We welcome you Gracie!

Yup, you heard right. Courtney and I have a dog! Here are some shots of our 8 week old pup who still needs shots come to think of it.

Gracie loves people, she also is learning to love her crate as we are crate training her. She knows not to go to the bathroom in it already, so that is great! right now after 15 minutes of crying she's fallen asleep in her crate and i have some time to make a blog about a dog.

CoCoa Beach, FL

We met this guy yesterday at an Episcopal school in a place called Melbourne, FL. He was our angel of encouragement - his name was William Gibbons. He was just a janitor at the school - but he came up to us and just unleashed a blessing of encouragement. It was neat because he said stuff like 'i dont know who you are, i don't care, the only thing that matters is that we love Jesus and you need to be encouraged.' It was really cool because both our drummer and i have been feeling quite worn out and so we were especially encouraged.

After meeting William we went 20 miles up the coast line and checked into our hotel at Cocoa Beach, FL
Here is our Holiday Inn pool. One of the biggest pools i've been it. We had a really great swim there.

This is the view from our hotel. Although our building was the one closes to the beach we were on the side the was facing west, not east - but the beach was just a 30 second walk around the building
guys were here surfing until the sun went down

Key West, Florida

Hey everybody, we made it down to Key West and visited the southernmost point of the continental US. Steve, Nathan and myself walked down to a huge pier then went out for lunch at a place called Salutes. We then met up with Perry and we all rented bikes and rode around key west. Here are some pictures from the day!






this was a sculpture outside an art gallery




beautiful down here!

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.