homes for troubled youths. Musically we have run the spectrum from phenominal cohesion to utter chaos, but out of the mire and muck we have been extracted (wc2ls) by God. He has turned our paltry attempts to share His love into resplendent glory.

God is amazing! But the price of an hour of internet is not.. meaning we can't afford another hour.. meaning we have to go.

PS we climbed a volcano.

okay bye! love you paul!

Another update from Taiwan

Here's another update we received today from Laura:

---

Hello Friends, Family, and others!

We hope things are going well there at home! We've had quite a week here in Taiwan. I'm not really sure where to begin. I know we mentioned last week that we have a pretty varied schedule, and it has continued into this week as well. In the last 5 days we've played for a kindergarden (TONS of fun!!!), at another hospital, at the Fishermen's warf, for the YWAM staff, a homeless shelter, a high school, and another convelecent center. It has been wondederful. The hospital we played at was one that we had played in the very first week. When we were there the first time, there was a boy named David that we were able to pray for. He was 5 and very, very sick. When we came back the next time, he had been feeling much better, getting ready to go home, and very excited to visit with us. He thanked us for praying for him and told us that God had made him feel better! It was really cool to see. At the homeless shelter, we were able to perform for about 100 men and then had the opportunity to serve them dinner. Talk about humbling. And we've had experiences like this every day so far.

We've also been spending a lot of time at The Rock in the evenings. We've been able to connect with a lot of students there and had a ton of ministry opportunities there as well. Just the other day I was talking to a couple of girls about movies when they asked me if I believed in ghosts. It was the perfect set-up to tell them about the gospel. We've all been learning a lot about what God can do when we make ourselves available for ministry. We've also been learning a lot about encouragement. Over the last three weeks, most of our devotionals have been on the theme of encouragement. Then on Monday, we lead worship for the entire YWAM base, and afterwords participated in the montly prayer day. The topic of the month (which every YWAM base in the world will be praying about this month) is encouragement. One lesson we've learned is that it goes far beyond words. It is a constant attituted of lifting each other up. To make another persons path easier to travel by clearing the way for them. It carries itself out it words, yes, but also in actions, in thoughts, in prayer, in sacrifice, etc. Encouragement. We all need it. And we all need to practice it. By practicing encouragement the way Christ did, we grow closer to Him. It's awesome.

On a lighter note, we've been able to do some pretty fun stuff here in Taiwan. Last week, we went to visit Taipei 101 and one of the largest night markets in Taiwan. We were going to go to the beach today, but it rained all day. We were able to go exploring a bit in our free time. Just today, we found an Irish coffee shop on the riverfront. We all ate tacos. Yeah... we had Tacos, in an Irish coffee shop, in Taiwan. Can life get better?!!! We've tried things like frogs, blood soup, pot-stickers, porrige (made with eggs and horse urine), and all kinds of other fun things. A team favorite has been the pot-stickers. It's our standby late-night meal. We also went out for a sweet meal involving lamb and clams. I'd tell you more about it, but it all happened in Mandrin, so I don't know much more than that. Most of our meals consist of us pointing at food that looks like it would be good, getting it and thinking, "Hm... I wonder what THIS is..." and eating it anyway. We've probably eaten tons of cool stuff without knowing what it was. The point is, FOOD HERE IS AWESOME!

Here are a couple of shout-outs from the team:

A quick word on Taiwan:
Great people, great city, great food, and we're all still alive. Keep praying for us. We love you all! Bye!

~Ken

Greetings to all.

The most importat thing I have to tell you is that the United States is in desperate need of more scooters.

The second most important thing I have to tell you is that I am alive and well.

~Christian

Everyone else is out galavanting aound the city and didn't get a chance to write down their messages, but we're all healthy and enjoying ourselves! Thank you so much for all your prayers. We love you and miss you!