so i’m back home. actually we got back into milwaukee this morning around 2:15am.. but i was too exhausted to post anything. besides.. i had a ton of pictures i wanted to share, so i waited till i had those online to post. and i had a busy weekend (well.. weekend plus monday, tuesday and wednesday) but it was SO awesome to hang out with tons of musicians, and even get the chance to be the musician… back on stage again. rock! i’m gonna post some pictures and then explain what i did over the ‘minnesota tour’ weekend+.
(nick, jess and joy in their “quakes are fun!” poses.)
(proof that you have to be crazy to be on team. all the teamers and past teamers being crazy in the back.)
(elise, bjørn and heather. bjørn thinks he’s something special.)
(believe it or not… but this girl first talked to me about joining team.)
(mary’s a crazy girl…. can you tell?)
(jonathan rudman playing with paavo)
(graham, dave and paavo (jonathan’s son))
(how cute is he?!? ahh!)
more pictures here
so if those don’t look like a whole lot of fun… let me tell you again (with words this time) how much fun this minnesota trip was. 
first off… let’s go chronologically, so i’m gonna step back to friday. 
friday: me and tammy left and drove to the twin cities. we met up with nick (guitarist/bassist… who also plays with the band “greenview”.. who i will be working with re-doing their website.) in becker, mn. that night i stayed at rachel’s house. (man, it’s SUCH a blessing to have friends in minnesota… and friends who not only allow you to stay at their house.. but friends who will give up their own room for ya.) so after staying up almost all night watching dvds and chatting… saturday morning came around
saturday: me and rachel were gonna head to the cities in the morning, but ended up sleeping in. (oops.) so instead we got to eat lunch with rachel’s parents and brother.. and then we headed to zimmerman, mn, where me, tammy and nick had a rehearsal for our concerts on sunday. we had two people who also played with us for one of the concerts, so they also joined us for rehearsal. after around two hours of rehearsal, me, rachel, nick and tammy headed down to the cities to crash the youth quake. (if you take a look at the first four pics above, those are from the quake) i had SUCH a great time hanging out with old and present teamers.. and even snapping back into ‘team mode’ and was all crazy with the youth. fuller still was the band that was ‘headlining’ the quake… and they are all former teamers. and they rock. go buy their cd. tammy and nick just stopped by the quake for a bit, but rachel and i ended up staying much later than we initially planned. we didn’t get back to her house until after 2am…. but it was all good. we danced a lot… laughed a lot… talked a lot.. and basically just had a blast.
sunday: both rachel and i overslept.. so getting ready in the morning was … well.. pretty crazy to say the least. i had to meet tammy and nick at church in becker (which was about 10-15 minutes away from where rachel lives) by 8 in the morning. but sure enough.. i made it in time, and despite the little sleep i got, i was ready to face a day of three concerts. we did some special music at church in becker, at both services.. and then left the second service early, so we could drive to zimmerman for the concert there. i found it really easy to take all the things that i learned while i was on team and apply them to the concert scene. i even got to do the “stelth drummer” sort of trick… where i would get the chance to sit with the youth in the audience before the concert… be goofy and just chat with them… and then when the concert started… run up at the last minute, and watch the faces of the girls i was sitting with…. they had that look of … “you are with the band?” surprise on their faces. it was cool. and i really enjoyed the time i had after the concert to hang out.. laugh.. sign some autographs… and laugh some more with the youth. then we packed up from there, and drove back to becker, and got ready for performance number 3. they had food there, and they even had the packer game on. (well.. since i was in minnesota, they would have said that they had the ‘vikings game’ on … but how cool was it that the packers were playing the vikings … so i got to watch the packers BEAT the vikings.. he he he) right after the game, we went on for our concert. it was just so great to be back up in front and playing the djembe to glorify God. then some more ‘hang-out’ time with the youth… then back to rachel’s house and.. CRASH! (boy was i tired… and not only that.. my neck was stiff.. so i couldn’t turn my head all day.. and let me tell ya.. it’s hard to dance without moving your head. heh)
monday: another early morning… but this time, to get picked up by tammy and nick, and head to the cities to play at a morning chapel at concordia st. paul with some church noise artists. i left right after that, and had lunch with erin, and then stopped by the ye office to visit.. to drop off a bunch of cds and dvds… and to get some work done. then i went and stayed at mary and lori’s apartment for the night. all four girls at that place are crazy and fun. so needless to say, i had some great fun hanging out with them.. (even if i did eat the pieces of plastic that were in my strawberry/raspberry smoothie…. don’t ask.)
tuesday and wednesday were more meetings and “jamming” with church noise artists. we played at the morning chapel at augsburg college… and i ran into my friend josh (from team last year… a fellow drummer… who was on the south east team). i also caught lunch with kate (my teammate.. who now works in the office) on wednesday. all this week it was cool hanging out with artists like jonathan, joel, dave, micah, shawn, lloyd.. and even graham. i also may have some more web design & graphic design work ahead of me…. which i am SUPER excited about! oh, also on wednesday, we played another concert at kevin’s church (kevin is another guy in greenview, the band that nick is in… and here’s a ‘small world’ story for ya… kevin is a good friend of lisa… who was on team with me last year. so i had actually heard of the band ‘greenview’ before meeting these two guys.) then me and tammy left around 9pm, and got back to milwaukee early this morning.
so.. there’s my fun ‘mn tour’ recap. i’m gonna go get some work done now. make sure you check out all those links, and buy all their cds! 
(and ps. do you see when i started writing this post? yea, well it’s after 9:30 pm now… yea… it took over two hours to write this entry.)
