Piano Men

Here is the previously promised Ton Face Christmas T 09. They turned out pretty great! I think I say this a lot, but I believe these to be my best so far... I think it will be hard for me to top these ones, but we'll see.


Most of my ideas either start with some sort of meaning, or receive some sort of meaning by the time I am done with them. This shirt is a depiction of my cultural background. My father's grandfather came from Italy, and I grew up with a love of Italian food, and a family that was loud and bouterous (like any good Italian family). My mother was born in Germany, and I have visited family there twice, and love the food there as well. I don't know why I keep mentioning the food. I was born and raised in America, so therefore I can say that I am a genuine Itermican (ITalian, gERMan, amerICAN). So, this shirt is a combination of iconic symbols from those three countries, the American Presidential Seal, the German Victory Eagle and the Italian Crest.

Lauren and I got to see the progress being made on our wedding invites that are being created by an old elementary school friend of mine, Shauna Serdal. She is an incredible graphic designer, and we are both really excited for what the final product is going to look like! Shauna also gave us a bunch of postcards that she had done for her senior project at East Bay, I really was impressed by all the fun designs she has done.

Tonight we are going to see Billy Joel and Elton John in concert together. I grew up listening to Elton John because of my fathers love of his music, and Billy Joel is just and incredible pianist, so I can wait for that.

Engaged in Shirt Making

I am engaged. You all know that. I am getting married on June 6th of this year. That is less then 5 months away. I am pretty excited about that.

This years Ton Face Christmas-T was delayed because an error at the printer. I finally have them now, and have slowly been delivering them to their rightful owners. This is my favorite design to date. I won't post it yet, just in case some one who is receiving one reads this post and sees the design before they get the shirt, it would kinda ruin it for them.

I am starting on the shirt for the MSM's Even Biggerer Snow trip. It will not bet artistically great, (not that anything I do really is) but it should be fun, and let's be honest with each other, how many middle-schoolers care for artistically great things? Not half as many as care about things being fun, I am sure of this.

Nate just moved into the Travis' old room, I am glad that he is here, but bummed that Travis' stay had to come to an end so quickly. But good for him, save some money before marriage!

That's all I got.

Goodnight (or morning, or day... whatever time it is that you are reading this, I hope that it is good.)

Last Post from Germany

This will probably be my last post from Germany. Lauren is returning to the states tomorrow, and I shall stay here. :-(... but :-) cause I get 10 more days of Europe. It would be better if she were here to experience it with me though....

That also means I will not have easy access to a laptop to edit my pictures and post updates on my blog.

VBC will be updating our daily happenings on the VBC blog though, so if you want to know what we are doing as a group go here.

Musically Magical Wonder Land

First, some pictures of Auschwitz, somber, I know.

I could sit in the caourtyard of the school that we've been working at FOREVER! I had a cool conversation with a Catholic student at the school today. It was cool, cause he was certainly a God fearing catholic, not just a go through the motions catholic. We talked, as much his broken English, and my complete lack of Polish would allow, about the importance of evangilization. He asked why we chose to come to Poland, and I told him that is exactly why we came.

I got to listen to another Trombone quartet, and added about 7 Polish friends on Facebook, I am so multi cultural. totaly unrelated. But man, it has been great making a whole bunch of new international friends.

I have also gotten to connect with a lot of students that we brought with us from the German base. That has also been fun, they are a bunch of great people. Most of them are very new to their faith, or still unbelieveing. But they are here because they appreciate the love shown by all their leaders, and are curious about the source of that love. We have seen a couple kids make new decisions to allow God to be Lord of their lives, and a couple of them deciding to recommit to serving Him as well.

We have also really connected with the other leaders from the Bittburg base. Lauren has certainly been blessed by God recently by all the solid friends that she now has in her life here. I have been really blessed especially by Brent and Joe by the way that they love on their kids, which I have been able to see closer, since Deej and I are staying at there house.

Dan and I also got a chance to sit down with the Chaplain over lunch. It was a good opportuity to pick his brain about the difficulty of being a minister to the military life style. I was very encouraged by his heart for the Lord.

This post is SO extrememly scattered, but I will not appologize, that is how this week has been. Now here are some more pictures, the reason you all really come to this page any way. ;-)

Service

I have very limited time to post, so a quick little update. I now have my roles of leadership clarified on the trip. I am my sites photographer, the slide show coordinator, and the percussionist for musical worship. It is quite a lot, nd has been keeping me very busy, thus the lack of posting.

The work site we are at has been AMAZING! we are at a more upscale music school in Poland, I can't remember/wouldn't know how to spell the name of the town it is in. It is like a musically magical wonderland! But I have to run, more to come... with photos.