What's in a Day

East Camberwell Baptist Church

We're back at it! It's amazing how exciting it can be after a small break to anticipate the first music event of the year. We visited East Camberwell Baptist Church and Glen Huntly SDA Church over the last week and it was amazing to get back into it. God really blessed on both occasions and helped us to once again experience the joy of sharing Him through word & song. 

Glen Huntly SDA Church

Touring, for us, comes usually in three different ways. Each are vastly different. The long stretch; On-the-road touring for between 2 weeks to 3 months! The short weekender; On-the-road for just a weekend and a couple of events. The home tour; staying at home, but doing events around the local city and state. At the moment we are in the middle of a home tour of morning events. To show you guys what a typical morning looks like I'll outline below what happened for us. Each day is a little different, depending on the church's denomination, start time and drive time. 

• Day before - Pack the car with our music and sound gear.
• 5:30am - Wake up & get ready.
• 6:30am - Leave to drive into Melbourne.
• 8am - Arrive at the church of the day. Get to know the wonderful person who opened the church up for our set up and sound check. 
• 8:10am - Unpack the car. Set up the sound equipment. Soundcheck. Set up information and CD interest table.
• 9:15am - Chat with the church's audio-visual team. Organise PowerPoint.
• 9:40am - Attend the church's Bible study time.
• 10:45am - Talk to the service co-ordinator about last minute details.
• 10:50am - Quick toilet break (Let's be real).
• 10:55am - Prayer. 
• 11am - Church service starts with the preliminaries organised by the church.
• 11:25am - Get up and present the Message through word & song.
• 12:05pm - Church announces and collects love offering. Final Prayer.
• 12:10pm - Get to know people. Awesome conversations. Hot drinks and snacks. Church treasurer gives us a packet with the love offering.
• 1pm - Begin to pack up our music and sound equipment while chatting with new friends. Pack the car.
• 1:30pm - Begin the drive home eating the snacks we prepared earlier for lunch. Veggie sticks, corn chips and Hummus! Chatting heaps about the different conversations we had and people we met. 
• 3pm - Arrive home. Decide to unpack the car later and to take nap! 

So that's a little bit of a look into a home tour event day. As I said before, it differs slightly with different denominations, drive times and start times. but we love each and every one! 

Click to see upcoming tour dates

There ain't no Kangaroos in Austria, or Germany for that matter...

Just like all tours that we've been on, we start out with good intentions of keeping a diary of all the things God has done and all the testimonies told. Unfortunately, just like all tours we've been on, our tiredness and busyness gets in the way. But we are going to endeavour to take ourselves back into the moments we've experienced with the amazing people we've met in Germany and Austria to give you a taste of God's goodness as we've experienced it in the past month.

After leaving Switzerland, we headed up to North Germany and began what was our busiest stretch of concerts to date. It was crazy hectic and held so many good memories. Often we wonder why God led us to do music ministry, especially full-time. We're both introverted to a degree, a character trait that doesn't automatically scream being at ease in different people's homes every concert night while on tour and meeting people new people each and every day, and yet we are. We value and love being able to meet the people who come out to our concerts and get to know each of hosts. And I think one of the reasons why we are able to enjoy such a busy tour schedule is that we also try to creat small spaces in each day when we can recharge our introverted self. Hearing of how God has used our music in people's lives or how the concert connected to the people who come is one of the most recharging things that we can experience during a tour. It might sound corny, but it's completely true! We love it when people come up and share their experience with us. For us, this is what makes a concert better then the average. 

These are the moments that stand out in our memories:

• The constant late nights and early mornings
• When people brought non-christian friends to concerts
• Driving at an average of 160km p/hr
• Selling out of the Everlasting physical albums
• The last minute concerts organised at both Friedensau Adventist University and Seminar Schloss Bogenhofen 
• The high level of hospitality
• Seeing tear filled eyes as I speak the spoken word before 'He Knows'
• Realising that people have travelled over an hour to come to our concert
• The heart felt thanks for a concert that touched their life that transcends language barriers
• A guy hearing Christian music for the first time
• The many moments of encouragement
• Playing three concerts with the Austrian-Swiss-German band tag7
• Singing 'There We Rise' with tag7
• Being giving gifts of two lighthouse containers
• Writing personal messages and signing a lot of albums
• Meeting people who know our music so well
• Meeting the people who did a cover of He Knows four years before we came to that church for a concert
• The really well attended mid-week concerts
• Surviving 11 straight days of concerts with a smile on our faces and a voice left to sing
• Listening to stories of how our music has been blessing their lives before we even came to their church
• Playing a concert filled mostly with refugees, and many many more that are currently blurring together as an information overload!!

Honestly, this has been one of the best tours ever, except for one concert which was the worst concert in our 6 years of music ministry. But even in the worst, God had a way of turning it around and using it as an example of the fact that we do what we do for Him, not ourselves. And strangely it ended up being one of the best 'in-concert' experiences for us. We are thankful for each and every church, pastor, and church member who organised a concert. We can't thanked each and every translator enough. Thank you for giving your time to break a language barrier and share the gospel through Word & song with us. Thank you to those who helped us with the sound and clicked through PowerPoint to provide translation for our song lyrics. Thank you to our hosts, who gave us food, a place to sleep and made us feel like we were at home for even just a night. Thank you to everyone who came out a concert or two. We loved meeting each and everyone of you! 

Now the last stretch of concerts for 2015 await us in the UK!

Until next time, many blessings to you!
- E & M

Memories from Switzerland 🇨🇭

Switzerland is amazing! We had two beautiful weeks there with friends, four concerts and a heap of filming for a new project. The JAWE conference was an absolute blessing to attend and to share a concert. Thank you JAWE for inviting us! After JAWE we had three concerts booked up in Switzerland, thank you Dominik for helping us organise these. Each one was special and awesome in their own right. We're so thankful to Beni and Thomas for 'keeping us alive' over the two weeks we were in Switzerland! When on the road, there are so many people who help us in various ways. We know that we can't do music ministry without any of you. On this trip we are especially thankful to the translators and the sound techs who come in early to prepare for each concert. You guys are super!

We took the opportunity of being in Switzerland for two weeks to start a new project. Below, you can see some of the amazing places that we filmed in. In my opinion, the Swiss alps are one of the most beautiful and spectacular places on earth and we couldn't think of a better place to film this special project. We can't wait to share it with you all!

Until next time, E&M

Pictures from JAWE taken by ©Ben Bornowski