The Obligatory Puppy Pic

My niece, Kaytlin, poses her new puppy Stella Luna for the phone-cam. Why do I post it here? Come on! How can anyone resist a cute puppy that looks like a mogwai?!

Letter From Portland Rescue Mission

Doreen just sent us this encouraging fax from Mieko Gray, Director of Public Relations at the Portland Rescue Mission:

Jason, Brian, Dustin, Steve 5/18/06

The first word that comes to mind is
"Wow". Each of you is truly talented in
unique ways & the combination of all four
is very powerful. More importantly
though, each of you is gifted with the
desire to reach people for Christ.

Thank you for sharing your talent &
your ministry with us at our first walk-a-thon.
Judging by the response many people were
excited & moved by your music. I know I
was.

We are still waiting for the final results but by the
preliminary counts we are confident the event
was successful. I appreciate your willingness
to partner with us.

I pray each of you continue on the path
our Lord has laid before you & that He be with
you on your journey.

Best-
Mieko Gray

We loved being a part of their event and we look forward to working with the Portland Rescue Mission as much as we can in the future.

Spirit on the Mountain Festival

It was early to rise and off to Dustin's house for me this Saturday morning! Our sound technician (artiste) Will, Dustin, and I carpooled to Portland's far east-side to board the RESCUE rig. The Spirit on the Mountain Christian music festival is held in a little resort near Mt. Hood. It is the second year of the festival which was designed to bring people from many different area churches together around the common ground of worship and Christian music.

We started setting up our equipment at 8:30 a.m. and after we were finished we shared some breakfast and spent the day rehearsing and talking and just relaxing. They furnished us with a small cabin where we chatted about new program, comedy and staging ideas.

One of our faithful prayer team members Bekah, who we met at the Cannon Beach Conference Center, was flying out of Portland for a trip on Sunday, so she drove up from Eugene a day early to catch the festival on her Birthday! It was great to see her again!


RESCUE wishes Prayer Team member Bekah a Happy Birthday at Spirit On The Mountain

Our concert was not until 5:15 that evening so we had PLENTY of time to relax. It was really good to spend some time getting to know Steve a little better. We've been pretty busy and haven't had much "down time" to just chat.

There were eleven different groups who performed on two stages throughout the day, including African Gospel Acappella.


African Acappella sings at Spirit on the Mountain

From their website: "African Gospel Acappella is comprised of six men from the African country of Liberia. They represent five different tribes and sing in several native African languages, and in English (English is the official language of Liberia). All six men are blind. They have survived a civil war, poverty and many other hardships. The group met many years ago while attending the School for the Blind in Monrovia, Liberia's capitol city.

"After the civil war started, all of the men were scattered for a time. Then, in 1992, they regrouped as the "Inspirational Echoes of the Blind." Through song and testimony, they ministered and evangelized throughout the city of Monrovia and beyond.

"In 1998, all six men came to America and toured forty-six states as the 'Liberian Acapella Choir.' Through their ministry efforts, many orphans in Liberia benefited by receiving food and care.

"In September of last year, the group formed the new ministry of African Gospel Acappella. They continue to direct their energy to singing the good news of Jesus Christ, and they are helping the disabled in Africa."

They were a very inspirational group to listen to. They were so full of joy and had such boldness aas they proclaimed the Gospel. I also loved it when they brought out the djembe drums and two of them started playing.

We had an incredibly good time during our concert, such a warm reception. We got to meet so many great people after the concert, and had the opportunity to talk to a lot of the musicians that had been performing throughout the day.


RESCUE Sings "Come As You Are" at Spirit On The Mountain

The best part is that we heard that throughout the day a total of four people gave their hearts to Jesus!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!


Brian, chatting with folks after the concert

We are very excited at the possibility of going back next year!

Pioneer Courthouse Square

Dear Prayer Team,

It’s been a very full couple of weeks for all of us in RESCUE! We got our monitor system assembled, rehearsed several times to get used to it, had three concerts and sent our future vocal percussionist, Brandon Bell, off to his summer job in Florida. ALL of these things happened since our last Prayer Bulletin!

During our concert on Friday, May 5th for Evergreen Christian Center’s big 75th Anniversary Program, held at Orenco Elementary in Hillsboro, Oregon, Brandon came up on stage and got the place groovin’ with a fun percussion demonstration, and much like the concert at the Vancouver First Church of God the day before, he performed our last song "The Way, The Truth, The Life" with us. What a pleasure it was for all of us to be on stage together. It was a wonderful taste of things to come.

One of our concerts this past weekend was an exciting opportunity to sing at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland. It’s a large, brick, open air, public area that has many public events and is always rich with people from all walks of life. Most times there are many people walking around there who are very open and even assertive with strange points of view and lifestyles. We were singing for the Portland Rescue Mission’s first annual “Walk to End Homelessness”. We sang after everyone returned from the walk during the latter part of the morning. Some of the crowd was made up of Christian people, but there were also people who came there just to hear what was going on. Many people talked to us after the concert, appreciative of the fact that our message stayed the same and was not watered-down for the mixed crowd. We had a great time, and we’d love to do many more concerts there!


RESCUE sings at Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Portland Rescue Mission's first annual "Walk to End Homelessness" in Portland, Oregon

Angwin, Aptos, and Brandon Bell

Dear Prayer Team,

Last Thursday night the four RESCUE guys, Will (our sound guy), Mike (an amazingly helpful friend of Steve’s that came along to shoulder some of the driving and set up), and Steve’s wife, Audra all climbed aboard Ginger (our bus) with our equipment trailer on the back and headed for Angwin, California. We were headed there for a concert at Pacific Union College for their vespers service on Friday night. We stayed in Medford, Oregon over night and continued on into California the next morning. After a wonderfully uneventful drive through the beautiful wine country of Napa Valley we arrived that afternoon. We set up our equipment in their beautiful, cathedral-like sanctuary. As we came into the room the choir director was rehearsing on the immense pipe organ. We were almost bowled over by the huge sound.


A view of the stage and pipe organ from the balcony of the sanctuary at Pacific Union College, Angwin CA

Levi, a student and local firefighter, showed us around and made sure we had everything we needed. His parents both work with the college and they made sure that we had places to sleep after the concert. We were very well taken care of. Levi shared with us all of the ways he had been promoting the concert and he was pretty certain that we would have a good turn out.

We did! College audiences are always pretty quiet, but the response afterwards was wonderful! We answered all kinds of questions and chatted with them for a long time after the concert.


RESCUE Sings The Lord's Prayer at the end of their April 28th Concert at Pacific Union College in Angwin, CA

The next morning we headed off to Twin Lakes Church in Aptos, California, a suburb of Santa Cruz. After a few hours of driving we arrived and set up our sound equipment in their sanctuary. Dan Baker led their praise team and was very helpful to us while we were there. We did their Saturday PM service and their two Sunday morning services.


Welcome to Twin Lakes Church, Aptos, CA

As it turns out, their main pastor, Rene Schlaepfer was a radio DJ in Portland a couple of decades ago and he was also a DJ in the Santa Cruz area. RESCUE was the special music for the services and they also had a special guest interview with Mark Rains, the Emmy nominated television producer of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”; “Untold Stories of the ER”; a Walt Disney Christmas TV Special and many others.


Twin Lakes Pastor Renee Schlaepfer interviews Mark Rains, the producer of, "Extreme Makover: Home Edition"

He is a very committed Christian who after growing up going to religious school and going to church every week, as a young adult started going to a church in Southern California with a “surfer dude” pastor. At that point he realized that he had never really made the commitment to Jesus that he needed to make and that it was time. After that his life changed for the better and he has never looked back! He and his wife are involved in an annual marriage seminar at their church in Southern California and they'll be in contact with us because they'd like to have RESCUE down to sing for that event.


RESCUE was very warmly received, Sunday April 30th at Twin Lakes Church in Aptos California.

Pastor Rene is doing a series on the historical questions that the novel The Da Vinci Code brings up. It was a really good way to talk about the validity of scripture and why we can be sure that our Bible is The Word of God.

After the services on Sunday morning a man in his 50’s approached us and said that he really enjoyed our music. He is a self-proclaimed historian and I think that he was there for the Da Vinci Code sermon. He said, “I really believe everything about Jesus, but the whole "God" thing? I am not so sure about that.” I testified to him that God had led me through my life in such a way that He has left no doubt that he is real.

He changed the subject, “I am going through some real problems now. I am going to jail very soon. The law says I have to go even though the judge doesn’t really want to send me there. peaople tell me that I should write a book about my life!”

“Well,” I said, “I hope that you will open your heart up to God, He would really help you through a time like that.”

I felt him wanting to give in to God, but then I could see the old arguments that had kept him at a “safe” distance from God surfacing as he seemed to detach from the conversation. “Well, I think you guys did a great job.”

I watched him walk away. I pray that when he has some time by himself that he’ll reflect upon the music and the message that he heard that morning and decide that his own way wasn’t so great after all, and that God may really be reaching out to him.

Around that same time a lady in her mid 40’s came up to me with the CD “RESCUE” in her hand. “I just wanted to tell you that I loved the song Rescue and that I am buying this CD to give to my 19 year old daughter. She has been a Christian for some time, but somehow she got into drugs and is now addicted to meth.” She gripped the cd tighter and the tears began to well up. “She is such a beautiful girl and this is just destroying her. She’s been in and out of rehab several times and the judge says that if she doesn’t stay clean this time, she’s going to jail for a long time. I am just hoping that the message of that song will help her through this.”

I said, “I recently learned about what this drug does to people and I know it’s just an awful, awful thing. Would it be all right with you if we prayed together over this CD?”
“Of course!”

So I grabbed her hands as she held the CD and we prayed that God would use His Word, written into the songs on that album, to touch and revive a heart and mind that had been so wounded by meth, and that she would be able to be a great witness to others of God’s awesome power. She thanked me for praying and she left. I quietly thanked God for allowing me to be there to pray with her. That made the trip for me.

We packed up our stuff and got on the bus. That evening we picked up Brandon at Simpson College in Redding, CA!!! It was really wonderful to see him again! He will be joining RESCUE on vocal percussion in January 2007, and we wanted to bring him to Portland so that we could introduce him to the prayer team, support staff, and get him into the studio to record some vocal percussion for our next album. He’ll be leaving Portland at the end of the week.

I made it to my home and into bed at about 4:30 AM Monday morning, but was able to come into work late so that I wasn't a complete zombie at work. It was a really great time and we are so thankful to God and our supportive families for the opportunity to be able to do these kinds of trips!

Yesterday (Thursday) we had the privilege of having Brandon come to a concert. As we sang to the children at the Christian school at the Vancouver First Church of God (Steve’s Church) we had Brandon come up on stage for a vocal percussion demonstration. It was amazing, and the children were bouncing with excitement as he “dropped the beat” for them! He is so talented and has such a heart for kids. He even joined us at the end of the concert adding live vocal percussion to the song The Way Truth Life. He tried it before the concert during our warm-up / sound-check, and we were amazed that he made all of the right changes and sounded as if he’d been doing the song for the last year! It felt so wonderful to have us all on stage at the same time with the unified purpose of lifting up Jesus.

What an amazing week!