From Mark's point of view
How we came together is pretty cool. There was this couple who was leading worship at my church called Lighthouse named Jerrad and Nicole. They had been doing it for a while and played with a band. But one by one the band started leaving cause they weren't very committed. So by about February of '08 I volunteered to start playing.
About the second or third week I was playing bass and afterward this guy named Alex came up to me. I sorta knew him from the conservatory at uop and I knew that he went to another church but came to Lighthouse a few times cause we had switched to Sunday night service. He said, “Hey man do you need a bass player?” I said yeah and he played the next week. HE WAS SOO KILLIN. One of the best bass players I’ve played with.
Probably about one week later I took my friend Della up to meet Jerrad. I knew what a super awesome gospel voice she had and that Jerrad would love her. He made her audition right there which she wasn’t too happy with me about. Jarred and Nicole were blown away though and she started singing a couple weeks later.
Maybe a week after that, Alex brought his friend Randy who is a really crazy awesome jazz pianist. I knew him from uop too and was really excited to play with him.
Around the same time, Jarred was like, “man we need a drummer next week.” Alex said, “hey my little sister plays drums.” We were expecting some timid little girl to come in but instead we got Alysha. She came in and laid it down!
I’ll never forget that first rehearsal with all seven of us. I think it was Randy and Della’s first week, Alysha’s second and only Alex’s third or fourth. We hardly knew each other at all. But the music sounded so awesome and we had so much fun. We were way more sarcastic than strangers should be to each other. Then, Jerrad took us into another room before service started. He told us about what a struggle it had been for him to twist people’s arms every week to get them to play. How it had made worship hard for him and how he had thought about leaving. But a dedicated band could grow in their worship, in community, and in their musicianship together. He saw the potential for all of those things in us already. We all had this weird excited feeling like something was about to happen. Though we all had very diverse backgrounds, this was something that we were all searching for. We were ready to jump in together. And worship that night was sweet.
Monday, November 23, 2009
These past couple of months...
Have been crazy. God's been blessing our band so much these past couple of months with many different opportunities to just share great music and create new relationships from so many different people. We've had several big gigs, we had our big benefit concert, we led worship at an Intervarsity retreat called Trilogy. God has just been doing great things!
We're trying to go to a missions conference called Urbana in St. Louis, Missouri and so we decided to host a benefit concert. We really didn't know how it was going to turn out, but God definitely came through! There was more people than we expected and it was just so much fun to just share our music and story with people. It's amazing! The Trilogy retreat that we led worship at was just crazy! Imagine over 400 college students worshipping God together, singing and shouting! That's what we witnessed at Trilogy. We were given the opportunity to lead over 400 college students in worship for a weekend, and God just blew us away! Just seeing so many students worship God was such an awesome experience!! It was also a great weekend to just get away and just reflect on what God has done and seek Him for what He has in store. God is doing great things and is just opening my eyes to many different things. I look forward to what He has in store!! Just exciting!!! :)
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