I sang on a Hillsong United Album!

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Last week, I finally went and bought the new Hillsong United Album entitled "The I heart Revolution: With hearts as one" The album was inspired by the I heart revolution movement and is a complilation of songs recorded all around the world. I have had this CD for about 5 days now and I can't get enough of it. The beauty of this album is that unlike their previous "live" albums this one is truly raw and live. No overdubs, no mixing whatsoever (not as clean sounding). This album has alot more crowd participation and also has some talking. Basically it is the closest one can get to experiencing hillsong united worship in person. Listening to this Album made me feel like I was at the conference again and it got me even more excited about this year's conference.

As I mentioned earlier, the album has songs recorded all over the world inluding 2 songs recorded at last years Hillsong United Conference in Orlando I attended. The songs are "Mighty to save" and "More than Life". In mighty to save there is a part about a minute into the song where Reuben Morgan backs away from the mic. and the crowd sings the chorus "Saviour, he can move the mountains. My God is Mighty to save, he is mighty to save". So there you have it folks. I have officialy sung on a hillsong United Album. I can't wait for the DVD to come out.

Seriously....if you haven't checked out this album, you must. It also features the musical stylings of Olivia, Miguel, Gerson, Pepe, Ian, Rebecca, Carolina, Pamela, Danny and Willy...among others.

Weekend Re-Cap

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

This weekend was a pretty cool one. We had 2 special quest singers come lead worship with us. Anthony Evans and Melissa Greene (from multi Dove Award winning group, Avalon). Worship was absolutely awesome. Anthony and Melissa have some powerful voices. At one point I think I heard my glasses crack. This was the third time Anthony Evans comes to worship with us and we love it when he comes. I played piano this weekend and I was hitting the keys so hard that my fingers are still hurting today. I am very excited I will be playing bass next weekend.  Here was our set list:

Go Big Offering!

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

This year on Mothers' Day, my church decided to do something a little different and even a little risky. My pastor felt that God wanted him to talk on the subject of generosity, giving, and the big eye roller: MONEY!! Now I know what your thinking, why the heck would a church talk about money on one of the biggest days of the year. I mean this was the weekend when a lot of people brought loved ones for the first time and for some people, it was the very first time they stepped foot in a church. Well, needless to say, pastor Dave spent the first 20 minutes of the teaching ticking people off. He talked about the importance of giving, and generosity and he talked about how most of us are already rich even though we fail to notice it. Towards the end of the teaching he announced that everyone was going to parcipate in an offering (and he meant EVERYONE). He called the ushers to the front and they passed the plate. Now here is where the twist comes in. Rather than have everyone put something in the plate, he had each person take an envelope from the plate. Church by the glades did what was called a "Reverse Offering". In each envelope, there were different amounts of cash. Some envelopes had 5's, some had 10's, there were 20's, 50's, 100's and there were even a few envelopes that contained 1000 dollars in cash. After 20 minutes of ticking people off, they gave out money to the congregation (40,000 dollars to be exact). Now why would they do this you ask. Well, the purpose of the Reverse offering was to jump start the act of generosity in people's lives so that they can experience the joy and blessing God brings to our lives when we give. Now there were a few rules each person was asked to follow regarding the envelopes. They were the following:

• You must not open the envelope until you leave church grounds (in your car, at home, etc. )
• You cannot tell anyone about the Reverse Offering or that Church is giving away money.
• You MUST use the money to bless someone else's life. (e.g. pay someone's rent who can't, or buy someone groceries, etc.)
• You cannot keep the money.
• You must tell us what you did with the money!
• You can only come to one service.

The church created a website called mygobigstory.com where people can post what they did with the money. The stories I have read have been absolutley amazing and I am so proud of what CBG has done. Alot of lives have been touched due to this and after 2 weeks since mothers' day, people are still posting stories. Check them out here. You can also hear the teaching here.

Weighing in...

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Well, it has been quite a while since I blog on the topic that is my weight. I owe you all a sincere apology for not keeping to what I vowed to do. It all started when I had my rude awakening from school. I stopped going to the gym due to the fact that I was in school 24/7. I told myself I would continue to eat healthy but who was I kidding. The holidays rolled along and not only did I put on the 10 pounds I had lost but I also put on an additional 8 pounds. By January, I was weighing in at 248lbs. (Talk about taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back). Well, I worked hard on trying to get back to my previous success. I am currently weighing in at 227lbs. (my lowest weight since I started my weight loss journey...cue the woot woots). It's been a few weeks now since I dropped the "holiday weight" and I figured that before I continue, I should check in with my accountability partners which are you readers. I have found that the best way to keep myself disciplined is by keeping myself accountable to you guys. Now I won't be posting every week like I was before but I will still keep you all updated whenever I can. Here is my weight re-cap:

Starting Weight: 240

Goal Weight: 190

Current Weight: 227

Weekly Plan:

• Monday: Eat Right - Gym 
• Tuesday: Eat Right - Football 
• Wednesday: Eat Right - Gym
• Thursday: Eat Right - Football...and then watch LOST!
• Friday: Eat Right 
• Saturday: Eat Right 
• Sunday: WHAT DIET?

I found that the thing that has made me lose the weight the most is staying active by either playing football or going to the gym. I am also drinking tons of water. 

Ok...so there it is. I will have my weight tracker posted on the sidebar on the left again. Thanks for all the support and if anyone wants to join along in the journey please by all means JOIN!

Birthday Wishes

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Well, I am very happy to announce that today, May 16th is my dearest annoying big sister's 24th birthday. She has always been there for me and it seems like the older we get, the closer we become! She really is the coolest sister I could ask for. She also happens to be modest so I took the liberty of hacking her blog and posting a birthday post so be sure to stop by and drop a happy birthday comment!     

Narnia Review/Music Recommendation

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Last night, I went to go see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. A customer from work gave me and some other co-workers some tickets to an early premiere of the film. My opinion was this:

• Overall Great movie 
• Has quite a bit of killing to be a PG kids film
• good message
• A bit long
• Good sequel but not as good as the first.

My friend disagreed and thought it was better than the first. Lemme know what you all think when you watch it (you know you want to).

After the movie, we sat in the theater and watched the credits (just like those old people that wait for everybody to leave and then go). As we were reading the credits (which I never do), a really cool song started playing. The voice sounded really familiar and I got it within about 3 seconds. It was Jon Foreman from Switchfoot. I remember a friend telling me a while back that they made a song for the movie but I totally forgot. You can check out the song here. Switchfoot also just performed the song on Leno Tuesday night. Enjoy!

                   

Stylin - Stage 3

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Well, I did something a little crazy today. That's right, I pierced my ears! I have wanted to do it for a while but have never had the guts to go through with it. It started on saturday when I went to go get a haircut. My friend Cristian has been telling me about how awesome his hair stylist is and that if I want that hillsong untited look, I have to go to him. So I finally decided to give it a shot. I must admit that at first, I was kinda not loving the new hair because it was much shorter than before and it's taken me a while to get it that long. But once I messed around with it, I actually started liking it alot. Anyways, my sister saw it and said that's cool, all you need now is the ear piercings. I went to a place that night but they told me that I had to have these ugly giant hoops in for 6 weeks until it heals. I didn't wanna wear hoops because I don't like how it looks and I don't think my job would be too crazy with it. So I left a little disappointed. Today, I was walking around sawgrass mall with my family when one of my cousins said, hey why don't you see what they tell you at claire's. Ok so, I am going to have too give up my man card here and confess that I did go into Claire's. I asked them about it and they told me they could do the piercings and just put small studs for 4 weeks. Long story short...I did it. It wasn't really that painful (just an after-sting). I know this is kind of a controversial thing and not too many people are gonna like it but hey I did. Lemme know what you think. Don't worry, I can take it. By the way, I will just have these studs in until my ears heal and I could wear the ones I want.

Before the haircut

The piercing

Aftermath

Radiohead Recap continued...

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Ok I got a hold of some more Radiohead photos (These were actually taken by us)

We ran into Radiohead's drummer, Phil Selway by the merchandise stand. You can tell by looking at the background that not many people recognized him. (lucky us!)

It was hard to smile with my sister's head crushing my lung

This was the view from where we were

During the final song

Radiohead Recap

Hello Fellow Bloggers...

Sorry...I know it's been a while so thanks for sticking around.

Well, Radiohead was yesterday and it was absolutely AMAZING! The lights and sound were by far the best I have seen and heard ever! Hats off to the sound engineer!. The lights looked like a gigantic pipe organ when they were off, but once turned on looked like a giant light cube....It looked SICK! (the good type). I would post the set list, but it was too long for me to remember and I didn't know the names of some of the songs. I have more photos to post later on but for now enjoy these. (We were on the lawn but I scored these photos from flickr). Also, I found a video of what was probably one of my favorite songs last night "Idioteque"