Jacksonville, FL

Hey guys, we had a pretty amazing experience today at a school called Providence Christian in Jacksonville, it has about 1200 students. We played for about 800 of the higher grade students and saw at least 125 kids get sponsored. That means that on our first 3 days of tour we've seen over 330 kids get sponsored. Things are crazy here, we're super tired and a little bit bickery with eachother so please pray for that.

I'll tell you a quick funny story. We played the world vision video and met a female teacher afterwards who explained to us that she was a breast feeding mother of a 4 month old child. She went on to describe that when she saw the world vision video she wanted to "take her breasts to africa and say 'here they are'" (cup breasts and bounce here). She then said that she was "emotional" and needed to go deal with something and cupped her breasts again. Let me tell you, Steve and Nathan and I got a real kick out of that! As funny as that story is it was really neat to hear another way on which that video reaches people.

sorry no pictures today. We stayed at the school for the whole school day and then drove 3 hours to some free lodging in Orlando - unfortuneatley no wireless there so i'm using the wireless at a restuarant we're at called "Moes"

We're all really tired but tomorrow we get to sleep in before driving another 3 or 4 hours down to Kendall, FL for an evening concert.

I love you courtney. I miss you mom and dad. I love you aimee and cara

sometime homes feels a little easier then today.

Drive Times

Hey everybody. It's 3:17am and we just checked into our hotel in Jacksonville , Fl. Northern florida. We've spent probably about 6 or 7 hours in the car today in addition to playing 4 concerts. The first concert we played this morning was my favourite concert yet. Kindergarten to grade 4 or so. They were so responsive and just had a blast! they were all calling my name when they would run into me later in the day. Today we played at a school called DADE christian academy and we saw the world record for world vision sponsorship get broken. The old record was 162 at a school in minnesota. DADE in miami broke the record and got 6 more sponsors to achieve 168 sponsors at one event. Wow. it was crazy.

Anyways, we're up at 6 am tomorrow but i didn't want to leave you without some photos. Here are two maps with all of our driving mapped out. Today we're in the middle of a 3 day push with approximately 30-35 hours of driving to do within those 3-4 days. The top map is the florida tour overview (north to south) and the bottom map shows only our souther stops.

I'm pooped. goodnight all!

Florida Jan 2008 Tour

Hey everybody! I'm down here in sunny florida writing to you from the SunRider hotel in Deerfield Beach florida. I'm about to go swim in our pool which is a hop skip and a jump away from the atlantic ocean, take a look at the first few pics below.

House of the Sun

Yesterday Courtney and I rented a car so we could make the 2 hour trek to Mt. Haleakala, a 10,000 ft. peak that is an active volcano - responsible for making up 75 percent of the island of Maui. We left at 3:45 am this morning so that we could go and see the sunrise. Haleakala means house of the sun. These pictures will do a good job of describing why


It was interesting being so high up this morning. It felt like we were in Whistler at the top of the mountaint. It was sooooo cold! We wore hoodies and jeans. Then, as soon as we got down the mountain the weather was great and we went to the beach.

Surfs Up!!

Well, we had an awesome day off today. courtney and i went to a beach called "D.T Flemming" near Lahaina on Maui with our friends Steve and Kristen Goold . We all rented boogie boards. Steve and I were out there almost all day long. While i was working on my sunburn in the ocean on the boogie board courts was taking some pictures of me and some of the surfers. I'll credit courts pictures - she got some really great ones!!Courts captured these two surfers greeting eachother in the water. Thought that was a cool one
At the end of the day after being crushed by a few too many waves i needed a rest.
This gives you idea of how big some of these 'shore-break' waves are
if you're lucky, it will push you out from being crushed, if you're not, all that water there pounds you onto the sand

Here are two of my favourite surf shots that courtney captured
apart from the funny look on his face this looks like its right out of a magazine
this is a surfer shot that i grabbed before i headed out to the water myself


Here are Steve Goold and i boogie boarding beside eachother

Here are a few shots of courts and i in the pool yard before we went to the beach this morning


Courts @ DT Flemming
Another Surfer shot i grabbed before going boarding
This is a beach we went snorkelling at the other day
This is a very poisinous centipede that courtney found. perry smashed it 12 times with a rock and it still wasn't dead.
This is courtneys favourite beach so far. it's a secret beach near the spot we went snorkelling. she calls it the wedding beach - i wonder what she means by that. actually, a lot of people do get married on this beach.

Greetings From Maui

Hello friends. Courtney is finally here! Early this morning Nathan, Perry and I travelled to Maui where we would later meet up with Courtney as well as perrys family. Courtney travelled with Julia and the kids to help her in the airports and taking care of the kideos. What really sucks is that courtney and all their luggage didn't arrive. we suspect that it didn't make the transfer of planes in Seattle. What really sucks is tomorrow is a day off and I wanted to go snorkelling and how courts what its like but she doesn't have a bathing suit. Here are some shots from our new hotel complex and our condo that 5 of us are staying in.View from the pool yard of the sunset
Courtneys cameras version
View of the kitchen from the living room couch
living room
view from our patio
This is Emma, courts took this on the plane
view of our patio
the bathroom
happy peoplel
courtney in her new tank top

Hawaiian Day Off

Yesterday, saturday, was our day off, we had a lot of fun. played some beach olympics, snorkeled with colourfull fish, and swam with sea turtles and a big tiger shark. for real, well, kind of.

So we went to this one beach called "Turtle Beach" when we arrived we saw this sign. we asked around about what kind of shark it was and how long ago it was last seen. Apparently it was a 12-15" tiger shark that was not much more 100' of the shore. The Tiger Sharks main sustenance is Sea Turtles. The Tiger shark is one of the only animals that is strong enough to break the shell of a sea turtle. Local authorities were so concerned about this Tiger Shark being so close to shore that they called in a police helicopter to monitor it. About 2 hours after all of that was when we showed up. What did we do? We went swimming. This is one of the only beaches where you can actually go snorkeling with Sea Turtles. Ryan was the only one of us who swam with a turtle, and none of us got eaten by a shark.


Here are a few shots from our beach olympics! Ryan won the long jump event

The beach olympics took place on our beach at the military base we had a great time.

see you tomorrow courts!