A Change in Location

I wanted to let you know about a change in location. No, not of our team, but of our blog.

Our team leader also has a blog for our team, and he has been able to post more frequently than I have. He has had more success than I have in publishing photos. In addition, he has invited me to post directly on the blog, so I can still make my updates available to you. :)

The location of all new posts will be: http://chccfusion.blogspot.com

I hope this does not cause any inconvenience, and I think it will give you much more frequent updates (as well as photos). Thank you for your understanding!

Camp has started!

The campers arrived yesterday, and we all had dinner together. Then we had our evening program where we learned about our camp theme, "Greater Than".  At the end of the evening, we went to a room that was set up like a Czech tea room, with hot tea, snacks, finger sandwiches, and pillows instead of chairs.

This morning, after breakfast, we had choir. Everyone is already doing an amazing job learning the songs. We also had our morning workshops.

This year, I am teaching a beginner guitar class, and Moriah is also teaching a guitar class. Our students are great to work with, and they are helping me to learn Czech more quickly. Braden is teaching a drum class, Randy and Braden are teaching a solo vocals class, Christel and Haley are teaching an American Baking class, Ryan is teaching a keyboard class, and Rich is teaching an English class.

This afternoon, we have sports and games, and then our afternoon workshops. The days are already going by quickly... :)

Getting Closer

Today, our training continues at the church, and then we start to gather items that will move with us to camp. Yesterday, a few more of the students from the church attended training with us. We learned that there will be about 60 students at the camp.

Moriah, Braden, Haley, and Ryan (all from our team) are leading worship at the start of training this morning. The set list includes "He Knows My Name", "With All I Am" and "Revelation Song". It will be my first live test of the software that I am using to show the words of the songs on the projection screen, so I hope everything goes well.

The weather has been warm with no rain. An occasional breeze serves to cool us off (at least a bit).

My knowledge of the Czech phrase meaning "I do not understand. Please repeat it" has received its fair share of use, but it is helping me to learn new words and phrases.

And so it begins...

Our team has arrived in the Czech Republic, and we are now with our host families for 3 nights before we head to camp. I am staying with a wonderful family. Brunia and his wife have 3 girls, ages 13, 10 and almost 3. We had a nice dinner and great conversation. The adults speak English well, and the girls are doing their best to continue my Czech education. I am amazed at how challenging their English coursebooks are.

We will work on preparations for camp today and tomorrow, and on Friday, we head to camp, which is about 20 minutes away.

Don't Stop Believin' - Fusion 2011

This video shows some of the students and activities from the 2011 Fusion camp.

The students learned this song (and 8 others!) during the week-long camp, and performed it at a concert attended by their families on the last day. Many of the students also performed these songs at various conferences and festivals in the months after the camp.

Both the choir and the band were made up of students, and they did a great job! If you look closely, you can see a few members of our team singing in the choir with the students.

Here we go again!

We are blessed to be able to return to the Czech Republic again this summer. We will have the opportunity to work with the same church from Havirov that we worked with last year. This will give us the opportunity to build on relationships that were started last year ("water the seeds," so to speak.)

Five people from last year's team are returning this year, and we have four new additions! Ryan, Braden, Haley and Randy will be joining Rich, Christel, Moriah, Taylor and Bradley this year. Randy and Braden (father and son) visited the Czech Republic a few years ago on a CHCC Choir outreach trip. This will be Ryan's and Haley's first trip to the Czech Republic.

More details to come!