Worship

I had a busy weekend churchwise, I was involved in three different services. I already talked about Saturday night, so here are the worship sets for the two Sunday services:

Morning at Lombard CRC
-Holy Holy - Nathan Fellingham
-Revelation Song - Jennie Lee Riddle
-None but Jesus - Brooke Fraser
-Your Love Oh Lord - Mac Powell
-When I Think About the Lord - James Huey

Sojourn Led Celebration Service at CCOB
Oh Praise Him - David Crowder
The Color Song - David Crowder
Sweet Mercies - David Ruis
Let Us Worship - Sojourn
All I Can Say - David Crowder
Clap Your Hands 2.3 - New Tune by Tommy O
How Great Is Our God - Chris Tomlin

A little Green in our step

IMG_1590
Originally uploaded by 9nineteen

The last couple of trips to the grocery store, we've managed to come home without a single plastic bag, which is a big plus. Ever since the "I'm not a plastic bag" phenomena alternatives to plastic have sprung up everywhere. All the grocery stores in the area have them and are selling for around $1. We first bought some bags at Jewel (Albertson's), but gave those to Elizabeth's mom and picked up more at Dominck's (Safeway) since they were bigger then the Jewel ones. My dad also brought us one from a grocery store in Brasil. That's the colorful green one in the picture. We always take them with when we go grocery shopping and try to keep one in the car just in case.

Radius

My friend Kevin and I led worship at the Radius tonight. It was my first time there, Kevin has led there a couple times before. It was a good night, they are doing a series based on the book UnChristian which has been blogged about a lot recently by a lot of the blogs I read. They had a good time of discussion which went a bit long, so we had to cut our set short, which was fine because we definitely did not want to hinder the excellent discussion that was going on. They put up podcasts every week on their site, so you can check out the message although they don't have the questions/discussion segment on there, still a good talk to listen to .

The set was:
Wholly Yours - David Crowder
You Have Redeemed My Soul > I Could Run Away - Enter the Worship Circle
You Said - Shane and Shane

We both played guitars, which is something we haven't done in a long time, but it was nice to get back to a simpler set(we usually play with a full band). Anyway the Radius community was a very cool and I'm sure we'll be back there soon.

Sir Edmund Hillary

Original Photo @ nzsheep

As a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary, everyone go climb Everest - or at least get outside for a little bit this weekend.

World Golf Tour

Last night I tried out this new game called World Golf Tour. As you can see from the picture it has pretty good graphics. It's still in its early stages, its supposed to go into its beta phase soon, but for now you can try it out. It promises to be an addicting and productivity killing game since you'll be able to play against your friends online. I think this game might lure in some folks who have managed to steer clear of WOW or Second Life or some other online time sucking machine. I don't really play computer games but I did enjoy my time with this game. I could see some of my friends getting hooked though.

HELP

Last month a new edition of the Beatles movie, Help was released. I don't think anyone can deny the Beatles place in rock and roll history. A lot of the younger generations hear about the Beatles from their parents or other friends in college. This movie was my first exposure to the Beatles. My dad is a big Beatles fan, one day well over a decade ago he brought home this vhs from the library. We watched it and really enjoyed it, in fact it became one of our favorites. We watched it several times that week. This movie was made early in the Beatles career so I was exposed to those early melodic tunes, which were good. It wasn't till I was in college that I was exposed to their later, more psychedelic works. Anyway I can pinpoint my Beatles exposure to that movie thanks to my dad. I think that's pretty cool. I ended up getting that dvd for my dad for Christmas. I hope it reminds him of those times like it did for me.

Guitar Shopping

I've been doing some guitar shopping lately. I've been reading up on different brands and models while trying to figure out which guitar I would get next. While doing all this research I came across an interesting piece of guitar history. The way Takamine made their guitars in the late 70's was just about an exact replica of the much more expensive Martin guitars. They even had the same lettering on the logo, which made the guitars look that much more like Martins. Martin threatened to sue Takamine and as a result Takamine changed the way they designed their guitars. These lawsuit Takamines, as they are known, are supposed to be very good, quality guitars. They aren't as valuable as those Martin's from the 70's but if you come across one that is in good condition it should be a very good buy and a cool piece of guitar history for your collection. The same day I learned about these lawsuit Taks there was one on Craigslist for $175. I was very close to buying it, but I knew that I would be buying a guitar soon (not just a collectible but one I would play in church) so I couldn't justify the purchase. That evening I also saw one at Sam Ash selling for $450. I didn't end up getting one of these classics, but I will keep my eye open for one, I think it'd be cool to have one of those in my collection.

Takamine F340

Martin D28

Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a fun and safe new year's celebration. We had a good time hanging out with some friends and playing some wii games. My parents and little sisters are in Chile for the holidays spending time with family there I'm sure they are enjoying their time there. Luckily Elizabeth's family was able to spend some time here with us for Christmas so we weren't alone. We had a great time hanging out for a few days before they made their way down to Florida.

I was listening to a podcast from Spain talking about traditions - new year's traditions specifically and it reminded me of the way we used to celebrate these holidays with my family in Chile. Much like my parents must be doing these days. The podcast explained how a normal new year's eve dinner consists of lentels, an Italian tradition that's supposed to bring prosperity in the new year. A Spanish tradition is to eat 12 grapes at midnight one for each month of the new year, if the grapes are sweet you'll have a good month, sour grapes represent bad months. Both those european traditions are part of the new year's traditions in Chile. I was trying to think of any traditions we did here in the states but couldn't come up with anything. As a family we don't follow those traditions anymore but when I heard about them on the podcast it did remind me of being together with lots of family during this time of year.