A Drive, Friends and Recording

This is what faced us..

That is kind of daunting at the best of times. A 2,254km round trip. After just coming back from a 10 day Year 11 camp - which by the way was absolutely amazing! I love my students! - I was a "bit" tired. So waking up at 4am to drive up to Newcastle wasn't really on my to-do list. However, I was surprisingly excited! A chance to meet up with some friends, family and do some recording sounded completely awesome. So, we woke up at 4am. Yes, that's right. 4 am. But soon enough I was in full-blown boredom-fixing-photo-taking mood. Eric wasn't so excited about this...

But soon enough he got into it and we took this - Got to love sunglasses that cover half of a tired face!

After 11  1/2 hours of driving - ok, I'll be honest I only drove 2 hours... Ok... 1  1/2 hours of that time. What can I say, my husband's an awesome driver! - We arrived at this beautiful view! Cathos beach was like eye-candy after living in the beach-less western suburbs of Melbourne. Look at that beach! Isn't it awesome!

As you can see we were clearly delighted!

The two days were full of catch ups with friends and even a bit of family! It's so awesome to have great conversations with good friends after not seeing them for a while! On Thursday we got into Psalter Studios to finish recording two new songs which will be going on our live album.

It was  a great day of recording. Dale is a great producer and sound engineer, and we love working with him each time we go up to Psalter Studios.

Early the next morning our warm weather hiatus came to an end as we drove over the invisible barrier that divides Victoria's schizophrenic Spring weather with the rest of Australia, and it was cold. But as we were driving into Melbourne we were met this stunner of a sunset to welcome in the Sabbath. So that was pretty cool.

And then a bit later... There was CAKE!

~ Monique

Happy Birthday Hubster

Happy birthday Eric! It's crazy that this is the seventh birthday that my husband has had since we met back in 2006. Time goes so fast! I am so happy that God bought this wonderful man into my life. He has added so much to my life, so for his present this year I made up something a little bit sentimental. A timeline of all the things he has meant to me. ~ M

Underground Believer - Live @ Psalter Studios

About a year ago we were given an amazing opportunity to record about eight songs from our debut album Pilgrim live at Psalter Studios for Hope Channel. The whole experience was an absolute blessing and it's really exciting that we get to share this experience with you guys as they begin rolling out the video footage!

Underground Believer is the second video to be rolled out - Pilgrim can be watched here - and in this video we get to share a bit about our process of writing music together and our love of epic themes. Underground Believer is a song that Eric wrote in 2008 after reading the book God's Smuggler, which is the story of a missionary who took God's Word across closed borders. This was also around the time of the Olympics in Bejing, when a magnifying glass was placed over the persecution and suppression of Christianity, and the general populous in China. The lyrics in the first verse create the sense of a person who has fallen in love with the God of grace, yet is in a land where sharing that message of truth could mean imprisonment, torture or death.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Matthew 5:10-12