Well, this is my last post until… well, until I feel like posting again I suppose, but most likely until New Years, and then I’ll post my yearly round-up. I pray everyone has an awesome Christmas, takes time to enjoy loved ones, and most of all, reflect on the birth of Jesus and how significant that is.
Merry Christmas everyone.
The weeks running up to Christmas are crazy around here. This weekend capped off a flurry of activity and now I’m in the home stretch to Christmas. After that it’s 11 much needed days off.
It was an awesome weekend though. Friday we went to my company Christmas party and had a good time as usual. I am fortunate to work with an incredibly diverse, yet pleasant group of people, and we had a good time eating, drinking and being merry.
Saturday and Sunday were spent at church, rippin some drummage for our church’s bring a friend weekend. It was a fantastic service that featured our awesome pastor Steve Davidson explain the reason for Christmas in only the way he can. It also contained some really incredible performances by our worship and arts team.
I gotta say that I feel incredibly blessed to be able to serve on this team. It’s one thing to play in bands and do some pretty good sized shows and stuff. It’s entirely different to be part of something that is so diverse, and complex and beautiful; where everyone is there doing these amazing things, simply out of the love for God and the desire to serve.
This weekend we had a full band do our normal rock thing, but we also had 5 singers join us and did a variety of musical styles, from rock, to ballads, to a little bit of funky christmas carolly things. Then we got to do an accoustic set with 3 accoustic guitars and me on the cajon. That was so cool and I really, really enjoyed getting out from behind the kit and doing something different. We also got to hear Aron and Jill do a song in Italian which was absolutely phenomenal and blew me away each of the three times I got to hear it. And then we finished with a big fat rock song featuring a group of gals doing some modern dance. This is one of the reasons I love this church so much. It’s just an interesting place to be.
So it was a great weekend and nice finish to the busy Christmas season. This week is going to be a lot mellower as I finish up a few days at work and share Christmas at home with the family. Oh, Clovis Hills is having a special Christmas eve candle light service, on Wednesday, so check it out. [CLICK HERE]
The Fresno Rescue Mission is an amazing faith based organization that feeds and houses the homeless, and spreads the good news of Jesus. They also have a shelter specifically for homeless families with kids. Every year, good people from our church family kick in time and money to buy these folks gifts, and throw them a party to celebrate Christmas. It’s just a really great time of love and fellowship and worship.
We took some video this year, and Luke Mundy was kind enough to let me use one of his songs over the second half, which you can download at his website. I hope you enjoy this little video, and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
Every year one of our volunteers from church, a great guy named Larry who mixes sound and a bunch of other stuff, puts on this Christmas “show” at this house. One of our drummers has participated in the past and this year we were asked to come and jam some carols and worship tunes.
Now Christmas is obviously a big deal in his neighborhood because almost every house on his street was decked to the nines. Larry holds his own as well and honestly, Christmas Tree Lane doesn’t have much on this street. It was pretty impressive. But every year, Larry sets up a P.A. system, builds a “set” in the front part of the garage for Santa to sit in, and it’s like a block party. People bring their kids to sit on Santa’s lap, there’s singing and hot chocolate and the whole nine yards. It’s really cool.
So a bunch of us from the band joined in this year and did an accoustic set. It was fun because I got to play the cajon while one of our other drummers jammed on the kit, and his son tore it up on my djembe. Very neat having three percussionists jamming together. I don’t get to do that very often. Larry also arranged for a really, really, good quartet made up of four women come and sing and that was pretty amazing.
It was just an all around good time and really has kind of gotten me in the Christmas spirit. Which is good because it’s going to be a busy season. I have two corporate parties to attend, the band is playing at a party for the Emergency Family Shelter, and we have a pretty involved outreach weekend coming up at church that I’m playing in.
‘Tis the season to be super busy, but it’s going to be a blast.
Last night we had our annual Clovis Hills sponsored Christmas party for the Fresno Emergency Family Shelter. It was a great time as always. Alan Yerxa and I provided the tunes, we had Santa show up, a bunch of Clovis Hills folks came out and everyone had a great time.
It was a little different for me this year though and I think it just has to do with the Africa trip coming up and some of the training I’ve been through for that. At our team building meeting the speaker took some time to talk about the importance of just loving people. As Americans we are always so focused on tasks and results that often we forget about just being with people. I mean physically just sitting and interacting with folks. So it was interesting that I had several people come up to me last night and ask what they could do, or if they could have brought something extra or given some more money or whatever. And suddenly a light went on. I was seeing first hand what this guy was talking about.
So I had to stop and explain that just showing up, just being there and talking to these people, singing along with them, eating with them, sharing stories about the kids and enjoying Santa’s corny jokes together… that’s the greatest “task” each of us was given. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people who are struggling, it’s that they are outcasts in our performance driven society, and they want nothing more than to feel included, to feel “normal”.
So next time you get involved with some form of social work or charity and you want to do something… remember that often just showing up is what’s most needed .
