Today I spent the better part of my afternoon in Barnes & Noble working on class schedules and trying to resolve scheduling quirks that have me teaching and sitting in a class simultaneously. While the similarity of the situation is comforting (it reminds me of those 4 years of school, music, and work), it also reminds me that the workload of a graduate student is about to come back.

I don’t think any of the eleven of us would say we’re ready for this.

I miss writing music like crazy, but I’m hoping things will all even out in the next few months.

I have so much to put up from camp this last week (it was really a great week), but the first thing I wanted to upload was our complete set list for camp. I put this list together initially for all the kids and youth leaders, but it’s a very interesting deal to see how the songs flowed together over the week – all 47 of them!

It’s also interesting to see how the “old songs that hopefully everyone knows” list changes (and did change) year-over-year. This year it was as if we were finally at a point where the well-known songs were more “Hosanna” and “All Because of Jesus” than “Sanctuary” and “Pharaoh, Pharaoh.” That made everything immensely easier and more productive; in general, we were teaching songs like “Spring of Life” and “Beautiful the Blood,” not “Hapy Day” or “Marvelous Light.” All in all, I thought the whole endeavour was immensely successful and I know we all came away lifted a bit.

The List…

Complete Songlist from Fits 2009 at Jekyll Island

Session 1: Sunday PM

1. Everything – Lifehouse
2. Happy Day – Fee
3. All Because of Jesus – Fee
4. Spring of Life – Kristian Stanfill
5. Mighty to Save – Hillsong United
6. How He Loves – Eddie Kirkland
7. Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin

Session 2: Monday AM

1. Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United
2. Spring of Life – Kristian Stanfill
3. Sing to the King – Candi Pearson
4. Beautiful the Blood – Fee

Session 3: Monday PM

1. We Shine – Fee
2. Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
3. Hosanna – Hillsong United
4. How Great Thou Art – Charlie Hall
5. Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill
6. Hungry – Kathryn Scott

Session 4: Tuesday AM

1. Happy Day – Fee
2. Everlasting God – Brenton Brown
3. Beautiful the Blood – Fee
4. From the Inside Out – Hillsong Australia

Session 5: Tuesday PM

1. Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United
2. Here Is Our King – David Crowder*Band
3. Hosanna – Hillsong United
4. Center – Charlie Hall
5. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
6. You Alone – David Crowder*Band
7. How He Loves – Eddie Kirkland

Session 6: Wednesday AM

1. All Because of Jesus – Fee
2. Cannons – Phil Wickham
3. Mighty to Save – Hillsong United

Session 7: Wednesday PM

1. We Shine – Fee
2. Cannons – Phil Wickham
3. Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
4. Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill
5. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United
6. From the Inside Out – Hillsong Australia

Session 8: Thursday AM

1. Spring of Life – Kristian Stanfill
2. Your Grace Is Enough – Chris Tomlin
3. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United

Session 9: Thursday PM

1. Happy Day – Fee
2. Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
3. Cannons – Phil Wickham
4. Hosanna – Hillsong United
5. From the Inside Out – Hillsong Australia
6. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
7. We Shine – Fee

Great camp… good fun. Lot’s more coming later, but I am exhausted.

UPDATE: Some more interesting-but-possibly-meaningless statistics. We played 25 individual songs which break down as follows: 7 songs were played 3x, 8 songs were played 2x, and we threw another 10 in as one-offs. I find statistics interesting, but I don’t really know that these mean anything.

Finally!

Martha and I just got our diplomas back all framed & nice — crazy. It’s still a little surreal that I’ve graduated, but on to the next thing — we’re getting married in 4 days!

I picked up our wedding bands from Diamonds Direct today — it’s a bit of a story, but it was going to be a big deal if they were ready for the wedding in two weeks. The fact that they were ready today (yesterday, actually) is unbelievable.

Both Martha and myself are going to be at camp this week with Port City Church, so hopefully it will make the week go by quickly. After that, we only have one week to go!

Music-as-a-whole: I apologize (click below for sound byte).

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All the critical gear is moved out of the apartment! We’re heading to Pine Level this evening to load up our furniture then moving into the new place tomorrow morning in Raleigh!

In a somewhat last-ditch effort, I have gotten back into running in an attempt to get into shape before I get married (in less than a month!!) Martha has been running longer than I have, so as an early birthday present, I got her the Nike+ package for her iPod Nano (she was also super nice & got one for me!) We started using them pretty quickly and it’s been a lot of fun now that I know how far/how fast I’m running. You can actually see my last 5 runs in the flash widget on the left.

The second half of the story, however, is that Chris was so taken by the idea that he summarily purchased a Nike+ package for himself. Seeing as we all are participants in the upcoming wedding, he also thought it would be a cool idea to challenge us to really work before July 11. The result? The challenge you see on the right: the three of us must run 150 miles total by 6pm on July 11. This is a super-neat idea & I am very glad Chris came up with it — it simply remains to be seen whether or not we can do it. The flash widget will automatically update as we add runs to it, so our progress may be tracked.* Pretty cool!

It’s also been really nice to track my progress. I posted a screen capture of my Nike + iPod screen in iTunes previously, but here’s where I stand now:

*What the widget doesn’t say is that, at the time of this post, I have logged 10.03 miles, my wonderful fianceé has put in 6.29 miles, and our wonderful best man Chris has contributed a miserly 2.27 miles.

I distinctly remember sitting in this lady’s 3rd grade class on a visit to the NWA YWAM base & getting an A on a spelling quiz — cold. Now I think she’s back working in Albania, which is boss — I got to be around a lot of cool, adventurous people when I was a kid.

* Unofficial title — with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Working on some sweet Matt Blair mixes from PC3 for Sean — this is getting to be an enjoyable diversion.

Still Amazing:
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