Well, here we are in Mexico...yes that is right Mexico, where our band is expected to sing AND make powerpoint presentations in Spanish. Now if any of you know me as well as I think you do, I have NO Spanish skills at all! Yes yes Mom, I know I took three years of Spanish but still, it is no help here when we are trying to throw together a set in a short amount of time. Meg and I are basically running around trying to put together a Spanish/English set and everything is going wrong. First we have to get those little squiggly things over our "n's" because we dont want everyone saying wierd things just because that little sguiggly thing was missing! Then we were trying to print out word cheat sheets for Meg and Kendall J. for their Spanish words and guess what...the printer doesnt work!
Ahhhhh! It has been a LONG few hours. We are all short on sleep for various rediculous reasons. Anthony, Taylor, Evan, and I were with our GF's/BF trying to take in every last minute we have with them until we come back in August, and Meg actually spent her evening in the emergency room with Elisha and Will because Will lost his toenail and had to get it pulled off!!! So gross! Anyway, we really need all of your prayers this week as we are going to be faced with MANY new challenges-language barriers, lack of sleep, small living conditions, heat, and everything else that could possibly get in our way of praising God. We miss you all so much and wish that you could be here to support us. Hope to hear from you all soon! (But not too soon because phone calls here cost an arm and a leg!!!!) XOXOX From us all!!!
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Off to Mexico!
Hello friends and fam!
We have safely arrived back to San Diego after a week of jr.high camp in the outskirts of San Luis Opispo. Another hilarious, fun, long but short week with awesome kids, youth leaders, pastors and camp directors. We are all in tact... although upon our arrival back to Point Loma last night there was a welcoming committee consisting of various girlfriends, boyfriends, best friends and SMT alumn including our beloved Will Shine and Anthony Pistotti may or may not have kicked off his toe nail and me and Elisha Medina and he may or may not have spent the majority of the night in the E.R. while he got the remains of his bloody stumpy toenail removed... it was a long night but all is well, we are locked and loaded with instruments, luggage and close toed shoes for the week ahead in Tecate, Mexico. We will put more videos and pics up soon when we have more time!
Peace
Regeneration (the band) ;)
We have safely arrived back to San Diego after a week of jr.high camp in the outskirts of San Luis Opispo. Another hilarious, fun, long but short week with awesome kids, youth leaders, pastors and camp directors. We are all in tact... although upon our arrival back to Point Loma last night there was a welcoming committee consisting of various girlfriends, boyfriends, best friends and SMT alumn including our beloved Will Shine and Anthony Pistotti may or may not have kicked off his toe nail and me and Elisha Medina and he may or may not have spent the majority of the night in the E.R. while he got the remains of his bloody stumpy toenail removed... it was a long night but all is well, we are locked and loaded with instruments, luggage and close toed shoes for the week ahead in Tecate, Mexico. We will put more videos and pics up soon when we have more time!
Peace
Regeneration (the band) ;)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Back to the states
After meandering around the Maui airport for 25 minutes looking for what airline we were going to be on, we finally were able to nuzzle and nest into these comfy leather seats in anticipation of our 12 hour journey back to Cali (12 hours including layovers… switching planes… ya know, the usual ). We’ll have a layover in Oahu, then arrive in San Diego at 5:23 a.m. (but our body’s and souls are on Hawaii time so that will be 2:23 a.m.) Our glorious tour bus will be awaiting our arrival and our dear boss George and faithful SMT alumn Josh Edwards will sweep us north.
Eventually we will end up in San Luis Obispo and do some laundry… then off to our second camp! We are stoked and counting down to our time in Mexico for Youth Works. Youth works is a missions co-op sort of program out of PLNU that connects pastors/PLNU students/teens from Mexico and the Southwest Naz district for an annual time of worship/service/and a blasty blast of activities in Baja California; we have the privilege of leading worship for the evening gatherings during that week.
There are a few more casualties to add to our list for the summer… Meaghan Maples is the official garage sale of the band. We are basically about to kick her out of the band. She needs to watch her back. She (Me actually, but at this point in my life I am ashamed to refer to myself with pride and vigor so I can only take a condescending 3rd person tone…) has abandoned the grand silver case containing the little keyboard and all its juicy parts (including a really long, expensive, fancy computer chord…) It’s back in Maui. At the airport. Where I’d like to be. Sulking and hiding. Hopefully the TSA or F.B.I. or some sort of Hawaiian C.I.A. situation has retrieved and stationed it in their secret head quarters. And then tomorrow George’s lovely wife Tanya- who is still in Maui with the fam- will do some sort of top secret undercover mission and pick it up. In the meantime, I must, I mean she must find the upside of things. She’s wearing really great new shorts that were on sale at the outdoor mall on Maui and she’s with a bunch of people that still sort of love her and will forgive her for being forgetful and lame… AND she’s hitting the road with these amazing, forgiving, great musicians who will survive without little silver and it’s goodies.
Here is the finale of pics from our life on this side of the ocean… Good night. Rock on red eye.
(P.S. Now we are in LAX and even though we are all running on little to no sleep the Maui airport has called and the keyboard, which shall now be named, silver revolution, has been retrieved! Yay!)
Eventually we will end up in San Luis Obispo and do some laundry… then off to our second camp! We are stoked and counting down to our time in Mexico for Youth Works. Youth works is a missions co-op sort of program out of PLNU that connects pastors/PLNU students/teens from Mexico and the Southwest Naz district for an annual time of worship/service/and a blasty blast of activities in Baja California; we have the privilege of leading worship for the evening gatherings during that week.
There are a few more casualties to add to our list for the summer… Meaghan Maples is the official garage sale of the band. We are basically about to kick her out of the band. She needs to watch her back. She (Me actually, but at this point in my life I am ashamed to refer to myself with pride and vigor so I can only take a condescending 3rd person tone…) has abandoned the grand silver case containing the little keyboard and all its juicy parts (including a really long, expensive, fancy computer chord…) It’s back in Maui. At the airport. Where I’d like to be. Sulking and hiding. Hopefully the TSA or F.B.I. or some sort of Hawaiian C.I.A. situation has retrieved and stationed it in their secret head quarters. And then tomorrow George’s lovely wife Tanya- who is still in Maui with the fam- will do some sort of top secret undercover mission and pick it up. In the meantime, I must, I mean she must find the upside of things. She’s wearing really great new shorts that were on sale at the outdoor mall on Maui and she’s with a bunch of people that still sort of love her and will forgive her for being forgetful and lame… AND she’s hitting the road with these amazing, forgiving, great musicians who will survive without little silver and it’s goodies.
Here is the finale of pics from our life on this side of the ocean… Good night. Rock on red eye.
(P.S. Now we are in LAX and even though we are all running on little to no sleep the Maui airport has called and the keyboard, which shall now be named, silver revolution, has been retrieved! Yay!)
Thursday, June 19, 2008
SMT Week II: Hellos and Goodbyes
Dear friends, family, campers, future and past SMT legends,
We've been working out of the following scripture in worship this week:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
1 Peter 2
We are learning daily about what it means to look like all of those things... to be genuine people, with pure motives and attitudes that reflect holiness and humility, with lives evident of our belonging to God... and to execute our assignments with passion and excellence... This is challenging. This is what we call in the biz... good. :)
It has been one of the most phenomenal, experience to lead others into a deep, fun, loud experience of God's spirit through musical worship and although we walk away from it tired and a bit sad to leave everything between our hello's and goodbye's will leave imprints on our own lives and the lives of those our paths have crossed over with. We're lovin it here!
In other news...
We had a night of praise and worship the day after we arrived in Oahu. Families from Kanehoe Church of the Nazarene welcomed us with open arms, hilarious youth, delicious food in our host homes and an ecclectic repertoire of musical equipement... everything went off without a hitch (what does that phrase even mean?!?) but then in the middle of the worship set during a fast praise song our drummer Taylor (aka Robbie, or the ripped one) was attacked by the drum cage. He blamed it on his "[power drumming skills". Some of us beg to differ. Reporter/friend/Oahu Intern Will Campbell was on the scene to report the shennanigans...
It was such a blessing to build relationships with these beautiful, talented youth. Here is Robbie the ripped one with two of our sweet hearts from Kaneohe church. We had so much fun hanging out with Misty and Amber... they were basically the ones who busted out the Ukelele (it must be capitalized out of a deep respect for the sweet, beautiful music poured out of it by these kids this week...)each night after chapel and just jammed in the warm evening air. Oh the nostalgia...
Above: Us girls stayed with the Kaneshiro family in their little cottage about 5 minutes fromt he church. On our last morning their daughters brough us breakfast bed! It was the sweetest thing ever. Here is our goodbye picture.
Below: Here is a night of worship at Kaneohe church of the Naz on Oahu. That would be "Papa George" (George Williamson, PLNU director of worship ministries, also in the blog following this one where he is annihalating some jr. highers during steal the bacon) He's been training us and helping us fine tune our sound and sets for the summer ahead. It has been such an awesome privilege to have him take us all over the place so far! We're basically his padawa (sp?) worship ninjas. Teach us oh Jedi. :)
Below: We all participated in team competitions this week also and got to perform in a "gong show". Gong shows are the antithesis of a talent celebration if you will... where the judges have the power (and then so use it) to gong the team/current act/striving musician/artist/comic etcetera off the stage mid sentence/song/dumb joke. Taylor literally took one for his team and wore a dress. I may or may not go missing on this tour after he finds out I posted this picture on the world wide web.
We've been working out of the following scripture in worship this week:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
1 Peter 2
We are learning daily about what it means to look like all of those things... to be genuine people, with pure motives and attitudes that reflect holiness and humility, with lives evident of our belonging to God... and to execute our assignments with passion and excellence... This is challenging. This is what we call in the biz... good. :)
It has been one of the most phenomenal, experience to lead others into a deep, fun, loud experience of God's spirit through musical worship and although we walk away from it tired and a bit sad to leave everything between our hello's and goodbye's will leave imprints on our own lives and the lives of those our paths have crossed over with. We're lovin it here!
In other news...
We had a night of praise and worship the day after we arrived in Oahu. Families from Kanehoe Church of the Nazarene welcomed us with open arms, hilarious youth, delicious food in our host homes and an ecclectic repertoire of musical equipement... everything went off without a hitch (what does that phrase even mean?!?) but then in the middle of the worship set during a fast praise song our drummer Taylor (aka Robbie, or the ripped one) was attacked by the drum cage. He blamed it on his "[power drumming skills". Some of us beg to differ. Reporter/friend/Oahu Intern Will Campbell was on the scene to report the shennanigans...
It was such a blessing to build relationships with these beautiful, talented youth. Here is Robbie the ripped one with two of our sweet hearts from Kaneohe church. We had so much fun hanging out with Misty and Amber... they were basically the ones who busted out the Ukelele (it must be capitalized out of a deep respect for the sweet, beautiful music poured out of it by these kids this week...)each night after chapel and just jammed in the warm evening air. Oh the nostalgia...
Above: Us girls stayed with the Kaneshiro family in their little cottage about 5 minutes fromt he church. On our last morning their daughters brough us breakfast bed! It was the sweetest thing ever. Here is our goodbye picture.
Below: Here is a night of worship at Kaneohe church of the Naz on Oahu. That would be "Papa George" (George Williamson, PLNU director of worship ministries, also in the blog following this one where he is annihalating some jr. highers during steal the bacon) He's been training us and helping us fine tune our sound and sets for the summer ahead. It has been such an awesome privilege to have him take us all over the place so far! We're basically his padawa (sp?) worship ninjas. Teach us oh Jedi. :)
Below: We all participated in team competitions this week also and got to perform in a "gong show". Gong shows are the antithesis of a talent celebration if you will... where the judges have the power (and then so use it) to gong the team/current act/striving musician/artist/comic etcetera off the stage mid sentence/song/dumb joke. Taylor literally took one for his team and wore a dress. I may or may not go missing on this tour after he finds out I posted this picture on the world wide web.
Wowie Maui!!!
Well, we made it through our first camp in O'ahu and are now in Maui!!! We had such a blast at camp which was held over in Waianea on the northern most part of the island. There were about 5 youth groups there with kids from 6-12th grade. It was EXHAUSTING, but we met some amazing people! This picture is of my team...POWER SOUR MONKEYS!!! 
That is right! The Power Sour Monkeys...and let me just say that we were amazing! We came in second place in the team games overall :-) We played the craziest games and I had so much fun laughing at kids and even some of our own band members joining in the fun. 
Yes, that is right...even our our George Williamson joined in the fun...please feel free to laugh out loud at the following video: That game was a hawaiian version of "Steal the Bacon." Oh and shout out to Traci Wilson for being there and being amazing and suffering for the sake of the call out here in Khalua (sp?)
We eventually all got in on the action and ended up looking like this:
OH! And of course you all have to enjoy the amazing "Team Kendall" shot we got afterwards: 
We also played a game which involved Meg lying on the ground with a cup on her head while campers cracked eggs on their forehead and tried to aim the "guts" into the cup.
She was such a good sport:-) So as you can see we had some good fun at camp! We met some great girls who had AMAZING voices and we were all very sad to leave. 
But now we are in Maui and ready for some more adventures!!! We are at the Pukalani Church of the Nazarene doing a revival and are so greatful to be here! We are no longer a sticky mess as the weather here is a bit cooler and the breeze is heavenly! Tomorrow we aparently get to go on an adventure so look forward to some awesome stories and pictures! We love love LOVE you all and miss you lots!!! xoxox
That is right! The Power Sour Monkeys...and let me just say that we were amazing! We came in second place in the team games overall :-) We played the craziest games and I had so much fun laughing at kids and even some of our own band members joining in the fun. 
Yes, that is right...even our our George Williamson joined in the fun...please feel free to laugh out loud at the following video: That game was a hawaiian version of "Steal the Bacon." Oh and shout out to Traci Wilson for being there and being amazing and suffering for the sake of the call out here in Khalua (sp?) We eventually all got in on the action and ended up looking like this:
OH! And of course you all have to enjoy the amazing "Team Kendall" shot we got afterwards: 
We also played a game which involved Meg lying on the ground with a cup on her head while campers cracked eggs on their forehead and tried to aim the "guts" into the cup.
She was such a good sport:-) So as you can see we had some good fun at camp! We met some great girls who had AMAZING voices and we were all very sad to leave. 
But now we are in Maui and ready for some more adventures!!! We are at the Pukalani Church of the Nazarene doing a revival and are so greatful to be here! We are no longer a sticky mess as the weather here is a bit cooler and the breeze is heavenly! Tomorrow we aparently get to go on an adventure so look forward to some awesome stories and pictures! We love love LOVE you all and miss you lots!!! xoxox
Friday, June 13, 2008
Our First Day in Hawaii!!!
Wow! I cant believe we finally made it here!!! After a LONG plane ride and a small amount of casualties (as in two cameras, an MP3 player, a phone charger and a book) we are here in Oahu at the Kaneohe Church of the Nazarene leading our first worship session tonight for about 2 hours!!! Thankfully George is here to keep us together and I know we are going to have a blast!
Today the band got a chance to go and hang out at North Shore with Byron one of the interns here who is a student/friend from PLNU. We soaked up the sun then headed over to Kua'aina-the BEST burger place on North Shore and had some Avacado burgers :-) Then we went and got some Shave Ice and headed back to get ready for our service tonight. We had about 20 minutes to shower from the beach then head back to the church...in the process I burnt my pointer finger on my hair straightner and am currently "chicken pecking" with my right hand while keeping my left finger on an ice pack! I probably look so silly haha!
If I was as cool as Meg, I would be able to post videos, but lets's face it, it is just never going to happen without her help because I dont know how this whole thing works!!! Tomorrow morning we will be heading over to the Jr High camp here on Oahu and will be "working" there until Wed. Our schedule is basically "George said that we will be at some camp sometime in the afternoon and will be there for about 3-5 days." I am working on letting go and accepting that I cannot and willnot be in control of our schedule this summer and I am going to be ok with that. Maybe I will come back a completely unplanned girl...NOT!!!
(This is Megg intervening for your photographic convenience!)
Below is Waemae (sp?) Bay on Oahu where we spent our free day!
There's nothin like Matsumotos famous Shave Ice... but the lines always too long so we went next door to Aokis... just as yummy!
Well let me tell you that these last few days has been full of laughter and there have been many occasions that I was hurting from laughter minutes after the funny moment. Anthony (our electric guitar player) and Meg (our other girl singer) have the funniest relationship. Meg claims to be a ninja and Anthony will have none of it and is constantly spitting back sarcastic remarks at Meg providing some great entertainment for me. Amo (or Evan our bass player) come across as a very reserved guy, but when he does open his mouth he always has something great to say...most of his phrases going into our quote book, which we should post soon :-)
Taylor (or Robbie-our drummer) is so full of life and so fun to tease. We even convinced him that egg shells are full of protien and he almost started chowin down haha! Kendall, our fearless band leader is a wuss and doesnt like sand so he missed out on all of the laughter today, but we still have shared some good memories. On the plane ride from SD to SF yesterday all either of us remember is eating peanut butter pretzles and then waking up in SF! We fell asleep happily with a handful of pretzles and next thing you knew we were there!
Jameson and George (our sound guy and overall "Big Man") have had plently of bonding this trip and are pulling us all together with their technical and musical abilities. Ok, well that is the overview of the band so far...OH! And for those of you who knew, we were struggling to find a nickname for either Kendall Johnson or I since it has been confusing having two Kendalls, and we finally found one that seems to have stuck...this summer I will be known fondly as "GK' short for "Girl Kendall." I like it and it is a good solution to our problem!
Ok got to run! Time to sing!!! Love you all!!! xoxox
GK (aka Girl Kendall, birthname: Kendall Richardson)
P.S.
Those of you who know much about the Music Major VS Chapel Banders know that you can never be too safe...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Day 1 SMT: Welcome Home Regen
So for some of us this is the last of our summers doing Summer Ministry Team, and for some of us, this is the first of many, and maybe even for some of us this is the first and the last... we'll let you know how it all goes. :) Needlesstosay (I have a love and hate relationship with that phrase) this is the beginning new beginnings, the dawning of new dawns if you will. We start our journey now!
We moved onto Point Loma's campus in beautiful San Diego, CA this past Saturday and after some nesting, some dinner and some equipment set up and sound check we finally turned it in me and Spesh (Girl Kendall aka G.K. aka Special K etcetera etcetera...) were lying in our bunks talking and dreaming out-loud to life all the brilliant things we're looking forward to for the summer of travels, music, camp food, bus rides, blisters, dirt, peanutbutter and spaghetti messes at jr.high camps, and oh yeah Hawaii! Some of the amazingness we are looking forward to include but are not limited to the following:
*Late nights, early mornings
*Relentless rehearsals
*Laughter til it hurts
*Praying with those beautiful campers we have yet to meet
*Being prayed for
*Bus rides through beautiful places
*Breakfast, lunch and dinner with strange and/or hilarious teenagers who we shall soon call family
*Melodies and harmonies and worship for Jesus
We would love see/hear/experience your thoughts, comments, prayers, jokes, poems, comics, silly songs etc...
Regeneration is:
Anthony Pistotti on Electric, Kendall Richardson (Spesh :) ) on vocals, keys, media shout
Our fearless leader Man-Kendall Johnson and Evan Amo gettin' down and holy on the bass guitar
Jameson Sturgeon on Sound (I promise he's not as scary as he may look ladies and gents)
then there's me to the left, Meaghan Maples also on vocals, keys and media shout, and Taylor Robbins aka Robbi T (far right) on them drums... maybe I'll start callin' him bam bam. He's kinda like a little baby with sticks making a ton of fun and interesting noises. Sidenote: We are rockin' the very cool, semi-stolen/borrowed sweatshirts from our sister band Transparent. They hit the road last Friday! Groupies much? :)
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