JTA uPdate - Christmas Party

Hey Team

Our tech team Christmas Party is just around the corner. We'll meet at the Hard Rock downtown at 7:00pm. Parking is a pain downtown, so plan accordingly.

Also, I would like to join the band and vocalist in collecting new toys to give to Toys for Tots. Please bring an unwrapped toy to dinner or to the church next weekend and we'll put them together with the the rest of the Worship team to do something really cool.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know. If you plan to come and haven't RSVP'd, please let me know. We want to make sure we have enough space set aside.

Here is a link to the Hard Rock Site. You can get directions from their if you need them.

Hey

It's been a while since I blogged and I though I would jot a quick note to say hey to whomever decides to check this. Also, during a conversation tonight it came up that there may be a problem with our iMix link so I decided to try to post something here. I hope it works.

See you this weekend. For the songs of our current series Interruption check out below...

JTA - FFF & Thursday Update

Good evening team,

I wanted to say a quick thank you to those who helped get ready for the Family Fall Festival. Thanks too for those that are coming tomorrow to serve.

For those serving tomorrow it would be great for you to arrive between 5 and 5:30pm. The food court is set up so you should be able to get something to eat pretty easily.

Here is what I'm planning on:

TD- Jim
Director - Dan B
CG- Becky
Cam 1- Ed E
Cam 2- Dottie
Cam 3- Danny M
Audio- Ed C
Lights- True
Stage - Rob B
TD assist / float Bart, Xavier


In case the week isn't busy enough and you find yourself with some idle time here are some links to the new software we will be walking through on Thursday night:

http://www.renewedvision.com/pp.php

You can also find the manual here:

http://www.renewedvision.com/ProPresenterHelp/ProPresenterHelp.html

This is pretty easy to use. Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's pretty user intuitive. It makes sense, and it is very stable.

I hope this helps. Please bookmark these pages for further reference.

I'll talk to you soon.

Blessings....

...Jim

It's ok to make mistakes...

if you are trying. It's not okay when you're not paying attention or messing around.

This is my big thought from the yard today.

There were a couple of things that happened behind the scenes of our service this weekend. Friday night we had some issue with the circle. Those that were there know what I'm talking about and I won't go into detail about it here. In any case, we had a brief discussion that if we couldn't get the circle right we shouldn't do it. I commented back that we were doing the circle.

Excellence is a core value for our weekend team. Most of the team that serves on the weekend is made up of volunteers. We have the best volunteers, period! We push them to try new things all the time. Yes, we want the services to go smoothly and we want things to be right, but sometimes as we are stretching and trying new things, something doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it does, and that is great. But when it doesn't, that is ok too. It is from those experiences that we learn and grow. In most cases we figure it out and learn what not to do.

Here are a couple of quotes that I came across that think speak to this:

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." --Erich Fromm, German-American psychologist

"There's a way to do it better -- find it." --Thomas Edison, American inventor

"If you can't accept losing, you can't win." --Vince Lombardi, National Football League coach

"Have fun, always set goals, but never set limits." --Shannon Miller, Olympic gymnast

"We try a bunch of stuff, we see what works, and we call that our strategy." --Dennis Bakke, AES co-founder and former CEO

I miss my grass

I know what you are thinking and shame on you...

Of course, that is one of the things I love about making up blog titles. I've talked to Heather about this post a few times and she thought that I did it already. If I have, please forgive me but I didn't see it so here you go....

I miss the grass that we used to have in the backyard. It wasn't much, but there is something was something about going out to mow what little there was that opened up the floodgates of my thinking. Maybe they weren't really floodgates, but I seemed to get a fresh idea or two. Maybe it was some clarity on a current issue, or a thought from God.



Now that most of the backyard is concrete there is no need to mow. Just keeping co weeds, which is an endless job, thanks Adam, that doesn't take quite as much time as getting the mower plugged in and ready. My friends back east would give me grief when they calledntrol of the and I was mowing. For most of them, mowing is at least a 1/2 days worth of work on a riding mower. No comparison to my 15 minutes or so pushing an electric mower.

Out in the yard today, I had a thought... It's coming next...

JTA - Couple of things

I thought it might be a good idea to mirror the emails here so there was web access to current information. I'll do my best to post the team emails.

Hey Team.

I wanted to send out a quick note to let you know a couple of things.

1) I'm working on the November schedule and I need to know if you have any conflicts. Shelly, Steve and Dan I have your's for sure.

2) I'll be sending out an email to confirm what we are doing for the Family Fall Festival. We will be setting up Tuesday Night around 5:30pm. Javier, I please note the time change. I told you 5pm.

3) We'll meet Thursday night as well to prep for service. CG operatiors, It would be great if you can all plan to be there. We have made some changes and I wouild like to bring you up to speed. Becky will also have some things to point out from running it this weekend.

More to come... Please stay tuned. I'll talk to you soon.

Blessings...

...jim

Book 2 Update

I finished book 2 on the way home from Busan, in case anyone was wondering....

Free Time & Seafood

We were able to get some free time today and one of the guys arranged transportation to a shopping area. It was like shopping in downtown La Mesa but the streets were a lot narrower and went on forever and there were tons of alleys just chalked full of stores and street vendors.
They had all the name brands, anything you could ever want. I went to the market just to see what it was like. I really wasn't looking for anything specific except for something with Hello Kitty on it, per Heather's instruction. The 5 of us split up and agreed to meet back at Krispy Kreme at noon. When we arrived the light was on, hot fresh donuts. We passed and started to look around.

We walked and walked and walked some more. Found a Starbucks and grabbed something to drink. It was pretty similar to what we would expect to find Stateside. We ran into some of the band and they asked if we had checked out the fish market. We said "no" and they suggested that we do that if we had time. We had a few minutes left so we checked it out. It was an experience. I made a page of the photos I took there but I couldn't resist putting these 2 up here.

Doesn't this make you hungry. I love seafood but this takes it to a whole new level. We have no idea what the worm looking things are but we hear they are a very popular sushi. Speaking of Sushi, we are near the capital of the Sushi world and the Sushi the guys had was really good. Not nearly as cheap as it was in Ecuador, but it was good. The good news is most of it was alive and nearly fresh, I'm just looking for a range, hot plate or something to cook it on.

Book two

I came up with 3 reasons why I picked this book to read:

1) I was drawn to it. I can't really explain, maybe it has to do with items 2 and 3.
2) The irony. Need I say more
3) The sub title - don't we all want to be a part of that?

I've received a few interesting looks from my colleagues here at the festival. Most of them are intrigued too. I think one of them is going to pick it up when he gets home.

It's cold here

The temperature has dropped another 15 - 20 degrees since yesterday. The wind is not blowing as much but it is so cold I ran up to check the lines for the band because they decided not to come to and do a sound check today. I was on stage for maybe 15 minutes and my nose is running because it is so cold. I checked the weather before I came over and it said the lows would be in the 50's. Well our high for today was 54. I'm grateful for the layers.

One last thought...

I was thinking as I was getting to the end of this book that some of the changes in my thinking have been encouraged by Erwin McManus, Rob Bell, Donald Miller and Scot McKnight just to name a few. Maybe it's that some of the things they say aren't really mainstream. They are fresh and different.

So near the end of the book Erwin discusses the statement that "God wants to keep you safe." Looking at some of the examples that are used in the book I would have to say that may not always be the case. There are tons of examples, and maybe we can discuss this sometime, of just the opposite.

This paragraph bothered me:

"It may seem counterintuitive, but the more civilized we seem to become, the more detached from the pain of others we end up finding ourselves. The most civilized churches have really no practical concern for people outside their congregations. The brokenness of a lost and unbelieving world is not enough to inspire the painful changes necessary to make the church relevant to the world in which we live."

I'm asking myself where do I fit into this? How concerned am I? How relevant? How involved?

By Committee

I've heard that word a lot this week. The way these festivals work is they are run by a local committee. It seems like this week has been one non stop clash between the local committee and BGEA. I mean no disrespect to the local committee or to the local culture. This post really has nothing to do with this local committee, but more of the timing of coming across this little snippet which I found amusing.

I'm just getting to the end of the book and Erwin is talking about groups of different animals. You'll have to read the book to understand how it fits into the book.

I'll set the stage with this:
A group of whales = a pod
A group of cattle = a herd
A group of lions = a pride
A group of fish = a school
A group of flies = a swarm

By now I think you get the point. So I found this to be most interesting. Do you know what a group of buzzards is called?

yes, a committee. A group of buzzards waiting around to feast on leftover carnage is called a committee. Erwin points out "This explains so much of what's going on in churches -- a lot of committees waiting around to live off human carnage."

Hmm.... we'll just leave that there...

We are what we read

I know this is true for me. I tend to jump into whatever my current "project" is with both feet. I tend to get pretty excited about a new thought or idea that is part of what I may be working on. I think a lot of it comes from my lack of really being able to multi-task. Sure, I can be running multiple projects or jobs at one time, but I've discovered that its not really multitasking. I'm really only working on one thing at a time. I watch my wife read a magazine while watching tv and not miss a beat. If I try to do that, I either don't remember what I read or miss something funny that just happened. Thank goodness for digital cable and the ability to rewind!

So I packed 3 books with me for this trip to South Korea with the hopes I would be able to catch up on some self learning. I've actually started in all 3, sorry Rod, I know that is a no-no, but only to see how easy they were to get into. I read a little on the plane on the way over, and that was cool. Today I decided I would really try to make a dent in one of my books. I packed "The Barbarian Way", by Erwin McManus basically because it was the thinest book I had with me. I think that Erwin has some fresh thinking on some topics and the fact that he could be viewed as controversial is good for conversation. One thing jumped off the pages to me today.

pg 45 "God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so that your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life".

Some other things that hit pretty close to home had to do with teaching our children. He asks the question "are you teaching your children about God or how to experience God in their life?" Makes you think, doesn't it?

So I read in between soundchecks and moved from the stage to our production office and back. There was quite a breeze today and it was much cooler. Toward the end of the afternoon just before the service started Paul came by and asked "What would you be doing if you weren't doing this? You seem to read a lot." I told him I was playing catch up on the reading and I really didn't know what I would be doing, other than something that helpes to bring change to peoples lives ...

Corn dogs and Sushi

Well we have broke our sting of having McDonalds every day for lunch while on international festivals. I thought we were sending out for some type of rice bowl. When the food showed up we had corn dogs & sushi. The dimsum we had was pretty good too. Sorry Joshua, there would have been to much bread on the corn dog for you.

And then the cat

I almost forgot about the cat that we had breakfast with. Yes, we walked into the coffee shop at the hotel for breakfast and found the hotel's cat.



Not really what I was expecting to see, but it did make for interesting conversation, especially when he jumped up and rested his front paws on the window.

Venue

I tried to take a series of picture to make a panoramic. I still need more practice, but here is what I came up with.
This was taken from the front of the stage.

Here is a view from my hotel room. I'm trying to figure out why the rooftops of some of the buildings are green. I guess they could be any color, most of the time they are white to reflect the sun and keep them cool. I see that the hotel has a putting green and some plants for decoration so it got me to thinking that maybe it is to help offset all the concrete and steel to make you think there is grass there. I'm going to try to find out why, I'll keep you posted.

Busan

My team packet had some very interesting information about Busan and the venue, The Busan Asiad Main Stadium.

* Busan was the host to the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 14th Asian Games.
* Busan has a population of 3.65 million
* Busan is ranked internationally as the 4th largest seaport, and the largest in Korea.
*2007 is the 100 year anniversary of the Pyongyang Revival. That is considered the bench mark of the start of the Christianity in Korea.
* Busan is one of only 2 cities never to be taken by North Korean Communists during the Korean war.
* Busan is home to the largest Asian film festival, the PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival)
* Busan is home to the only United Nations Cemetary.
* The average Christian population is 23%. But in Busan, only 7 - 10% of the population is considered Christian.
* 40% of the population of Busan is Buddhist. The average Buddhist population in Korea is about 20%.

More to come...

Tight Flight(s)

I'm not a stranger to traveling but yesterday was one of those days I actually thought "I might not make it". It all started in San Diego as I started my journey to Busan, South Korea. Our American Eagle flight was 20 minutes late in boarding. It was actually late arriving but they turn the little planes around pretty quick. We boarded at 10:40am. I got on the plane and fell a sleep. I woke up as we were coming on approach into LAX. The 2 people across the isle were talking about how close their international flights were. I looked at my watch and realized it was noon and we still weren't on the ground.

I checked my ticket to confirm that I had a 1pm departure. LAX international terminal can be brutal if you have to through security and I needed to get a seat assignment. It turns out that American Eagle buses you to your terminal so we got dropped off a few gates away from where we were departing. That was cool, except for the line of people at the counter trying to get on the flight and the fact that we were now 20 minutes from departure. One of the agents taking tickets decided to help me out and she entered my passport info and generated a seat assignment and I boarded the plane. Departure time came and went and we were delayed because they were still loading luggage. For this I am grateful.

We arrived in Tokyo some time later...11 or 12 hours later. As we were getting off the plane I saw one of the other crew members who was on the same flight. We followed the signs for international connections and went through another set of security down some steps and straight onto another plane. We had an hour from the time we landed until our scheduled departure to Busan. Again we waited until all the luggage was loaded, again, I'm grateful for that, and then we departed. 2 1/2 hours later we arrived in South Korea.

I was thinking on the plane, this is the first time that I have been to Asia. I think I have now stepped foot on every continent. I think that is pretty cool, just a piece of useless trivia.

I think this feels more foreign because its nearly impossible to make any sense out of the letters. Oh well, most of the signs have English subtitles. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get them downloaded.

Kudos Ed

I had to check Brian's Blog to see if he noted this... I didn't see it...

Every once in a while there is that thing jumps out at you and today Ed said something right before the Spiritual exercise:

"Jesus was always on the move. We have to get up and go. We can't just sit there."

This is right in line with some other things that I have been learning and will discuss in future blogs.

Thanks Ed,

thanks again team.

We Rock!

I want to say that my team rocks too. Guys, You did a great job this weekend. Thanks to everyone that served. What I saw online, and Sunday when I arrived was awesome.

LJ - Thanks for the comment about how you felt calm and really enjoyed the service. I think it really showed.

Randy - Thanks for your awesome work and consistency.

Becky - Thanks for your creativity with the fonts and for keeping things running so smoothly. Way to rock the backgrounds too.

Brian - Thanks for Friday, Sorry for giving you the wrong date. I meant August.... You Rock.

Bart - You Rock too. I'm blessed to have you on the team.

Michael L - Way to go on the lights. Way to add in 27 when Ed went up and take it down when he came down... You Guys have gone to town on the board and it is awesome to see.

Steve R - Way to rock on the programming. You have totally taken us to the next level on your own, and that is awesome. It brings tears to my eyes.

Dottie - Thanks for rocking on camera, for being consistant and stepping in on lights when we need you. Your being there rocks.

Danny - You have been an awesome addition to the team. Your eye for shots is great.

Javier - It has been awesome to have you around. I appreciate your wisdom, maturity and your
insight gives us balance.

Dan B. - Wow, you have really blossomed over the past couple of years. I like your self education and how you aren't afraid to try new things. Your camera work is awesome as well. Another great eye.

Walter - Way to go. Way to be involved and it is great to see God working in your life. Thanks for letting be a part of your Journey.

Josh - Thanks for all that you do. Your dedication is awesome.

And to everyone else that wasn't serving this weekend, we couldn't do this without you. You are all part of the work that God has prepared for us. Many, Many, Many thanks. I'm blessed to be able to serve with all of you.

ROCK On

Today was the opening day for the ROCK Church's new facility at NTC. Since I am a curious one and they are in San Diego, I thought I would drop in for a peak and then I can be one of the thousands that can say "I was there on opening day". It will be one of our future tech outings for sure.

Here are a few pictures:















The background of the stage is done with 3 large projectors. I was told the center screen is LED but it didn't really pop like I would expect LED to do so, even if it was turned down. I'm also told the projectors are fed from a Barco Presentation system.

I was a late and Mike McIntosh from Horizon was there to help dedicate the building. I stayed through the offering song, How Great is Our God, and the transition to Miles which was a video that played across the back, in which the Hummer drove across the screen.

It's a nice facility with a ton of potential. It will serve them well.

ROCK on!!!

I'm a Type "A"

Ok, some of you are saying "You just figured this out!". Very funny. I'm not referring to the personality type here. Although I have been told that I am a control freak at times but I had a good teacher and sometimes that is ok when you are pushing to give your very best. What I am talking about is blood type. I donated blood last week when we had the bloodmobile come to Journey. I haven't been able to this for a while due to some international travel in countries where there is a malaria risk. I think it took longer for them to look up the countries than it did to give blood.

That is not entirely true. I tried a new donation type. It's called a double red. Is that right Ed? or is that just the nickname? In this process they take your blood, separate out the red blood cells from the plasma and give you back the plasma with some saline. They are able to take 2 units of red cells during a single donation time. That is pretty cool. I do admit, the saline feels weird going back in. It was cool. I don't know why it was cool but it was.

All that to say, if you can, give blood. It can help save a life.

San Diego Blood Bank
American Red Cross

JTA Theme

I was able to get into a couple of books on my last trip and one of them was Holy Discontent by Bill Hybels. I got the book for Fathers day from my mom, (Did I say thank you?, thanks mom). It is a really quick read but it did what good books do and made me think. That's not what this post is about. In Chapter 3 Bill is talking about Your "One Thing". Bill goes on to talk about one main verse that talks about "why we are here" on page 51. He quotes Ephesians 2:10, " We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do!"

That is our theme verse. I think that is cool. It's a good reminder that God has already prepared the way for us. It's also cool to stop and think that we are His handiwork. Created in His image. He created us to do "good works".

I'm glad I'm able to do them with you. I look forward to the road ahead.

Final Word

I came across this recap to our Kiev trip from on the BGEA website. I put it in the last email but I thought it would be interesting to post here as well.

One Week Later...

I think my body clock is back to normal now. I think going to the gym helped out. I was actually looking forward to going, which is a big step for me, right Heather?

I finally got the pictures from Kiev posted. I was having trouble uploading them but somehow everything worked this morning. There are 4 pages. Hopefully a picture is worth a thousand words because there are very few descriptions. I have a few ideas for next time that I hope will give a better overview of the local area.

Click HERE for the link to the pictures.

I was musing about all the talk about food and thought it is about time for a night on the town. Stay tuned... we'll do that soon, as well as a pool party to try to beat the heat.

Rain on, Rain off

The past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Long days filled with rain and wind. But the last evening was picturesque.

The photo above is from the alter call on Sunday night.

All of the programs went off without any major glitches. One Saturday night I think we had 4 different bands, 3 of them back to back. Thanks again to Rick for keeping our side of the stage patched correctly and running smoothly.

I'll try to work on a photo page on the plane. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks to Adrian Goldberg for sharing some of his pictures from the event.

It was a great week and I have more to share. I just can't think to clearly at the moment.

Stay close, more to come...

Porkchikenflatfish

That is what we have called it. The "other" white meat. We know it's not a beef product of any type but after that, we're not sure what it is exactly. I'm talking about the meat we have had for dinner since we have been here. Our meals have been arranged and as I understand "business dinners" were ordered so we could eat when we returned from the festivals each evening. That is really cool. But we noticed a patter after a few days. The meat portion of the meal looked identical. One night it was chicken, one night fish, and one night it was pork. It was all breaded and pressed real flat. All of them were prepared the same way, without any seasonings of any type. So we coined the term, "Porkchickenflatfish" to describe the "other white meat".

That will help explain the excitement when we saw the sound check schedule an realized we were going to miss our catered lunch. We HAD to send out for McDonalds. Believe it or not, it was the best McDonalds I've had this month. It's the only McDonalds I've had this month so I guess there's nothing to compare it too. In any case, we enjoyed the burgers and fries.

Here to the left is our resident McDonalds expert Paul Hendrix. Paul has eaten at McDonalds on every continent except Antarctica. Paul managed a McDonalds for 5 years. It's a trip to be around him in McDonalds. He has them sized up about 3 steps in the door. The last time we crossed the threshold of a Mickey'D's we were in Norfolk, Va. While we were waiting in line Paul pointed out all the things that weren't up to par with the McDonalds standard. It really is very interesting. Did you know that the bathroom in a McDonalds shouldn't have any type of smell when you walk in. That piece of useless trivia is free.


This blog has taken 4 days to post and to be honest I don't know where my train of thought is. I know that as excited as we were to not eat at the hotel, when we got to TGI Fridays it was closed. We ended up at Arizona Bar-b-que which come to find out is owned by an American and a German. The decor was americana at it's finest and the service was fast, and good. We ended up there again on Sunday night. I apriciated the apple pie and the funny thing was it cost more than my thin crust pizza.

I must say that the breakfast buffet was a very enjoyable part of the day. I enjoyed the fresh tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and English breakfast tea.

I can't believe I spent so much time talking about food.

Hunker Down

Well, today began early and with grey skies. All the free time yesterday came at a price today when we had a lobby call at 7:45am. Day 3 seems to be the worst for jet lag too. In any case, we had quite a bit of work to do to get ready for sound checks. It rained overnight and everything was wet. By 10:30 or so it was warm an humid and things were drying out.

We got everything ready by lunch and had a few minutes to chill. Our first sound check was 3pm and everything was going well. The clouds started moving back in and we started covering everything. By 4:30pm the deluge had begun. Within an hour it felt like the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and I was looking for some kindling to make a fire.

The service started on it's own at 7pm. I know that sounds like a funny line but we don't really know how it happened. Miles, the FOH A2, was at FOH trying to re-patch a line (more on that in a minute). Jeff, the FOH mixer was on stage next to me, as was Rick. Winfrey was under his plastic listening to the mic that we were trying to fix. It is somewhat of a mystery how the track started, but it started on time and the program was off and running.

I need to give kudos to Rick (see photo on right). I took this photo the first time I saw him sit down all day. Actually it was the second time because he got up before I could get my camera out and I asked him to sit back down. He is soaking wet from standing at the podium while we are working on trying to figure out why one of the lecturn mics had some noise on it. Actually, Rick spent the better part of the afternoon working on the 2 lecturn mics trying to get them clean. Something happened while we were at lunch and the mics didn't sound good at all. These happen to be the mics that Franklin and the translator use. The comical part now was that when the CD started we all scrambled back to our positions for the service. Rick and I were trying to get the mic issue finished and I decided to run a new cable. I got all the pieces together and headed out on stage to hook up the mic. I grabbed the loose cable on the stage, plugged it in and the to the cable we had just run and Jeff turned it on so the speaker could talk into it. I know that sounds a little crazy, but it really happened that way. We talked about it at dinner when we got back to the hotel and Jeff said he was watching the channel for the spike when we made the connection, as soon as he saw that, he turned it on and the speaker started talking. I was one of those, "I can't believe that just happened moments".

The rain was off and on for the service and the wind blew really hard. We had to hunker down to keep from blowing away. I'll end with this picture of our work in progress.

Have a great rest of your day. I'm off to grab some shut- eye.

Then came the rain!

And other things we take for granted.

After I finished the last post I had about 30 minutes before I had to come downstairs. I had been sitting in the lounge with Winfrey, Rick and Paul. We were all working on our computers, thanks to the guys who got the wireless connection fixed, and watching soccer. When I got to my room I noticed how dark it was getting outside. A thunderstorm had blown in and within 10 minutes there was thunder, lightning and rain. We still headed over to the venue and started to try to get things done. It rained off and on for the next couple of hours.

I didn't realize how far North we are. It's not getting dark until close to 9:30pm and I could see light outside when I woke up this morning at 4:45am. I don't think the sun was up, but it was light outside. I heard a couple of the guys talking about the winter months. I can't imagine the short days. Sun comes up at 10:00am and sets between 2 or 3pm.

I haven't thought much about the things I take for granted. Here are a couple of examples:
1. Ice for soft drinks
2. Free refills
3. Smoking indoors.
4. Air Conditioning

I know that all of these are really superficial but they have made me stop and think. I thank God for the blessing of being able to be outside of my little world and see life here. I'm grateful for all that He has provided.

Off to bed now. We have an early call (7:45am) in the lobby. It will be a busy day tomorrow.

Enjoy the fireworks.

Happy 4th of July.

Day 2

You may be asking yourself, "Do we ever work?"

Well yes, yes we do. This is my 3rd post today and I'm trying to play catch up. We have 20 minutes until our next lobby call. This time things should be in a better place for us to get some work done. Here is the view from my hotel room: (Click on the pictures to load larger images)
Just got a message that our call was moved back another hour so I should be able to finish this post.

Here is the view from the field:



Ok, one more. This will look very similar, but I have noted the location of my room.

Ok, with the extra hour, it is safe to say that we have to much time on our hands. By the way, this is not the "normal" set up for Franklin Graham. It happens that George Michael has a concert on Monday night, 24 hours after our last festival. The use of some of their equipment was negotiated and they will be setting up at night after we are done with our programs. Sunday night as we are loading out, they will be loading in their 25 trucks worth of equipment.

That's all for now. It looks like I can grab a quick nap before our lobby call.

Hurry up and Wait

I've been in Kiev a little more than 24 hours. I'm a little upside down. We are 10 hours of time change away from home so things are pretty much upside down.

I landed at 8:30 am yesterday (July 3). It took us about 30minutes to reach the hotel after we waited for another person at the airport that never showed up. After checking into the hotel I ran into another crew member who said everyone was meeting in the lobby at 10:50am. From there we went to the stadium to have a look around and come up with a plan. That took us about 2 hours, waiting for all the different departments heads to show up.

After our meeting we came back to the hotel for a little break and got ready to go to the Chernobyl museum.

One of the festival volunteers gave us a guided tour. He was 6 years old when the accident happened and lived in the closest town to Chernobyl. Both his parents worked at the nuclear power plant. I didn't realize that the plant continued to operate for 14 more years after the accident. There were a total of 4 reactors. 3 of them remained operational after the accident. They finally shut down the reactors in 2000.

One of the things that I found most interesting was the fact the total lack of care for the people. There was such a high need to keep the strong image, the government was willing to risk hundred's of thousands of lives. It took 3 days to start evacuations near the disaster site. 4 days later on May 1st there was a big parade planned in Kiev. The government had a chance to call it off, but didn't. Thousands of people were exposed to high levels of radiation.

The picture to the left is used to depict the devastation and lack of life since the accident. There were entire villages that were buried because the radiation levels were so high. They say the radiation levels were 500 times that of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Over 600,000 people, mostly young servicemen, were involved in the clean up of the accident. They were released from 2 years of their mandatory service time if they would spend 45 seconds cleaning up the debris from the core of the reactor. In that amount of time they received a lethal dose off radiation.

It was a pretty sobering experience.

From there we went across the street to a restaurant that specializes in Georgian (Russia) cuisine. It was very interesting. The bread was good, the veggies were fresh.

First Post

Well, here it is. The first post for the Journey Technical Arts page. I think this will be a lot more interactive than the site I was trying to set up with dot Mac. In any case I hope this will extend our community online and be a little more interactive.