City by the sea...

This has thus far been the ‘no internet’ tour and consequently maintaining the blog has been extremely hard. Nevertheless I will not give up. Since our first show in Lebanon a lot has happened, but rather then fill in all the details I will jump forward to our show last night. Last night we played a show in a main city square in the Croatian seaside town Rijeka. This town was near the border of Italy and was extremely beautiful. Aside from being beautiful Rijeka is known as the alternative/punk city in Croatia. What’s more, the city is known for its atheism. In fact, we were the first Christian band to ever play in Rijeka. By the time we played around 400 people had gathered in the town square known as a popular place for the youth to gather and to drink. During the show there were many technical issues, but overall it was an amazing night. Around 100 people knelt in the middle of square dedicating their lives to Christ. Following the show I was frustrated because despite my best efforts I was unable to have any serious conversations. Everyone I spoke with either believed already or had no interest in the message. I persisted and God led me to two young guys. Oddly enough the two guys I spoke with hadn’t even seen the show. Nevertheless the conversation turned to God and I was able to share with them that Jesus was not about religion or a set of rules. I was able to tell them that Jesus died so that I could be free, and that the closer I came to him the freer I felt. I could really tell that I was connecting with them. I prayed with these two young guys and while they did not make a commitment to Christ I know that a seed was planted in them that God will bring to completion.

Thanks for all the support! I am so lucky to see God at work and your prayers are a critical part what we are doing.
-ben

Metal makes my head hurt...

First post of the tour! Sadly, Internet has been extremely hard to come by so far so it has taken me way longer to keep the public informed of the happenings over here. Honestly, the last week has felt like two months; so much has happened!
For the sake of brevity I will recap:

Currently I am in Beirut, Lebanon. This place continues to live up to its chaotic reputation and in the words of Justin (our bass player) is well and truly a bag of dogs. Chaos withstanding, the trip has been a success but certainly not without its challenges.

We have played two shows so far one on Friday night and one last night. The Friday night show featured 10 melodic black metal bands and us. Needless to say it was a very odd combination. The venue was named after a mythological sex God Tantra but I renamed it the sweat box because the majority of my time was spent sweating. Everything that could go wrong seemed to. The PA wouldn't work, the air-condition was being turned off and on in 20 minutes increments, and the bands played way too long, and no one seemed to know what was going on. We were scheduled to play at 10:30pm but end up playing closer to 2am. Sadly by the time we started some of crowd had left. Nevertheless we played in front of crowd of roughly 300 and all in all the show went well. At the end of the concert my dad invited to crowd to respond the message and over 30 people joined hands praying to receive Jesus into their lives.

It was a powerful reminder that God moves despite adversity!

We played a show last night at the site of new the church being established. Around 30 people came and again God moved powerfully.

We play one more show here in Lebanon and then we head off to Croatia. The time here has been chaotic, sweaty, and very unpredictable but ultimately God has moved in our concerts and we expect to see more in our last concert.

Please pray:

- That God protects the church being established here in Beirut
- That many people will be saved at our last concert on Wednesday.

Thanks for the support! As the tour goes on I should be able to update more regularly so keep checking the blog!

Thanks,
Ben

The Blog is Back Baby!

Nothing to report as of yet just thought I would start this baby up.

Where the Helsinki?

Well...I guess it's time for an update...I've been kind of slack I know!

Since my last post, we headed to Finland. In fact our time in Finland is all but over...so I will recap.
Our time here has been great. We played three shows, one in Helsinki (the capital of Finland), one in Tampere ( a city north of Helsinki), and one show in Rovaniemi ( a small city, a mile from the Arctic Circle, seriously!)

All three shows went well, but for the sake of brevity, I will only talk about our show in Rovaniemi.

This show had to be the most remote of all of our shows. We literally drove an entire day to get there, and it is famous for being on the edge of the arctic circle. We played in a popular club, and despite playing on a Sunday night, we had nearly 200 people at our show. The show went really well, but most important was the response after the show.

Throughout our tour in Finland, public response to the preaching had been minimal. We were told, and eventually experienced, that Finnish people, as a rule, don't single themselves out. People in Finland are extremely reserved in public settings, rarely even clapping throughout our entire show. The reality is that people here struggle with self-image, and simply lack the confidence to stick out from the crowd. Obstacles aside, my dad told crowd, at the end of the show, who Jesus was, and what He did for them. He told them that they didn't have to be alone, and that they weren't an accident, that there was a plan for their lives. He than asked them to do a very "unfnnish" thing: to come to the front of the stage, and publicly declare their desire to give their lives to Christ.

After several seconds of silence, two young guys in their late teens, stepped out, and despite the mocking of their friends, stood alone, choosing to publicly declare their desire to know God. Members of our band were able to pray with them, and both made serious commitments to follow Christ.

God again proved that no obstacles are too big for Him to overcome.
Pray that these kids can get the discipleship they need!

That is a really quick recap of what God did in Finland, we now head to Iceland, and soon back to the States.

Thanks for all your prayer, and support!

-Ben

Some pics from the Croatia show!