Linda's husband, Jon, getting some help from Ava with the sound check

Our old house! The new owners have clearly put a lot more money into it than we did

Cars getting ready to drive off the ferry

Some of the tornado damage in Masachusetts

Prepping for the concert at Evangelical Covenant Church

Linda and Pam with the famous golden tennis shoe - it's a long story

This past weekend, I got to go back to my old stomping grounds in New York. It was so fun – I flew into Islip, Long Island, and my dear friend, Linda met me at the airport. I haven’t seen her in years, and it was just wonderful to have some time with her! I was doing a concert at her church the next night and then she came with me to Massachusetts to be my roadie for the weekend so we could spend more time together. We had a blast!

I did a concert Friday night at her church and met an incredible mom and daughter, Jodi and Kyli. Please keep them in your prayers. Kyli is 9 and can’t talk or move much, she’s on a feeding tube, and yet, no one has been able to diagnose what the problem is. They are just not sure.. Her mom is the most patient and persevering person I may have ever met, and she just loved her little girl. You can tell that Kyli is very bright, though, and she loves music, so she enjoyed the concert. My heart just goes out to them – we lived in uncertainty for our son’s diagnosis for quite a long time, but I can’t imagine 9 years. Please pray for their doctors to have wisdom!

Linda and headed out on Saturday morning and took the ferry across the L.I. Sound to Connecticut. I took a bunch of picture for the kids – they thought is was so cool that the cars could drive right onto a boat! Then we drove up to Massachusetts where I was leading worship on Sunday morning and singing a concert on Sunday night at the Evangelical Covenant Church there.

That area has simply been rocked this fall by crazy weather – they’ve had a tornado (in Massachusetts!!), a hurricane, and a microburst. We were just astonished at the level of destruction. I was there about two years ago, and it was really shocking. Our host, Pam Pearson (hey, Pam!) had been lucky with very little damage to her actual house, but the microburst did flood much of her bedroom because she had left her windows open a few inches to normalize the pressure and the rain was blowing sideways – through a couple inches of window, it flooded half her room! Just crazy.

Because of all this bad weather, a missionary family who had been scheduled for the church earlier was rescheduled to the week I was there – they had canceled church when it lost power before. They were also staying with Pam, so it was a full and very interesting house! They have 5 kids, the oldest is 11, and they live in Papua, Indonesia, in a remote jungle village that is a three day hike to the nearest road. Yup, you heard me – three days to a road! Just incredible. They were wonderful and had amazing stories. What an interesting couple of days! For me, it is one of the coolest blessings of what I do, that God connects me with His people all over the place.

After the concert, which was wonderful (ECC, you are some of the best hosts out there!) and one more night in MA, Linda and I drove back to Connecticut, took the ferry to NY, drove across the Island (stopping to buy a sock monkey – can’t leave a good friend without a sock monkey to remember you by!) to the airport, and I headed home. So tired, but so exhilarated at the same time. And so much to tell my family!

New Hope Church

Long Street Studio front

My intern, Julie, checking out the stage - I'm interested in the bricks!

My intern, Julie, and I headed out this morning to scout some locations for the video for the new song to send to Jeff, the director. He’s in Philadelphia, so rather than bring him in, I’m just emailing him photos to give him a better idea of what we’re working with. I’m psyched that we’re going to make this video happen! I had such a cute idea on the way home from the writing session in Nashville for this song, “Life Not Typical” and I really hope we can make it work on the screen. My good friends, Dustin, of Long Street Studio, and Christine, of New Hope Church, are so kindly letting us use their spaces. Thanks! We’re filming it in January, so hoping to have it out before we leave for Thailand. Yea!

Well, it’s official. We’ve known for a while now, but the dates are set, the tickets are bought, and Nathan and I are heading to Thailand on February 15th! We may also go to Cambodia or Myanmar, and right now we are just waiting a bit to see if the situations in those countries calm down a bit. Could happen, we’ll see.

I’m so excited about this trip! It’s being sponsored by an incredible organization called Remember Nhu – a group that is working to rescue children from child trafficking. I got to meet Nhu – she is the first girl who was rescued and the inspiration for the ministry. Now they have homes all over Southeast Asia, and they are bringing us over to see the work.

Please pray for this trip, for their ministry, for our ministry and safety while we’re there, and that God will really be clear with us about how He wants to use us in this fight. Thanks!

Going into Wright-Patterson Airforce Base

Speaking to the ladies of the East Central District Missionary Churches

This weekend I was the speaker for the East Central District Women’s Retreat – it was women from all of the churches in the East Central District of the Missionary Church. What a wonderful weekend! I was speaking on the life of Esther, and these women were wonderful. They had told me the conference center was near Wright-Pat Airforce Base, but I was thinking it would be across the street or something. Nope, it’s inside the base. That would be the first time I’ve ever needed to ask directions to a women’s event from a man in uniform with a beret and a gun.

My mom and I were there together, and just had a blast getting to know all the women. I especially enjoyed meeting a missionary from Spain and hearing her story. It’s always such a treat for me to finally get to meet and spend time with the people at a retreat – we spend months corresponding and talking by phone as we plan, and when we finally get to meet them, it’s such a pleasure. Thanks so much! I hope I get to be with you all again soon. 🙂

Since I posted the new choral arrangement of “God Loved the World” I realized I never posted Phillip Keveren’s arrangement. Phillip is an absolutely amazing arranger and composer who has done work for some very, very big names. He’s also with Lifeway, and I was so privileged to have him write and conduct the string parts on my last album – don’t know how I got that lucky, really (okay, I do, that would be God’s grace). Anyway, Phillip had written the string parts for “God Loved the World” and when he wrote this musical, he made a beautiful choral version of it. I was so honored to have it included!

One funny little story – I met Phillip at the string sessions for my album since he was conducting. When I got home, the next day my daughter picked up one of her piano books to head to her lesson, and whose face was on the back cover but Phillip’s! Apparently he’s also written a lot of teaching music for piano, who knew? My son and I played a duet by him just last week. When I told the kid’s piano teacher that I’d worked with him, she was very excited. Small world, this.

A new arrangement of my song for choir through Lifeway

Look what I found in the Lifeway Worship packet this quarter – they didn’t even tell me there was a new arrangement. That’s pretty fun!

The Generations Ministry of Old Fort Church

This morning I was the keynote speaker and presenter for a really cool annual event up near Toledo. It’s hosted by Old Fort Church and held at Heidelberg University every year. They’ve basically put together a mini Women of Faith idea – they have a full day event with multiple speakers and even comedians from all over. It was really a fun day – the women had put so much time and effort into getting this all together!

One really touching thing about the event was that they were having a cancer focus during it, and the organizer, Carol (hi, Carol!) had a cancer scare the very week of the event. Praise God, she found out only a couple days before that they do not think she has it, but she told the story and it added a new depth. We also heard an incredibly moving testimony from a cancer survivor. I was with Donna, my assistant, and she is a two time cancer survivor, so we were both pretty teary. It was so wonderful to hear someone else share truths that I know so well from my own life: God is faithful, God is good, God gives us what we need when we need it. It was a great day!

I spent several days down in Nashville this week. I was mostly songwriting (I have a couple of songwriting partners down there who I love to work with), and also figuring out the distribution deal for my book. I am happy to say that it was a great week all around! The deal is done (yea!) so while it pushes off the release date a bit, it’s all for a good cause – we’ll have national distribution starting in January!

We also wrote two songs while I was down there that I really like. One of them is called “Life Not Typical” just like my book, and we will be releasing that as a radio single in January. I had a great idea for a video on the drive home – wonder if I can make that happen too? So many ideas, so little time…

Well, we were just offered a national distribution deal for my book through STL, the largest distributor of Christian books in the world. We haven’t hammered out all the details yet, but that is pretty cool! I’m headed down to Nashville in a couple of days to do some songwriting, and I will meet with them then and see where God takes it!

Last night I went up to Christ Community Chapel in Hudson, OH to help out with their Operation Christmas Child fundraiser. It was great to hear more about this ministry that we have personally supported for years, and to get to help them with my songs as well. Every year each of my kids makes a shoebox for someone just like them, and we love seeing where it goes. If you haven’t made a shoebox, check it out – it’s a great ministry.