Chan's Personal Blog - Church

Hope Is In The Air

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:27:48 -0800

Don't worry, even though the title has the word "hope" in it, this entry has nothing to do with President Obama. In either case, sorry for the break in blogging, I've been preoccupied pondering about what lies in store for me in 2009. I had a battle plan all worked out for this year, but half of the goals in it are already void as the situation on the ground has already changed that quickly. As they say though, one of the first casualties of war is the battle plan. The Art of War also says, "just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions."

Anyway, while I was away from California, the church which I attend in San Jose started a 4-week series entitled, "Miracles." My mom usually listens to those sermons as well, and she asked if I had heard it yet as it was amazing. I hadn't and life went on. When I got back to California, I had lunch with one of my church friends, and he asked if I had heard that sermon, and he implored me to listen to it. I finally got around to listening to it tonight, and I have to say it was an awesome way to start 2009. Despite all the horrible news around us, it's a nice change to hear good news. The sermons are archived here, and there's a video version, and an audio version.

Here's the abstract:

Do you need a miracle?

Are you struggling financially? Is your health what it used to be? Have your relationships become difficult to manage? Whatever situation you find yourself in, no matter how discouraged you have become, there is hope. The good news is this: God is committed to taking care of your needs - physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. No matter what circumstance you find yourself in, God is ready and willing to meet your need.

There's one line in the sermon that really stood out (and I'm paraphrasing): "You ask, what happens if I get my hopes up, and nothing happens? You should be asking, what happens if I get my hopes up, and something does happen?"

I'll be the first to admit for my battle plan to work out, it's going to involve a few miracles, a bit of faith, and a bit of bravery. Anyway, I'm going to mark down some milestones as a note to myself should things work out. Jan 22, 2009 - Operation Delicious Victory. Jan 26, 2009 - Operation Valour.

I have to say I'm a bit excited about how 2009 is going to unfold. One last thought that someone conveyed to me recently, when you finally succeed in your goals, all of those past failures will suddenly matter a lot less.

Battle Of The Joes

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:18:12 -0700

This last Saturday, I went paintballing at TNT Paintball with my church. We brought a group of 18 people, and another group of 10 people fought alongside. When we arrived to the paintball field, we saw a lot of pro paintballers who brought a lot of their own equipment. We're talking about modified guns with improved accuracy and range, body armour, elaborate air systems, etc. When the teams were divided, our side had two people with their own guns, while the other team had at least five. This was going to be a battle of the pros vs joes. Looks like we were going to be outgunned, but I love being the underdog. Naturally, a few people were a bit intimidated by our competition, but that quickly got disspelled when you show that the enemy is not invincible.

By the way, if you were there paintballing, please leave comments on this blog entry.

On the first game, we played on the urban assault field, and we got slaughtered simply because we didn't know the field. We had a rematch on the field, and we won.

Bunker To Bunker

The next field we played on was the Grog's Nest which consists of forts linked by bridges, and 60 man-made bunkers. I thought I was going to hate this field because it reminded me of speedball courses with the man-made bunkers, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The objective was to take a flag from the center fort, and deliver it to the enemy base.

The strategy we had was to grab as much real estate as possible in the first minute of the battle, in order to capture strategic locations. Doug ran to center immediately, grabbed the flag, and hid the flag behind me. I ran up the left flank of the map. My objective was to be the tip of the spear which leads the assault. I had to pave the way clear for our flag runner, so he could safely deliver the flag to the enemy base. I picked off 8 people who were unfortunate enough to get in my way. Eventually, I was eliminated, but Adam, our trusty flag runner was able to make it to the other end with barely any resistence. Adam made a great flag runner because he was able to hang back and survive through entire games. Doug and I were usually the shock forces who aggressively rushed against the enemy. Lucas also was a trusty last line of defence. He was able to survive long enough to launch a late game offensive. He was our rock. Anyway, on this field, both sides were able to pick up a point, so we were still tied.

Continue reading "Battle Of The Joes"

Nanoose Bay - Kids Camp

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:38:00 -0700

An appropriate subtitle for this blog entry would be, "Why Chan Grew A Beard." Lets begin. Immediately after the Young Adults Camp at Nanoose Bay, we switched gears to Kids Camp. Doug and I volunteered to work as counselors for the week because they didn't have enough male counselors, and our contribution allowed an extra 10 kids to come to camp.

Going from Young Adults Camp to Kids Camp is quite the change. A lot of the freedoms and privacy that you enjoy as an adult is instantly stripped away when you have to watch 5 kids 24/7. The hardest thing to get used to was the bed times. During Young Adults Camp, we were sleeping at around 2:00am-3:00am because we were playing video games all night. The first night at Kids Camp, I was horrified to find that bed time was at 8:30pm! It wasn't even dark out yet! Our cabin had a sunroof, and sunlight was still pouring into the room at that time! The other thing that I didn't grow accustomed to was having kids poke you in the face at 6:00am asking if you could take them to the washroom. Doug could probably relate, except he was woken up with a football to the eyeball.

Most of the other counselors were 14-16 years old, so I think Doug and I got the toughest campers to deal with because we were the oldest and most mature. The leadership claimed this wasn't intentional, but I think it was. For example, both of us was assigned an ADD kid. Doug's kids were known as the most rowdy kids. My kids had the worst hygiene (more on that later). We were taking care of 5 kids while most counselors had 3-4 kids.

Continue reading "Nanoose Bay - Kids Camp"

Nanoose Bay - Young Adults Camp

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 17:16:53 -0700

Last weekend, I was up at Nanoose Bay Pentecostal Camp for the first ever Young Adults Camp. This was organized by Pastor Doug Slack from my church, and it was a great success. About 60+ people were at the camp which isn't bad at all for a first time.

I went up Thursday morning with Doug to help get things set up. The weather wasn't exactly cooperating. We had torrential downpours of rain when we passed through Nanaimo. We arrived at Nanoose Bay (home of a Canadian military base complete with a torpedo test range) shortly after noon. We checked in, and opened up the lodge which was where the services would be held.

The lodge was gross because we were probably the first ones to use it in a long time. Lots of dirt, spider webs, random insects, and water from a leaky roof. We gave the room the extreme makeover and turned it into a coffee lounge. By the end, we spent 4 hours sweeping, vacuuming, moving furniture, etc.

This coffee lounge was complete with a $4800 coffee machine that Doug borrowed. In addition, we had a certified Starbucks employee running the machines during service. I don't drink coffee, so I don't quite understand why a coffee machine could be that expensive. My theory is that the thing is either made of gold, or there's magic gnomes inside the machine that makes the coffee for you. In either case, it was quite amusing watching Doug accidentally making a double strength espresso and being completely buzzed after it.

Continue reading "Nanoose Bay - Young Adults Camp"

A Series Of Coincidences To Camp?

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:00:00 -0700

Well, I'm off to the Young Adults camp at Nanoose Bay Camp this weekend. In addition, I've been drafted as a counselor for the Kid's Camp in the following week, so I'm going to be away for 10 days.

The draft was interesting. On Monday, my Youth Pastor calls me up and asks if I could be a camp counselor for Kid's Camp because they were desperate for volunteers. Unfortunately, he knew that I was unemployed, so it's pretty hard to lie about being busy.

There was one problem though, all counselors were required to pass a criminal record check. And no, the problem isn't that I have a criminal record. The problem was that a check would require at least 5 business days before it was complete, so it was unlikely that the check could be completed before the camp started.

We were trying to figure out how we could resolve this, and then it hit me. I remembered that Yahoo had already started a background check on me in early June, so they should have some documentation showing that my background was clean. I got off the phone and contacted Yahoo about this. Then, the strangest coincidence happened.

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History Maker 2007

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:59:28 -0700

This last weekend, I was at History Maker in Chilliwack; this is the annual youth convention for our church's district of British Columbia. Normally it's held in Kamloops, but this year it was in Chilliwack because the majority of its participants are from the lower mainland, and having it in Chilliwack would reduce the travel time.

The start of the trip was interesting. I had just gotten back from California, and my plane landed in Victoria at 12:30am because of a delayed flight by Horizon Air. I got to bed by around 2:00am. I woke up, unpacked and repacked, then we were off to History Maker. This year I was a chaperone for History Maker instead of a youth; I suddenly felt very old.

The ferry trip to the mainland was pretty slow going as ferries were arriving and departing late. We managed to catch the 5:00pm ferry. Once we got onto the otherside, the ship slowed down and waited because there was too much traffic at the terminal, so our arrival was delayed. Once we landed, the drive to Chilliwack wasn't too bad; I was expecting it to be far worse considering it was a long weekend.

When we arrived in Chilliwack and got out of the van, my first thought was.... ugh, what is that smell? There was a lot of agriculture around, so the smell of manure was very prevalent.

For the weekend, we would be sleeping at a church with no showers, so that was going to be interesting. Lets just say, washing my gargantuan head in a sink is not easy.

Anyway, onto History Maker which started on Saturday night. There were over 3,000 people at the venue. It featured bands such as Amanda Falk, Leeland, Desperation Band, and the main event, Starfield. I really liked the line-up that they had this year; good solid rock.

The speakers they had this year were really good. I really enjoyed Reggie Dabbs who preached very well, and taught us all how to be a bit more black. Out of all the speakers that I've ever heard at History Maker, Reggie was probably the best.

This year's theme was revolution, and there was a lot of talk about how we can change the world and fight injustice. Reggie talked about the Scottish revolutionaries who fought against injustice (fighting the British), and ultimately won independence for Scotland. He talked about the story after William Wallace dies (see the movie Braveheart to learn more about William Wallace). Basically, Robert The Bruce screws over William Wallace and hands him over to the British. In exchange, the British gives a bunch of land to the Bruce family. Robert The Bruce's son becomes king, and continues the fight that William Wallace started. King Robert The Bruce wishes that he had joined William Wallace instead of screwing him over.

Continue reading "History Maker 2007"

Operation Steam Roller

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:45:35 -0700

Well, yesterday I was out paintballing with my youth group at Stormin Norman's. Before the day started, I was having a few second thoughts like.... man, its been a few years since I've last played, what if I'm not as good anymore. There was also a noobie that everyone was wanting to hunt down to settle some scores, and I thought, it would be really embarassing to get shot down by this person.

When we got to the paintball field, we surveyed our potential competition. We had a group of 10, and there was another party consisting mostly of kids and a few parents. There was also one pro paintballer who had his own gear and uniform. We got out to the field, and it was going to be a 10 vs 10 battle for the afternoon. The teams were divided and from my church group, we had myself, Pastor Doug Slack, and my brother. We also got the pro paintballer, one parent, and the rest kids. The other team had seven people from the church group, and the rest kids plus a parent. Originally, I thought the teams were going to be unbalanced because the other team had more able bodied men and women; this didn't prove to be a problem.

The scenario of the day was attack and defend. The attacker's objective is to attack the defender's base, and take down the base flag. The defender's objective is to prevent the attackers from obtaining the flag for 10 or 15 minutes.

Game 1

My team started as the defender. Our strategy was to send three people outside of the base to harass the enemy and buy everyone some time. Everyone else was tasked to defend the base. When the game started, I dashed out of the right side of the base. I stealthily got behind enemy lines, and started my attack run up a hill and took out four attackers. They never saw it coming because I was shooting them from behind. By midgame, I took out another two attackers on a hill, but then another three attackers showed up. I take another one out, but the ref tells us to stop firing. Apparently I was shooting at my own team mates. I thought this was an enemy because he was facing our base like an attacker.

This friendly fire confusion happened because by the time I took out the two attackers on the hill, they were the last of the attacking force. The rest of the defenders rushed up the hill that I was shooting at. We were shooting each other because there were no enemies left, and the referees didn't realize this, and they hadn't stopped the game. The referees are supposed to end the game when one side runs out of players. We completely dominated that game.

Play of the Day

The play of the day comes from Game 4 where Doug and I were attacking the enemy base. This is the play of the day not because of how many kills we got, but it's the strategy that was in play.

At the beginning of the game, we cleared the right side of the enemy base, and we were going to the center of the field to prepare to capture their flag.

As we went to the center of the field, I noticed that all of our attackers to the left had been eliminated, and the defenders were rushing up from the left hand side. If we didn't take them out, we would have been encircled and they'd have clear shots at us from behind. So, I rushed to the left side to hold off the enemy while Doug took on the base defenders. I managed to eliminate two defenders immediately, because they weren't expecting me. I moved further down to the left, I found another two defenders huddled behind a bunker. I couldn't pick them off, but I was keeping them pinned down, and they couldn't move against Doug.

Meanwhile, Doug entered the enemy base and neutralized the guards in the tower fort, and blew away all of the defenders, and bagged the flag for the win. The crazy thing is, the tower guys didn't even warn their teammates that someone had entered the base, and that's how Doug managed to get the element of surprise.

Anyway, the strategy was great because two of us were able to handle eight defenders. That is some serious force multipliers there.

Continue reading "Operation Steam Roller"

Getting Battle Ready

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Fri, 11 May 2007 01:08:07 -0700

This weekend marks my epic return to the paintball fields; I haven't been paintballing in over two years now. Unfortunately, most of my crew is either in Vancouver or is unavailable, but we'll have to do. I'm going with my church youth group to Stormin Norman's.

To prepare, I've been building endurance by running 2.8km twice a week since the middle of April. The best time so far has been 13:50 which is still about 40 seconds slower than my running times back in high school. But hey, high school was a very long time ago, and I'm getting old.

The other thing I've been doing is reviewing battle tactics, and I've come across an excellent introduction to paintball tactics. It's entitled, the "Paintball Tactics Guide". The guide uses Flash to demonstrate its key concepts, and it's very entertaining to go through, and it covers all the basics that you need to know. The guide starts with individual level tactics, then squad level, then team level. It's very well done!

For the more hardcore tactician, you can scan through the U.S. Army's Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad Training Manual. Some really good stuff in there, but it's a long read. I've been told most military tactics will work in the paintball field. Err.... minus the parts about putting up defensive barbwire, calling in airstrikes, and positioning heavy armour units for frontal strikes.

Continue reading "Getting Battle Ready"

Good Friday Main Event

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:24:01 -0700

Looks like I just got booked to do sound for a huge Good Friday service at North Douglas Church for April 6 at 10:00am. There are 17 churches coming together to hold a joint service to celebrate Good Friday. The place is going to be absolutely packed out, so if you want to attend, make sure you come very early. They've also got a really good worship band coming in to do music. It should be an awesome event if it's anything like last year's Good Friday Service. If you do come, please drop by the sound board at the balcony and say hi. If you're not connected with a church, this is a pretty good opportunity to informally check out what a modern church service is like. It's very different from a lot of people's preconceptions of what church is.

Event: Good Friday Service
Place: North Douglas Church, 675 Jolly Pl.
Time: April 6, 2007 10:00am (please come early)

Note: The church is asking for younger people to park along the road, as they want to reserve the parking lot for the elderly.

Random Acts of Kindness: Iron Chef Edition

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:52:39 -0800

Every month, our church's young people does a random act of kindness to help people out. A popular act has been cleaning homes for single mothers, or sick individuals. Our latest act involves helping out a young family where the mother is dying, and they have three young children. On top of that, the husband is leaving the work force to take care of his wife. Overall, the situation is fairly dire.

To help out this family, our church got together to cook meals for the family because the family indicated that preparing food was a big challenge.

So, last night, we had a cook-a-thon at Adam and Sarah's. Adam made a rich Texas Chili that was slow cooked in a crockpot.

I prepared a Cashew Gai Ding Stir Fry because the family would probably enjoy some asian cuisine. The base consists of cubed celery and carrots with sliced mushrooms. On top of that, I added cubed chicken breasts which were marinated in a hoisin sauce, and I threw in some roasted cashews. Oh it was gooey and delicious.

I got to the church this morning to drop off the food, and there were quite a few dishes prepared. There were soups, casseroles, stews, pastas, and more. There was enough food there to last more than a week. Other people were already volunteering to prepare additional meals. Hopefully this helps.

Please keep this family in your prayers.

Drafted

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:35:05 -0800

You may have noticed a lack of updates recently, but luckily there's a story about why. In mid-December, I got an e-mail from one of the staff at the church asking if I could help run the sound system for a New Year's Eve event that was happening. I thought, okay, a small show, that'd be fine. It'd probably be a two evening commitment at most; one night for a band to reherse, and one night for the actual show. So, we left it at that, and I thought I'd have this lovely week off from work.

This is the only time of the year where I actually take holidays for rest. You can ask anyone at work, and they'll tell you that the only time I take a holiday is if I have to study for exams, and that's not much of a holiday at all. After four years at my work, I have accumulated a crapload of vacation days and overtime hours. I could take almost 2 months off to burn through all those vacation days.

Anyway, after Christmas, I get an e-mail about the rehersal times, and a list of the bands that were coming in. Turns out there's going to be five different bands playing at the New Year's Eve event. That means that most bands want rehersal times with the sound guy, and time to setup their gear. This has snowballed into a really big event which I have been drafted into. One band coming in consists of professionals who has record deals with Time Warner for crying out loud.

So, I have been doing sound stuff on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. This is by no means a small commitment, and it is all volunteer work. I even had to skip part of a birthday party to give one of the groups some stage time.

You'd think that people would appreciate it that I was giving up all this time to help setup the stage, and give people rehersal time. Most of the bands that I have worked with this week have been great, except one. Saturday's band was a nightmare. Their leader liked to micromanage everything, so they'd play four bars of music, and he'd stop to criticize his band members. Repeat this about a hundred times. In two hours, they got through only four songs I think. Morale was fairly low, and people were getting ticked off.

Anyway, their rehersal time was scheduled for Saturday between 6pm-9pm. At 9:40pm, I politely asked how much longer they were going to be, and the music lead said they had all night still. I said, no you don't, the agreement was 6pm-9pm, and I have already given you an extra 40 minutes. The guy then goes, "Pfft, you Pentecostals and your rules." I think this guy just dissed my entire church denomination. This really ticked me off. I have been here the last few days working countless hours for free, and this guy has the nerve to complain. If their band stopped arguing, they would have gotten through a lot more music. This guy was absolutely out of line. In either case, I told him that he had until 10pm, and I was kicking everyone out.

It's kind of annoying when people don't appreciate your work. I could have been at a birthday party this week. I could be spending New Year's Eve with friends. I could have done a lot of things this week, but I answered to the call of duty.

I was pretty close to burning out this week, until I watched an inspiring interview with Senator Obama. The interview was discussing what was wrong with America today, and the senator said that society rewarded those who are rich, those who are famous, but not those that work hard. He said people today are far too concerned about themselves, and how do things benefit themselves; there needs to be a new effort to focus on serving, ask yourself, are you a useful member person? Does serving other people come first?

This interview reminded me of Kennedy's famous quote, "ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country."

So, that has helped me. Anyway, I have to get ready for a 12 hour show for tonight. I'm going to need a vacation after this vacation.

Pardon my rant, I'm a bit tired, a bit bruised, and a bit lonely. Now I remember why I didn't choose sound engineer as my primary professional.

Red Handed

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:59:00 -0800

Every week I help out at a community drop-in centre which is hosted at my church where kids from the community come and hang out. We have a lot of different activity for kids, including soccer, floor hockey, video games, crafts, singing lessons, etc.

In either case, there are quite a few kids from the community that live in fairly difficult circumstances. Some of them are fairly out of control as a result. Anyway, on Tuesday, I was cleaning up because the kids were leaving, and this nine year old girl comes up to me, and she has a roll of lipstick in her hand. She proceeds to start drawing on my arm with the lipstick. I tell her to stop, but then she proceeds to smear lipstick on my shirt. At this point, I whack the lipstick out of her hands, and she darts off to the girls' washroom which is a no-fly zone for me. My hands had globs of lipstick on them, and they were a bright shade of red. It took forever to wash my hands clean.

Anyway, I was fairly ticked off, and those who know me well are aware that I rarely lose my cool. The sound system could fail during a live performance, or the servers at work could be under hacker attack, or I could be under heavy paintball fire from superior forces, and in all those situations, I'm calm and collected. I was just ticked because the event was so random, and lipstick stains clothes, and the kid had no respect for other people. Getting lipstick on my arms and hands, fine, but when you ruin people's clothes, that's a different story. I'm all for pranks as long as people's stuff doesn't get destroyed.

I spent the night scrubbing my clothes with liquid ultra Tide. I don't have much experience with lipstick... you know, due to the lack of a girlfriend and all, but I now know that the stuff is oil based, and fairly waterproof. After an hour, I managed to get most of the lipstick out of my clothes, and I put it through the wash, and thankfully it didn't stain. Huge waste of time though. Even after a day, my hands still smell like Tide though. Bleh.

The lesson here is, parents, don't give your nine year old daughters lipstick. They're too young to have makeup! Let kids be kids

Worship & Praise Rally

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 23:27:24 -0800

Well, tonight was the main event, the Worship & Praise Rally at North Douglas Church sponsored by Praise 106.5FM. The entire floor level of the church was packed with people, and a good part of the balcony as well. Two local bands came together to perform as one; they did a 20 song set together. It's amazing how quickly they could merge together and really gel with only two days rehersing together.

The time just before the show as the sound guy and stage manager is always the most stressful as there are a billion things to worry about. Are people going to show up? Will people complain the music is too loud? Is the stage equipment secure? Is the song list correct, or have the musicians modified the order.... again?

Another common pre-show ritual is the visitation by other sound guys. Sound guys from other churches will innevitably find the sound board, and scope out our sound and computer system. This evening, I had three different sound guys come through; so, I gave them a full tour of the system. They were pretty impressed.

I was also visited by a person that represents an important link to my past. A guy comes up to the sound board and starts asking me questions, and he looks really familiar. I ask him, is your last name Taal by any chance? Surely enough, it was Mr.Taal who was one of my substitute teachers in high school. This was quite surprising because last time I checked, he had moved to Ontario. Anyway, this is the man who helped my high school sound crew pull off major drama productions by giving us a hand in stage design, sound effects, sound setup, and lighting design. This was about 10 years ago, we're talking old school! So, it was really neat reconnecting with my past. Turns out he has moved back to Victoria, and he's the sound guy at Lambrick Park Church. We traded a few tips about sound and computer systems.

For those G2Kers, here's a tangent story about Mr. and Mrs. Taal. People who didn't go to high school with me can skip to the next paragraph. So one year, the sound crew was tasked to support a really complex play which involved a lot of actors, sound effects, and light cues. To deal with the sound effects, we had a midi keyboard programmed with a ton of different sound effects and such. This worked well because we could hit a key and the sound effect would play, this was way better than playing a bunch of tapes with sound effects. For this play, I was the manager who followed the script and gave orders to the lighting team, and the sound team. On opening night, we were a bit short handed, so Mrs. Taal volunteered to help out with the sound team. There was one scene where a doorbell is supposed to go off, and the actor is supposed to say, "Oh, someone's at the door." As we got to that scene, I cued my sound effects guy to ring the doorbell, but he missed the cue for some reason. I repeat the order and Mrs. Taal hears it, and realizes that they missed their cue, so she panics and hits the keyboard to do the doorbell sound effect. However, she hit the wrong one and we get a telephone ring instead. The confused actor says, "Oh, someone's at the door." Realizing that the wrong sound effect was played, Mrs. Taal panicks some more and hits the keyboard again, and a grandfather clock sound goes off. Laughter from the crowd ensues. Good times

Shortly afterwards, the worship service started. The whole venue felt really intimate and close, even though the church sanctuary is pretty big. We had the lights down really low so people wouldn't be distracted by looking around seeing who was there. People were able to just come in and focus on worshipping God a lot faster this way. Overall, the worship set had a good mix of traditional hymns and upbeat modern choruses.

My favourite song was Consuming Fire (by Hillsong United) as I really love the lyrics to that song:

There must be more than this
oh breath of God come breath within
There must be more than this
Spirit of God we wait for you
Fill us anew we pray
Fill us anew we pray [...]

Stir it up in our hearts Lord,
Stir it up in our hearts Lord,
Stir it up in our hearts Lord,
A passion for Your Name.

Overall, it was a rocking evening of praise and worship. The band was great. Everyone loved the sound mix. In fact, this has never happened before, but someone actually gave me a tip for my sound services. Who tips a sound guy??? Mental note for future, keep a tip jar by the sound board.

Anyways, these sorts of services are my favourite as it's Christians from all over gathering, unified as one to worship God. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Alliance, Reform, etc. We put aside all our differences.

Brought To You By Praise 106.5FM

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:50:00 -0800

So, Chan Productions has been hired to do sound for the Praise 106.5FM Praise Rally that's happening this weekend at North Douglas Church. This could be the biggest gig for us yet for the year. Here's the information straight from their website:

OUR NEXT PRAISE GATHERING IS IN VICTORIA!

DATE: Sat, November 18, 2006
TIME: 6:30 pm
PLACE: North Douglas Church 675 Jolly Place, Victoria
COST: Free
CONTACT: PRAISE 1-888-298-1065 for more information.
INFO: Church: 250.744.2411

Join us for a wonderful night of Praise and Worship! Our community worship team will be led by Fraser Campbell and Kathie Penny. DIRECTIONS: From the Pat Bay Highway take the McKenzie exit. Go "WEST" on McKenzie to Glanford. Then the first LEFT again is Jolly Place. North Douglas Church is at 675 Jolly Place.

We encourage you to bring a non-perishable food item for the Mustard Seed food bank.

See you there!

It should be a packed venue. I've already received the song lists, and it looks pretty good. Hope to see some of you there. I'll either be at the sound booth, or frantically running around like a headless chicken.

Ignition

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:59:00 -0700

This entry is a bit late but better late then never. Last Saturday was Ignition which was a big youth rally at the Save-On-Foods Centre. $10 to see three bands and a sermon by Will Graham (Billy Graham's grandson), that is a bargain. The bands were Salvador, Joy Williams, and Tree63. I personally had never heard of any of these bands before, but they were pretty good. It was also the first time that I visited the new arena.

I was expecting this to be like HistoryMaker, but it was a little different. For example, the music was like a concert rather than a praise service. It's fine, just not what I expected. I was surprised how many people showed up. They almost packed the entire arena. There were 5,000 people there.

It was kind of funny seeing the audience as each church sat together more or less. There was this large section of asians on the floor, and you knew they were from the asian churches. Why wasn't I sitting with them? I fly under the flag of North Douglas Church now. Oh, shout out to Lianne as well who was part of the asian collective . One of my arch-nemesis were there too. I also saw quite a PCSers there. I saw Bethany and Heather who were from my class as well.

Our group was able to score some really great seats. Our youth pastor was there really early, so he was able to grab front row seats at stage left. Only disadvantage was that we were really close to the speakers, so it was really loud. Earplugs would have been a good idea. There were some kids that were standing less than a foot away from an array of giant arena speakers, and I don't know how their hearing could have survived.

One of the things that I always observe at these concerts is their sound system, their lights, their security, and their multimedia systems. It's just a habit from being a sound/light/computer guy for so long. They had setup two rear projection screens, a crap load of intelligent lighting, and a massive array of speakers. The lighting design was quite gorgeous. I thought the projection screens were a little too small, so it was kind of hard to read from.

Security definitely had their hands full as the arena had a rule about no stage diving, no crowd surfing, and you couldn't sit on top of someone's shoulders. So, security was going after quite a few people. I guess the arena does that for liability reasons.

The bands were pretty good. Joy Williams, a little too pop for my liking. Most of the songs that were played, I had never heard in my life, so it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. Tree63 was a good rock band, and I could appreciate them. I knew three songs that they played so that was good.

The speaker, Will Graham had a decent sermon. He is strikingly similar to his grandfather. When he gave the alter call, hundreds upon hundreds of people gave their hearts to Jesus. It was quite a spectacle to see. The Kingdom of God grew quite a bit that night.

All in all, best $10 I ever spent. The night was quite a success, and a lot of people were saved.