Fruit

Rehearsal day is a day when much patience is needed. Tired bodies and minds don’t necessarily make a great accompaniment to a long day of rehearsal. But the team displayed great fruit of the Spirit and somehow it all worked out.Trevor set us his recording gear and had a practice run as we rehearsed. Jim and Curtis unpacked the massive lighting rig trying out the different options. Josh spent many hours working on getting all of the band’s in-ear monitor system up and running. And he did it all with a horrible tooth ache. Bus drivers turned into lyric screen installers. The musicians and vocalists offered their individual gifts and together it made a wonderful sound. David M. from Hong Kong fired up the camera and provided all the still shots for the CD/DVD insert and for this blog.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity!

RESTORE travels East

Worship leader Mark Tedder is currently in Beijing. He is part of Worshiplanets support team in Asia. They have been working on the video editing and design layout of the upcoming RESTORE CD/DVD. Today he took some time off and visited a few of his favorite spots in the city.

Guest Artist

In order to help anchor the RESTORE project, we asked local musicians to join us. Martin Clark, resident of Lincoln, played guitar on the CD/DVD as a guest artist. Mark and Martin spent about an hour together on rehearsal day before joining in with the rest of the band. What a joy to work with Martin. We only wished he could have joined us for the remainder of the tour.

Carting it all in

Even an acoustic set requires lots and lots of stuff! Both of the RESTORE tour vans had head-to-ceiling rear cargo space and we still needed to tow a trailer. Fifteen people on the road for 10 days equaled 30 pieces of personal luggage plus equipment. The 10 x 10 trailer was skillfully loaded each day by Manu - our resident stacking genius! Everyone else did their bit by moving flight cases that were filled with amps, speakers, in ear monitors, lights, music stands, recording gear, musical instruments, and an untold amount of cables.

Clip by Clip

If you have ever tried to make a home video, you know the hours it takes. So you can imagine the hours, days actually, that David Teo will spend on the RESTORE DVD.

Our camera guys, Jim and Curtis, compiled so much footage while on tour from the four different locations; Lincoln, Lisieux, Florence, and Prague. However, if anybody can do, David can. He is fast with a mouse and very creative! If you think about it this week, pray for him!

The Restore Tour Continues

The band and support team may have gone back to their respective countries but the RESTORE tour continues. Mark Tedder, worship leader of RESTORE, is in Beijing at the moment. His tasks for this week include helping with the layout and design of the CD/DVD insert and overseeing the video editing. He is there to provide direction in both of these areas. Our Asian based support team were not on the tour thus his input is needed. And of course in order to do this job effectively he needs a daily latte from Coups!

Worshiplanet's great friends David Teo and Marylynn Chee are hard at work. When Worshiplanet produced The Door, CD/DVD; Marylynn & David were part of the team. Coming from Australia and Singapore, they both serve the International Church in Beijing. The same place were the Tedders recently served. 

This week of work requires a lot of dedication and focus AND yummy Chinese food too!

Update

Apologies for leaving the blog stranded in Florence but there has not been a spare moment or sufficient internet speed to upload. And besides, I never got a copy of the photo CD so there are no pictures to upload, they are all back in the US.


What a whirlwind trip! The RESTORE tour was truly a call for Europe to return to God. We sensed the hand of God via your prayers in so many ways; protection while driving, health in spite of fatigue and truck stop food, strong hands and voices for making music, awake drivers, focused cameramen, sound engineers with power, and the list goes on .

By God’s grace we successfully worshiped in four cathedrals and managed to record each event. We also worshiped and filmed two outdoor gigs. The team is exhausted because the schedule was nearly impossible. We are so proud and extremely thankful for each of them. They all pulled triple duty and with a good attitude to boot.

To him be glory forever and ever amen.

PS. I’ll be posting more photos around June 12 so come back for more stories and photos of the RESTORE tour.