It's been over a week?!? Well, this is going to be a looooong one.

Let me set the atmosphere for you right now. It's about 7:11pm on a beautiful Michigan Sunday afternoon. I'm sitting at my desk on my powerbook, my little parrot professor is looking at me because she doesn't have any food. She keeps on biting her food dish, and that means she's hungry. She'll have to wait until I'm done with this blog. She needs to learn patience. I only have one light on right now, it's the little lamp right above my desk. It's setting the mood pretty nice. I've been thinking about lighting a candle but I don't think I will as I'm not in the mood for a headache from the smell. Tara is on the floor right now (she wanted to be there, I didn't put her there) she's making name desk tags for her students. They chose spanish names within the last week, pretty different stuff. She teaches near detroit and it's mostly an African American school. Let me give you an example of some of the names of her students . . . Jada, Mikyelah, DeMarko, Juwaun, Bril, Materre, Dy'Amond, Tamia, Nakayla, Ke-Shawn, Ebony, Haleem, India, Jalizic, Kortez, Daze', Psyche', Tyjadah, Moses, Niquelle, Myr'esha, Ja'lynn and my favorite, A'myrkal. I guess her parents thought she was indeed, a miracle. I wish I was spelling all those names wrong, but I spell checked, and had Tara spell Check as well. I love the fact that Tara is a teacher, it's so awesome. I'm very proud of her. I find it funny that I'm half hispanic, can't speak one word of spanish and she's white and is teaching Spanish in a African American school in the Ghetto. Actually, it's not that bad, but it's pretty close to the Ghetto. But regardless, I'm proud of her. Here's a real time picture of Tara working. . . .Hello Tara!! He's my girlfriend. I'm also listening to the new Charlie Hall CD and it's awesome. So a couple of things, I've been spending a lot of my time working on an event called See You After the Pole. For those that don't know, See you At the pole is an awesome event started by students in about 1998 where they began once a year to meet at their school's flag pole early in the morning and pray for their community, school and country. I was in charge of a lot of the progamming of the event as well as leading the worship. The goal was to have multiple bands from students for multiple churches, but it was just the 2|42 StuCo Band and two other students from other churches. There was 8 of us and we played about 7 songs. It was amazing. We lead for about 400 students from all over the community, from all churches and demoninations. It was quite some work setting up practices and everything and making sure everyone was on the same page for everything. But it was great meeting with the Livingston County Youth Leaders for a couple days straight. Good to be apart of Unity in the Community, OH MY GOODNESS THAT RHYMES! Anywho, Here's the pictures and some video from the event. Now for some video, I'm going to try and see if this works . . . . .



Here's another video . . . .

It was such a great experience, I've been involved the last two years but this one was definately way cooler than the last. It was also cool to build relationships with the students that were involved as well as getting to meet their friends.

Being Sunday, of course, this is the highlight of my week. I got up today at around 5:55, yes 5 minutes to eat Breakfast. I had so much stuff to carry in this Sunday, my drums, two laptops, two lamps, a guitar, a sound board etc . . etc . . .goes on and on it seems. Thank goodness I didn't sell my Truck. It's a 1996 Isuzu Trooper and I use it often, I just can't wait to drive it in the snow with it's super awesome and or amazing Four Wheel Drive! Whoohoo for Snow and Michigan. So anywho, a Student Ben Led today and he did amazing, we also played the Cover song "Control" by MuteMath, it went awesome, We played along to a loop and I sang it and it went really well. I was very proud of the students today, they've come a long way since the first time we all played together. They've really grown and have carried their weight.
Here's some pictures from Band practice on Thursday . . . . .
Lauren was supposed to be there but she couldn't get off work. It's alright, she's really devoted and has an amazing voice, sometimes it just doesn't work out, I'm thrilled she apart of our Arts team. We're practicing at Lakewood Church, a Church that was given to us, this is where our offices are. That's Jordan on the drums, he's super talented, I'm starting to teach him on this Thursday. That's Ben leading right now, great voice, that's Jonny on Guitar and Zack rockin' the low end. The lover of the low end. The Sub sonic bo' bonic Chronic, as we like to say. It starts at 7 then ends at 9pm. All this work for the big day . . . . SUNDAY, here's some shots of Sunday, Sunday Sunday!
This is from the 9:30 Service. It's the JR. High Service. We have 30 students if we're lucky. We normally have between 70-80 at the 11am service. It's mostly Sr. High Students.
I made the designs on the screens.
























This is what it's like when we have to tear everything down. Total Chaos! No actually, it's one of the best parts of the day, we all joke around with eachother and just build relationships. Good stuff. That's Jay's feel sticking out there. He's kind of a dork. haha, no he's cool.




Alright, well Tara and I are going to make something to eat. I think all I have left is Brat's and Asparagus, Sounds good to me. I think Asparagus is one of my most favorite vegetables. Alright, until next time!!! I promise it won't be so long until my next Blog.

Jonathan