Europe

Dobrey Den, Dzien dobrey, Guten morgen, Hello,

As many of you know, I have been in Europe for the past few days. The places I have been and the things I have seen is FAR more to describe to you in a blog, but I am going to attempt to give you a few examples and visuals in the next few moments.

Starting in Augusta, Georgia we loaded up our bags, guitars, pedals, and any other necessity and left for the Atlanta airport at 12 Noon on Tuesday. Arriving in Atlanta about 2.5 hours later, we went through 3 security checkpoints and finally found our terminal, the VERY LAST terminal in the Atlanta airport. We waited for our plane for 1.5 hours then finally boarded. Nothing I could have ever done would have prepared me for the HOURS traveling I had ahead of me.

After 9 hours on the plane. We arrived in Frankfurt, Germany. There we hopped (or slowly made our way to...) another plane which then took us 1 hour away to Prague, Czech Republic. We finally made it.......well...almost. We then found taxi's to take us about 30 minutes away to a train station. After waiting about an hour on our train, we boarded. Keep in mind, boarding a train is INTENSE. You have approximately 90 seconds to get yourself and ALL of your luggage on. And they WILL leave you. At this point in our trip we had picked up 12 people. All with a large carry-on bag, suitcase or two, and us with 4 guitars. So jumping on a train is not as easy as it sounds. Also keep in mind, we have no idea where we are going, what language they are speaking, or any general understanding of what is going on. We were on this train for almost 3 hours.

So let's recap. 12 people. Around 1200 lbs. of luggage. 13 hours of airports and flying. And to this point...4 hours of trains and train stations.

After the first train ride, we were all exhausted. So we decided to take unload (in 90 seconds) our first train, and load (in 90 seconds) onto a second train. This was close to another 2 hours and took us into Katowice, Poland. We then loaded a bus and the bus took us about 20 minutes away to a church. We did a quick church service running on nothing but fumes and then finally another 15 minute bus ride to our hotel. At this point we hadn't eaten anything in about 6 hours. We found a French restaurant to eat at...and it was amazing.

By the time I got in bed, the grand total was 29 hours of traveling. This means it took us 29 hours to get from Augusta, Georgia to our hotel in Poland. Including sitting in airports, train stations, bus stations, taxi stations, etc. And when I laid my head on the pillow to sleep I had been awake for over 36 hours with the exception of some cat-naps here and there on uncomfortable trains and airplanes. Phew.

The next day, we woke and played a service from 12-2. We had some of the afternoon to rehearse and relax a little and did another service at 6 PM. This service was awesome. This Polish church had close to 100 people there including our team and the age range was from toddler to 70 something. All generations were well represented. God did some amazing things there in that church that night.

After a night of quick sleep in the hotel, we loaded up in box trucks and Mercedes cars and got a train back to Ostrava, Czech Republic. A total of 4 hours of traveling again after waiting for a train, (which was WAY late) and trying to find enough Taxi's to take us to our hotel.

We dropped our bags at the hotel and went to our new church. This is where our main conference is taking place. Arrived at the church around 4:30. We setup all of our stuff, then walked to a Chinese restaurant called "A-Dang". Ate there then started the conference off with a bang. Played an awesome set list and God was using us like crazy. Songs were being sang in 3 different languages at the same time!

At this point I have totally lost track of date or time or what language to try to speak. 4 countries in less than 7 days. I think its Saturday, and I know that it is 11AM here. We just rocked faces again this morning for the opening session today. And we will rock faces again tonight....Jesus will rock the hearts like he has already done.

It has been a blast so far...I am very blessed to be a part of this.

We will be in touch...enjoy what I think is your Saturday...

Na shledanou, Do zobaczenia, Biss spater, See you later...

_C_