AHQ Gospel Echoes Tour Update #1

AHQ Gospel Echoes Tour Update #1

Editor's note:  On tour again!  Once more we find ourselves at peace and fulfilling our destiny.  This time we are on tour with Gospel Echoes Northwest prison ministry.  Brent Baker, the director of GENW, asked us if we would go on tour with him for about a week giving programs in a number of prisons in the state of Washington.  For 13 years the Jim Eigsti family traveled the northwest doing prison ministry, and now we get the privilege of using their bus! 

Written by David and Byran

Greetings and salutations to all personages out there!  Well, here we are on tour again, but before we start on the account of this trip, I've been asked to bring you up to date on our activities from the end of our last tour up until now.

This is what we get to tour in this time!

For those of you who don't remember or didn't get our last Tour Updates, we arrived home on Sep. 18th at about 4 a.m. after giving our final concert in Nebraska the Sunday before, Sep. 15th. Since then, I've been working with my dad in construction, Konrad has been working for a local grass seed farmer, and Byran and Tom have been attending Oregon State University and Linn-Benton Community College, respectively. We've sung a fair amount around home and Western Oregon also, plus a wedding in Central Montana and a trip with one of our ministers, Paul Smucker, to Western Montana and Northern Idaho. Some of the places we sang at around home were Zion Mennonite Church in Hubbard, Brownsville Mennonite Church in Brownsville (our home church), a residential center in Albany, and a few others that I can't remember at the moment.

On Oct. 19th, we sang at the wedding of two friends of ours, Jonathan Kropf and Jane Eberly, in Montana, I can't remember the town's name exactly, Bozeman or something like that. I'm very happy to say that of all the weddings we've sang at, not one couple has ever broken up! (So if you want your marriage to last, just give us a call! Just kidding.) I drove separate from the rest of the quartet that time, and on my way home, I drove through some incredibly beautiful country in Wyoming (believe it or not!), Montana, and Oregon. It was just the time when the leaves were turning color... wait, I'd better stop before I start rambling. This is about the quartet, after all. But if you like to drive and you ever get out West, I could give you some great scenic drives to try out!

I mentioned earlier that we also traveled to Montana and Idaho with our minister.  In November we went with Paul Smucker, his wife, and 3 of his children, to Trout Creek, MT, and Bonners Ferry, ID, to give the program we gave in the Southeast this past June about our missions in Mexico. For those of you who were on SMBI tour last April, these names should ring a bell. We've always liked traveling with Paul and this trip was no exception. Plus, this time he even brought his wife and part of his family too (oops, I already said that). Cool!

It was great to once again see the friends we've made up there.  From then until now? A couple of things here and there, but their locations and times slip my mind at the present.

That's all I have to say for now, so I'll turn the rest of this update over to Byran.  Cheerio!!

David

Some of us stayed at Ed and Corina Byler's house when we were in Bonner's Ferry, and maybe even helped LaTasha milk her cow!

Jenny and Emily in front of Cousin's restaurant on the way home.  Emily is an accomplished writer, following in her mother's footsteps.  She wrote a limerick for each member of the quartet.  The other guys don't have theirs along, so I'll just share the one she wrote for me.

Anyway, back to current happenings.  Byran starts us off on our current tour.

Saturday, December 14

As seems to be common on trips that we take, we left really early. The benefits of a bus were readily apparent at that early hour, because after our initial beginning-of-trip excitement, the four quartet members were able to settle down in their bunks and sleep for a couple hours while Brent took off down I-5. We were pretty tired. I figured I probably had the least sleep of us all, because I didn't get to bed until between 12 and 1. I greatly overestimated my fellow travelers. I actually slept more that night than anyone else. Kon had the least sleep: none. He's crazy.

Yes.  He seems a little confused about what to do with his cell phone too.

We were on a tight schedule because we had two services scheduled for the day, one at 12:30 and another at 8:00. Since the services were up in the Tacoma area, we had to keep moving.

There's a lot more room in this bus than there is in the car!

The first service was at a minimum-security, pre-release prison called Cedar Creek Corrections Center.

David's got rhythm and a real knack for picking things up quick. There was a drum set at the chapel and David was messing around on it while the chaplain was messing around on the keyboard. So during the service, the chaplain was leading the men in some carols on the keyboard and he made David get up and accompany him on the drums.

I love singing at prisons. The men are such a blessing to me. I hope they receive as much encouragement from us as I receive from them. I mean, they're in prison! But so many of them have the joy of the Lord, which as we know, transcends circumstances.

Our fearless and benevolent leader pilots the bus.  We just found out that he is also an award-winning quartet lead singer!  I suddenly feel insecure.  He recently confided to us that he led his high school quartet to a dominating finish at state convention.

The second prison was a women's pre-release center. They were probably the most enthusiastic crowd we've had thus far, which is saying a lot considering the services we've had. It was a little different, singing to all women, but there were many Christians among them, and they really enjoyed the service.

We parked at a rest area for the night and arrived at Cornerstone Bible Church for a service Sunday morning. Konrad's brother, Michael, attends there along with his wife, Jana, and their two children. Brent presented information about Gospel Echoes NW, and we sang. After a hurried but wonderful lunch prepared by Jana, we left to another Bible Church--Curtis--pastored by the same person as Cornerstone.

From the stage, behind the orchestra pit (as the pastor put it--they were playing the classic Chinese song "Toon Ing"), in the Grange hall where the church meets.

This is sort of an amazing church, because they have maybe 80 people attending, but they have enough children that play instruments to have an orchestra. They played some at the beginning of the service and were quite good. We had a similar service to the one in the morning, ate some good food afterward, and headed out.

Between four laptops, five cell phones, two digital cameras, and an air freshener, we need lots of electricity!

Next Update