Tour Photo Journal: So far...

Over the last four weeks we've been travelling, singing, collaborating, practicing, ministering, and having a heap of fun with the Songs of Ascent crew. We thought that we'd share a little bit of what we've been up to in photos with you all. Hope you enjoy!

We arrived... Here in Oregon it rains... and rains... But the campus is beautiful here at Lightbearers! The thing that's amazed me is that the trees look like they are covered in leaves... But it's mostly just moss...

We practice and go over the program...

We collaborate...

We eat... A lot.

We load up.

Set up...

And we figure out wires...

We sound check...

Then we change the sound levels...

We check out the piano... Jackie and Alison sing a few gospel songs.

We try and figure out how to play the strings of a piano.

We sneak some photos while in concert...

We sell the CDs and T-shirts sometimes...

We pack the van... Tetris style.

We receive some amazing hospitality and eat yummy food after the concerts to fill us up for the long drive home.

We hangout outside on a rare sunny day.

And try to play disc golf (first time we've ever seen this game).

We take a touristy look at the beautiful places near our concerts.

We play a few board games.

And we jam and practice some more...

Tour Update & Pics by Alison Brook

Guest blogger and fellow musicianary, Alison Brook, shares some of her amusing highlights and pictures from this weekend's Songs of Ascent tour that we are currently on. Check out her music at alisonbrook.com

This weekend Songs of Ascent had 3 engagements: the first in Portland, another somewhere I forgot the name of, and the last in Grants Pass. It was a wonderful weekend where we experienced God work. Before I share a few of our quirky moments here are some pictures:

We joke that packing the giant tour van is like playing Tetris.

Oh Portland how I love thee. I’m tempted to move there, but it rains all the time.

We ate at a grilled cheese place that had any kind of grilled cheese sandwich you could ever dream of. Oh yea, and the bus was the dining room!

We’ve been projecting the lyrics to our songs for the last few concerts and it’s dramatically increased the impact of our songs.

Maybe these things were only funny because I was tired (you know how everything is funnier when you’re tired?), but I will share nonetheless:

• Josie told me a story about how her 4 year old nephew loves peanut butter so much that one time when talking about it he got a distant look in his eye and said, “Peanut butter is like smooth brown waves flowing over my teeth.”

• I had an epic crack during our saturday night concert. It was like a mini female Tarzan interrupted the song for a second. Nothing is more humbling than a giant, unavoidable crack.

• During the weekend I kept on calling Grants Pass “grass pants.”

• There was a kid at one of the churches we visited who decided it would be fun to follow Matt around and spit on him.

• Friday night, as I was eating some chips for supper, I bit my own finger by accident. How does that happen?

• Before the prayer for potluck sabbath the pastor asked if there were any birthdays in our group so they could sing to us. Everyone said no, but they decided to sing happy birthday anyway. It was great.

• Matt shared a story about how someone he knew tried to get rid of a mole by taping a raw piece of garlic to it. Instead of getting rid of the mole he gained a scar from garlic burn.

That’s it for now folks. Stay tuned for more.

By Alison Brook

Canada... Aye?

After being in the US for just over a week now, we thought it was about time to update our blog. As I type this, it is raining. It does this almost continually in Oregon. One of our first impressions was the amount of moss on all the trees. Initially, it looks like spring has come early, but no, it's just the moss! Amazingly the warmest and sunniest days we have had occurred when we all hopped into two jam packed vans and drove eight hours north to Vancouver, Canada for the ACTS for Christ conference. While at the ACTS for Christ conference we had the blessing of doing a concert with Songs of Ascent on the Saturday night and again on Sunday night at a local Canadian church.

Being at the ACTS conference was a huge blessing and we really enjoyed the presentations from Jeffrey Rosario, Jay Rosario, Justin Kim & Mark Howard to name a few. The theme of the weekend was about dying to live and focused on John 12:24-25. One of the most memorable quotes, for us anyway, came from the evening meetings with Jay Rosario: "The law of self sacrifice is the law of self preservation. The law of self serving is the law of self distruction."

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Canada. We found that Canadaians are incredibly friendly and actually have some cultural similarities with Australia. The city of Vancouver is very beautiful, especially with all the stunning mountains towering around.

This is just the beginning of our 5 weeks in the US touring with the Songs of Ascent crew.