sabbatical fruit - week 11 - with a little help from my friends

We started the week worshiping at Matthews Presbyterian Church, where we have several friends. We've been enjoying visiting different churches every week. Well, Heather and I have... the kids have been missing Good Shepherd... well, they did really like the church a few weeks ago that had the service on TV and juice and pastries to eat while we watched.

Monday night the whole family went to the Lodge bar/restaurant on Colony/Rea to eat dinner and hear Jim Terrell provide live entertainment. Jim stepped in to lead the music at VBS and our kids were all really excited to see him. Elizabeth was especially excited that he played harmonica on some songs! Jim has a beautiful voice and had a great playlist that included some great Eagles songs. I (and others) were singing along! I think he plays most Monday nights, starting at 7pm, so go check it out! (I'm pretty sure we also spotted Ric Flair... brought back childhood Sat. morning TV memories.)

The rest of the week I've been hard at the recording... up most nights until 3am trying to get all the CD tracks ready for the background vocals. And that leads to the title of the post... a number of friends are helping me out on this. Mike Slade came over last night (Fri) for 3 1/2 hours to sing on a bunch of the songs. Katie Meeks is coming over tonight, and John Kaneklides on Sunday night. I know each of them will add so much, and I appreciate their friendship and help on this project so much!

Hopefully, my week 12 post will have a few early snippets of songs (though I want to spend most of my remaining time mixing rather than posting). I'm out most of Tuesday to moderate the summer presbytery meeting... so really I only have a few days (and recall that mixing can take as long as recording!). But, I think I can get close.... at least a lot closer than I thought I would five weeks ago!

I'm also beginning to have church planning pressing in at the edges.... so much to do the first week back: August newsletter, sermon planning, Bonclarken planning, officer training, Wed. night planning, confirmation communication and planning, etc... (This is me writing it down here to see if I can keep it at bay for 8 more days!) Now I don't have to remember - I've written it down. :)

I continue to hope to hear from Good Shepherd folks about their "sabbatical assignment" - I've heard from 6-8 people or families... hope to hear from the rest!

'Til next week...