"Oh the places we'll go..."

Captain's log:

Okay, so where are we now? Where did we leave off.... *how much sleep did I get last night?..* okay I think.. this is where we left off.. So we performed in a very nice out door mall in phoenix because it was so hot we had to do a few songs then water break and two songs and water break.. etc for an hour. And since they worked hard in the heat we thought a nice air conditioned room for about an hour and a half would be good so we all went to see Wall e in the theater right next to where we performed. After the movie we drove to Sierra Vista where we blew up some air beds and got ready for our night in the church gym. The church supplied a bunch of air beds and bedding. The best part.. although I'm not sure how many of the girls agreed with me at the time.. a thunderstorm blew in and was extremely loud and then knocked out the power.. imagine 13 girls screaming and running like moths towards the only generator lights in the lobby where we three leaders were standing.. Hilarious right?!? I'm not gonna lie I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.. we calmed them down and the power went back on in a little while as the storms continued through the night. Beautiful music. :) Memories to last a lifetime. The next morning was their first early call time of 6am because we had a drive to Tucson for our Sunday morning concert where we performed two songs in two services and the young cons got to go to sunday school and during the second service we got to sit in on the sermon. We had our second full concert that night and had a couple technical difficulties... our laptop which has all of our concert music on there was not sending out the music to the speakers so with some prayer and some tech brainstorming we got with the church techs and got the music from our laptop to their computer and got to do our show!! We had some technical difficulties during the show but the teens did great and followed my direction and we got through looking professional and everyone complimented the teens' energy and attention to their director which was so great to hear!

On Monday we drove to El Paso, TX for housing in a mission house which was fun to have everyone together and since we were running low on petty cash Mira (Assistant Director) and I went to the grocery store and got mac and cheese and ramen for dinner along with cereal for breakfast and pb and j for lunch... all for 63 dollars! Josh kept the teens entertained (for a little while I heard.. :) ) Mira and I cooked dinner for everyone back at the house and then we had group time/devotions and then for those who wanted to stay up they shared scary stories and ended up screaming their lungs out because the lights flickered out.. and one of the boys walked through the back room casting a shadow into the room where the girls were... the girls laughed and talked for a while after.. good times.. :)

And onto this morning... we woke up all in one house which is always interesting.. :) and off to Odessa, TX but of course not without a stop at the CARLSBAD CAVERNS! It was tons of fun and of course after two days of driving without a concert the kids really needed some exercise! And the best part kids 15 and under were free .. :) Our favorite! Tons of pictures even though after a while they all started looking the same to me but the teens had lots of fun! And that's all that counts! After that we finished our drive through boring west texas.. (sorry texans..) and got to Odessa into our motel which THANKS to Belmont Baptist we have rooms reserved and don't have to worry about spending too much of our small petty cash amount. Tomorrow is our next full concert and yay we finally get to perform again!!!


Prayer requests:

OFFERING!!!! Because we haven't had a lot of concerts we've been penny pinching everyday and haven't been able to buy gas and definitely need to buy some on thursday for our drive down to San Antonio for our show on the riverwalk!

Our Audiences: For our numbers to go up so more people can hear this important message... we will perform for any number but its really encouraging to the teens when they see how many their message is getting too.

More concerts: We still have open dates so keep praying and keep trying to fill them if you know anyone in the open date areas!!

Our team: That we will continue to be strong and continue to give a strong message.

Over and out

Mel
Mira
Josh