Keynote ’09 Experience Blog

Young Isaac Update #2

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 05:57:21 -0600

... wow. That's all I gotta say...

But for those of you who would like more, I can expound upon that. I realize it's been over a week since I've sent out an update, and I apologize. The last week has been amazing to say the least. I last left you on your seats waiting to hear how our first "gig" went. Since then we've played 8 concerts at 4 different gigs. Let me fill you in on what all of that looked like...

Monday 6/22/09
After getting picked up from our host homes, we traveled what was supposed to be a 2 hour drive from where we were staying in Winmalee (just west of Sydney in the Blue Mountains) to Bathurst (just on the other side of the Blue Mountains region). I say it was supposed to be a 2 hour drive because we ran into some trouble with the van along the way. I'm not sure we know yet what the problem was, but whenever the van got too stressed (due to weight and climbing hills) it would loose power. After lots of prayer and singing, we arrived at Bathurst High School. Luckily we had extra set up time scheduled, so we got everything ready in time for the noon time show. Set up went really fast, which I liked. We had some help by a two students from the high school that were in to running sound and lights. The leader, Nathan, was especially helpful. He set up all their stage lights and ran them from the back with me during the shows. It added a lot. The first show ended up seeming more like an extended soundcheck and rehearsal. The show was shorter, and unfortunately there were not many students coming into the hall (gymnasium with stage). Even with the abbreviated set and story, it went pretty well, and the students checking it out seemed to enjoy it. About a half hour or so after that show, we did a more complete show during one of the class periods. There was around 300 ish students at the show. It was a "mandatory" thing (more to come on that in a bit), so they were seated and relatively attentive. Even though the atmosphere seemed a bit dark, I felt like we were relatively well received. Unfortunately we were not allowed to hand out comment cards to gauge people's response to the music and the message, but a few conversations with students and staff gave us the impressions it was positive. John, our contact at the school, seemed to really enjoy it all and was thankful we were able to partner with him in this way. After the show we packed up and debriefed at McDonald's (called "Macca's"), and then headed to hour various host homes for the night.

I want to take a minute to explain exactly what we are doing and where with these schools. As I've stated before, we are an acoustic rock band doing covers of popular songs and interweaving personal stories in order to communicate the Gospel in a relative way to youth. We are partnering with CRAM (Creative Arts Ministries, a lot like Keynote) and going into high schools to do this. Evangelism is only part of what we are doing. The other aspect is that we are helping CRAM further their ministry ties by being an example of what they do. Most of the schools we are getting into are new contacts for CRAM, so we are able to (hopefully) leave a good taste in the mouths of the staff so that a CRAM band in the future would be able to come in as well. You may be wondering how we are allowed to go into a public school and present the Gospel. In the United States this sort of thing is not allowed, and definitely not allowed for a class. However, here in Australia the schools are totally open to it. In fact they actually have "scripture" classes where the students here the Gospel regularly. This totally blows are minds because we are so not used to it. We are very thankful that we get this chance because we all feel high schoolers are at a point in their lives where they are forming their identities and in need of spiritual direction. In most cases, we area partnering with the scripture teacher(s) at the high schools we are going into. In some ways we know it may seem like our message is redundant, but we all feel that even though they may here the God loves them, they don't get it in a way that relates to them personally. Our hope is that Ryan's story would be an avenue for the kids to connect with the message through.

Tuesday 6/23/09
After an amazing evening with host families in Bathurst, we got up the next morning to do the same format shows as we did the day before, but this time at Kelso High School. As we waited for everyone to arrive from their various host homes, we saw Andrew pull up in his host's car. That's right, he drove. Not only that, but we found out that he actually drove around Mount Panorama which is a local motor racing circuit. He said it was pretty cool, but very strange (seeing as they drive on the opposite side of the road here in Australia). Anyway, we eventually got set up in their hall, which was another gymnasium with a stage set into one of the walls. The lunch crowd at Kelso was a lot more attentive and active. There were probably 50 ish students coming in and out during the 35 min show. We then ate lunch as we waited for our next show to start. I actually got the chance to show some of the students from the Entertainment Production class around our gear. I was asked if I would go over what we were using and how we do things because they hadn't gotten a chance to see a lot of this type of thing. It was pretty fun. The students were attentive and they seemed to like to see and hear how everything went together. When it came around for the second show, we were once again preforming for a scripture class. This time we estimated around 300 ish students were there. We agreed that the atmosphere at this show was a lot more positive. We were fortunate enough to be able to hand out comment cards and found that 33 students indicated they started a relationship with God that day. We were all encouraged that students were responding to the message and the music. If I had them with me I would quote some of the things the students said. Obviously not all the comments were positive, but that is to be expected. After all, they are high schoolers. After we loaded out we said goodbye to Bathust and headed back to our host homes in Winmalee.
This night was actually the fist time I got to spend at my actual host home. The previous nights I had been staying at the house of the pastor of the church Darren attended because my host family had people over that weekend. I was dropped off at Bruce and Louise Carr's house. It's a nice little one story house on the edge of the "bush" (aka a forest). As I believe I mentioned before, Winmalee is in the Blue Mountains. It's kinda like the mountains of Pennsylvania if I recall correctly. Obviously different vegetation though. Bruce and Louise are pretty cool people. I believe they are in their 50s. They have 2 daughters in their 30s, and at least one grandchild. Bruce, it turns out, really likes audio stuff. We've spent a lot of time talking about it and checking out his surround sound system. I showed him my audio editing software and he was totally blown away by it. He has grown up in the analog era, and I've grown up in the digital one. We get a long though (and we both don't like salad). haha.

Wednesday 6/24/09
This was one of our day's off. We drove over to Katoomba (about 30 ish min away) to go on a hike. If any of you were following my twitter/facebook updates that day, you may remember I said we were going on a "tramp". I was somehow under the impression that Australians called hikes tramps. Apparently that is not the case, so I would like to correct myself. So anyway, Wednesday we went on a hike to Wentworth Falls. It was soooo beautiful there! Hopefully you can see pictures and video when it becomes available. We hiked down a few thousand feet. The trail was pretty much carved into the side of the rock face. Aka it was steep, narrow, and awesome. There were a few harry spots, but the views and the exercise were worth it. After we hiked back up, we went to a cafe to rest and hang out. On our way out, we met a group of Australian pastors that were on retreat in the area. It was cool to be encouraged by them, and the fact that the encounter was so random. From Katoomba we drove back to have dinner with our host homes and get to bed for our ridiculously early morning the next day.

Thursday 6/25/09
Morning came way too early. Pickups from our host homes started at 6 AM! Just in case you were wondering, it is still dark and cold at 6 AM in Australia during their winter. We agreed that being up that early was fruitful because we got to see a sweet sunrise. We arrived at Mitchell High School to set up for our longest day of the tour. Our first of three hour long shows started at 9:30. This school was interesting because each scripture class was 1.5 hours long. This meant that the teachers would actually go through a lesson for the first 30 min, and then we would play for about an hour. Side note: Australian high schools are made up of grades 7-12. The first show was made up of about 150 7-8 graders. It was a good show, and they seemed to enjoy it. The band liked being able to preform more songs for one audience too. After that show, we had about a 45 ish min break before the second show (again, starting with the class). The second show was made up of about 115 or so 9-10th graders. The crowd seemed a little quieter, but it was still a good show. Again, we had 45 minutes between shows. The third show was significantly smaller with about 35 or so students in the 11th and 12th grades. We were told that by the 11-12th grades the majority of the students opt out of scripture class. In all there were around 300 students that came to the shows combined. We were able to learn from comment cards that 115 students made a decision to follow God that day. We were astounded and thankful with how God was moving in that place. After this we were dropped back at our host homes for dinner and much needed sleep.

Friday 6/26/09
After "sleeping in" compared to the day before, we made our way to Girraween High School. This school was closer to the city then previous schools. We planned to do almost a full set, and then after words have a Q&A from the stage. Unfortunately our time slot was adjusted slightly, so we did about a 3/4 set (which we miraculously adjusted on the fly) and about a 15 minute Q&A. Our good friend Tim (Bass player for CRAM) lead the time with some ice breaker questions, and then opened it up to the crowd. Most questions from the crowd were surface level (several having to do with Andrew's hair). A few were a bit more spiritual in nature. The time was good over all, and I feel it helped us relate even better to the crowd because it was a genuine time. Tim had some good filler questions that probed deeper, so even though the students didn't ask the question, they still were able to hear genuine, heart-felt answers. It was cool to see afterwords two Christian students stand in front of all their peers and encourage them to get involved with the Christian group they were starting at the school. Our hope is that the 44 people that indicated a decision to start a relationship with God that day (and the many more that wanted to know more) would be able to get plugged into this group. After packing up in what felt like record time (20 minutes due to the fact they needed to use the gym during the next period), we headed down to the Seven Hills area to check out CRAM's office headquarters. They share a small office area with another Campus Crusade Ministry. It's small, but there are only 6 CRAM team members at the moment, so it works well for them. We had lunch at a nearby mall area and then drove the hour or so back to our host homes.

Saturday 6/27/09
Yay for sleeping in! I think I slept till about 11 and then got up to do some laundry and have some lunch before heading out for the day. We got picked up around 1:30 to head back out to Bathurst for an evening show. On our way, we stopped off at a scenic point called the three sisters. It's called this because there is a near by rock formation consisting of three rock protrusions. There is a myth that three sisters were turned to stone for some reason. I can't remember what that reason was (Elly's update has the story). We continued on to Bathurst, Stan (the van) continued to have some problems, but we prayed through it and eventually got there. Nathan and his friend were there to help us out again by running the lights. This show wasn't during school hours. Various youth groups from around the area had been invited to come, and the event was also advertised in the local news paper. Around 50 kids showed up. They played a few fun games before the concert started which proved to be some good comical relief. The show itself was the first and only full set we played (meaning we played all of our songs). The band had a lot higher energy and enthusiasm that night. I think it was because we weren't was worried about time restraints and teacher's opinions - not to mention that the crowd was a lot more responsive. After the show we had some good conversations. Comment cards reveled that 15 people decided to start a relationship with God, including a mother of one of the students! Although we were all excited from the evening, we were all tired. I think we ended up getting to our host homes between 12-12:30 am.

Sunday 6/28/09 - The day that shall forever be remembered...
Not to get ahead of myself, but Sunday was amazing... We started the morning by going to Tim's church near Sydney. It was a very contemporary church. The worship was great, and the sermon was inspiring. The service was dedicated to the people that served at the church, so the message was about serving and the heart behind it. I thought about inviting him to come on a preaching tour to some of the churches in America because it was so inspiring... haha... Although the service was enjoyable, I was having a really hard time getting into it for some reason. I still don't totally know why, but I'm still glad we were able to go.
After some free sausages at the church, we headed down to New Port beach. This was the first time we had been down to the ocean, and it was the PERFECT day for it. So sunny and warm. We could hardly believe it was winter! Andrew and Erica had their swimming suits so they went swimming as we watched and took pictures. Sadly I was standing ankle deep in water when a 2 foot higher wave decided to spring up and soak my pants. Although the water was warmer then expected, it was still not welcomed. Luckily we were able to swing by Tim's place to pick up some new pants afterwards.
After the beach, we headed to what I hope isn't a once in a life time event, but might be. We got to go to Hillsong. For those of you who have no idea who/what that is, let me let you in. Hillsong (as known my many in the U.S.) is a worship band who has written a ton of worship that is played in churches today. Little did I know (until Stephen informed me awhile back), Hillsong (the band) comes from Hillsong the church. More specifically, Hillsong the church in Sydney, Australia. You may wonder why this is such a big deal... in some ways I wonder too, but it's kind of like going to your favorite artist's concert once a week. In many Christian circles, Hillsong's music is very popular. I must say that they are one of my favorite (and most powerful/talented) worship bands. That having been said, it was quite an experience to be able to go to the birth place of the band and hear them play. Technically Hillsong (the band) is made up of a ton of different artists (or so I understand it). Apparently they're on tour right now in the U.S., so we only saw part of the band. For those of you who follow Hillsong (*cough*Stephen*cough*), Joel Houston was leading most of the worship. Ryan said many of the other musicians preforming looked familiar. I know (from experience) that it is easy to make a band sound good on a CD, but I must say that Hillsong was officially the best sounding church I've ever been to... the kick sounded amazing. haha. The mix, speaker coverage, and everything just sounded good. Mind you, sound guys are all opinionated, so I may have done a few things different (or maybe where I was sitting effected what I was hearing), but everyone has their own opinions. I will say that after looking at the giant digital soundboard (I'm pretty sure it was a SoundCraft), the Front of House mixer knew what he was doing.
Ok, enough about the music... super unfortunately we managed to come on what is probably the only Sunday of the year without a sermon. This was a special Sunday where they were raising additional support for one of their biggest charities. That was ok though. That meant that we got to hear more worship :) ... A few interesting things did happen that I would like to mention. First off, you should know that we were meeting a friend of a friends of Amy's that go to Amy's church. Her name was Faith Oxley. She's a Sydney local that goes to Hillsong. She contacted Amy when she learned we were coming to Hillsong. Thankfully she got their early and saved us a bunch of seats together. I forgot to mention their auditorium seats around 3,000 and it usually gets filled, so saving seats together was a good idea. We got to the church early to meet her and find our seats. We spent some time chatting and then the service started with some advertising for their Hillsong conference that would be the week after we left (we were all bummed to hear this and wanted to stay for the week long event). After that, worship started (as described above). A bunch of the band went down to the front of the auditorium for the first worship set because there was a large standing area. Again, it was amazing. After a few songs (including the chorus of The Stand which was epic), one of the pastors got up to say a few things about the service. He mentioned it was going to be different because the time was going to revolve around worship and the sermon would be replaced by an offering for one of their largest charities they do. Also included in this time was the reading of prayer requests and praise points. People can write or email the church with both, and apparently they read some of them off during the service. There was the usual prayer requests about jobs and such, and there were the usual praise points such as surgery going well, etc. But then he started reading one that went something like this, "This women is praising God that her friends from America were able to come tonight..." At this point I was like huh, that's cool, there are other Americans somewhere in this sea of people. But then he continued, "They are a band from America that are doing outreaches in high schools in the greater Sydney area. They're called Young Isaac." At this point I about pooped myself. Out of the huge stack of requests and praises in his hand, he HAPPENED to flip to Faith's and read it. Not only that, but he stopped going through them and had us raise our hands to call us out. Like I said, a few of the band members were up in front, so the camera went to them as they raised their hand. The pastor came over and asked them where we were all from. It was kinda funny to see Andrew's long golden locks fill 2 of the 3 HUGE screens. We were all crazy amazed that this randomly happened, but we were content just being able to be there. Anywho... the rest of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of worship were amazing. They played a few songs I recognized (and I recognize them all now that I've gotten their newest CDs), but the whole atmosphere was inspiring. I'll share a little about what I've learned and such in a latter update. This one is getting long enough as it is!
As I said, Sunday was amazing...

That's going to have to be all for now. This is already really, really long. Sorry! I'll post at least 2 more updates in the week to come. The first will finish out the day to day updates from the trip (as well as some more descriptions of what Australia is like as a whole), and the second will be an update about what I'm taking away from this trip. Also! Stay tuned for the videos I will be posting as soon as I get time to work on them! They're coming, I promise!!!

~ Peace

Young Isaac Update - (Day 3 in Australia)

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:33:17 -0600

We've arrived!!! After leaving for the airport at 12 PM on Wednesday, June 17th, we arrived in Sydney, Australia, at 6:10 AM, local time, on Friday June 19th. It was cool because we basically flew over the day of Thursday. We flew from Indianapolis to Denver to San Francisco, and then on to Sydney. The flight from San Fran to Sydney was 13.5 hours long. It was the longest flight I'd ever been on, but I was able to sleep pretty well.

After landing I turned my phone on (because I paid for an international data plan) to see that I got an email from my mom. The email read, "In case you don’t already know, one of your bags was ‘misdirected’. It is sitting in Reno, NV, awaiting a missing bag report. Good Luck!!!" ... I thought it was a joke, but it was not. After some digging, I found that they had put the wrong tag on my bag in Indianapolis which landed it in Reno. After safely making it through customs, I filed the missing bag report and they told me I'd have my bag in 24-48 hours. I was ok with that, but I wasn't excited about staying in my smelly clothes for that long. I made it work though.

Since we arrived on Friday morning, the goal was to keep us awake until that evening so we could get acclimated to the new time. To keep us up, Darren (the guy in charge of the ministry here in Australia) took us to a local wildlife refugee so we could get our "Kangaroo and Koala" fix. So, yes, we got to pet Kangaroos and Koalas. It was sweet. There was also a lot of other local animals that we got to see.

From there we went to a local part to have a "Barbeque". For those of you who don't know, a Barbeque here is like grilling out in America. We didn't have "shrimp on the barbie", but we did have some delicious sausages. We also got to meet a few other members of the CRAM team (Creative Arts Ministry, the team Keynote is partnering with in Australia, lead by Darren). After the BBQ, we walked around the park and got some coffee (they really, really like their coffee and tea here). I had probably one of the best milkshakes I've ever had...

After that we were dropped off at our "host homes" -- the places that we are staying at through our time in Australia. I've stayed at Darren's pastors house for the last few nights before I move into the home of the hosts I'll be staying at for the rest of our time here. We're all in different houses in the area, but all of the hosts are really accommodating and amazing. I must say that I absolutely loved my first night of sleep here. After being in transit for nearly 41 hours, a comfy bed was like a little slice of heaven.

Eventually the morning came and Darren came around in the van to get us. We were brought to a local church where we were going to set up the gear and run through our set to get warmed back up. The gear and the setup went ok. It seemed to make sense. After getting some of the cobwebs out of the band I think we were rocking the songs as well as we were in Indiana. Eventually we tore down the equipment and packed it in the trailer/van and headed back to our host homes for dinner. I went with Darren, his wife, and Amy (one of our team leaders from Keynote) to the next door neighbor's house for dinner. It was delicious. For desert we had some amazing apple/pear crumble with custard on it (*note, their custard is really liquidy and different from the standard Culver's custard).... again, it was amazing. The food coma I got from that definitely gave me a good night's sleep.

Today, Sunday, we went to church with Darren (which was right next to my host home since I was staying with the pastor). It was really good. The message was about God's sovereignty in salvation... very insightful. After church most of us went over to one of the host families for lunch. Again, more great food, and more amazing people. We hung out and talked and played some games through the afternoon. Now we're watching the movie Australia... in australia. haha, oh the irony...

Tomorrow we head out on a 2 hour drive to our first gig. I'll hopefully give some more updates afterwords. Be praying that the show goes well. We're all excited. :)

A few points about Australia so far:
1. When it's summer in the US, it's winter down here.
2. Winter here is fairly warm. Highs usually around 60 degrees fahrenheit, and lows in the 50s. However, where we are going for our first gig is said to get down around 32 ish.
3. Because of the mild winters, they generally don't heat their houses as warm as one would expect.
4. Food is great. Apparently less sweet then US food, but still really, really great.
5. Oh yeah, because it's winter, it's also darker (just as it is in winter in the US). That's what has really thrown me off because the days are so much shorter.

There's so much more, but I'll tell more in future updates! That's all for now. We all hope everyone is "going" well in the US (as they say in Australia).

“Free Falling” - Young Isaac

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 20:57:46 -0600

Young Isaac has been working hard learning all their music. We all had fun today as we learned John Mayer’s version of Free Falling. With Mrs. Elly Gouin on lead vocal, we had to change a few things, but it’s pretty sweet!

This recording is done a little bit differently then the previous rehearsal recordings. I recorded each channel so that I could mix it down better afterwords. It’s obviously not perfect, but we all hope you like it!

PS: The bass solo is going to be even more epic later...

Keynote Summer Project Intro Video

Wed, 3 Jun 2009 22:42:51 -0600

The first of several videos from Keynote ’09. Watch and see what we’ve been up to so far!

Out of Contlor - Suspension

Sat, 30 May 2009 14:34:30 -0600

The Band “Out of Contlor” was formed for the first Keynote Coffee House open mic. We played “Suspension” originally by Mae.

If you are wondering why these some of the words in the video (and band name), it comes from the new “Engrish” language that was made. Basically, L’s are replaced with R’s, and vis versa.

The Band:
Vocars:
Stephen Haddenholst
Andlew Fackrol
Lyan O’connerr
Guitals:
Stephen Haddenholst
Andlew Fackrol
Keys:
Lyan O’connerr
Bass:
Kevin Butrel
Dlums:
Blad Adams