Something Exciting

Hey, I did say I'd yak on a bit about my adventures at Noise, so I figure I'd better do that. Even if it's just for Carol and Erin's benefit. (Erin - thank you :) you're awesome)

Wednesday is one of my nightmare lots of consecutive classes days, so by the time I got home I was well and truly exhausted. I threw some clothes together, had a shower, fielded a call from Grandma (she's lovely) and ate whatever it was we had for tea and as soon as I'd accomplished all that the boys had arrived to pick me up. Which was good. We collected everyone and got on the road at around 7ish. Arrived in Auckland at 4 in the morning, then drove around for awhile trying to find the street where the boys were staying. I camped out on their couch for that first night and got about 3 hours of sleep, then woke up and called the people I was staying with, who then came and picked me up and took me back to their place where I had another 4 hours of sleep. Then I went to register for the conference.

We'd seen that registration was between 2 and 5, but I'm not sure if anyone really thought that if we registered at 2 we'd have a couple of hours to kill. So we went shopping. I bought some clothes and nearly lost everyone, but luckily refound them. At 7, the first meeting started. The Planetshakers did the worship, and it was awesome! I'd never actually seen the Planetshakers live before, so I really, really, really enjoyed it. Sy Rogers spoke, and I actually got a lot of notes out of it. The one thing that stuck out for me is that God's plan for my life extends to what generation I was born into. As in I am here and alive and 18 years old in 2005. And I'm in New Zealand for some reason. I'd never really thought about the being alive in this era as part of God's plan... I mean, it's kind of a stupid thing to have never thought about, but it had never really hit me before. That night we saw a bunch of acts at the theatre bit, including Nathan King, Kate Wray, Brad Dring and the highlight for me, Kevin Max from DC Talk. He was awesome. It was quite honestly incredible the way he could pull off a set with an acoustic guitar and his incredible vocals… yikes.

Friday the morning meeting was cool, then I went off to a workshop run by a guy from PlanetShakers whose name I cannot spell (I’ll run off and get my programme in a sec and spell it for you then) about “The Discipline of Being a Worshipper”. It was awesome, actually, and I got a recipe for chicken marinade which, apparently, is never allowed to get to Australia. So I can’t tell you. Sorry. (runs off) Aha! Mike Guglielmucci. See why I couldn’t spell it off the top of my head? Cool guy. Anyway, after that I went to a workshop called “Developing a Successful Worship Team” and sat next to this guy who had a pretty decent seat. He was very cool – his name’s Adam. After that, Adam and I both headed off to a workshop about “Writing a Great Congregational Worship Song” but there were too many people and we couldn’t get in, so we went to something else Worship Team-y and I ran into Tom. Then I went to a singer/songwriter session which was very useful (apparently, a thesaurus is a good songwriting tool – I never really thought about that) and then jetted off just in time to see the Vatican boys do their audition. I thought they did great. Nathan and Matt went back, gave one of the judges their demo CD and then found out that this particular judge person was DJ-ing on Radio Rhema on Saturday night. The guy was stoked to get the CD and promised to play one of the tracks. Now that’s something exciting!

That night the Parachute Band did the worship, and the speaker spoke on “Non-refundable Kingdom Attitudes”. Basically about not just waiting for revival to happen someday, but getting the right attitude to believe it can happen now. After that, Magnify did some worship and that was cool. Kinda tired by this stage, so the guys took me home. I actually had to do my German assignment at this stage. Bleugh.

Saturday morning – last day of Noise! (Awww…) Christian Life Centre Auckland did the worship and that was pretty darn cool. Speaker spoke about “A Spirit of Excellence” and that was good, too. Points I got from that:
1) Excellence commits to reaching higher
2) Excellence lives beyond the demand and drive of perfection
3) Excellence commits to doing the best with what it has
4) Excellence embraces expectation, extra effort and evaluation
(A lot of e’s just there…) After the morning meeting, I ran into Adam again. We headed off to a Worship Panel, which was basically a Q and A session with Henry Seeley, Libby Huirua, Reuben Morgan, Richard Knott and Kate Wray. (For those of you who don’t know, they’re all worship leaders and the majority of them are songwriters, too – all from NZ or Australia.) Adam and I had lunch and I ate sushi for the first time in my life! AND I didn’t have to pay for it! What a nice guy! But yeah, I had been informed I wasn’t actually allowed to leave Auckland without eating sushi, so we fixed that all up. Sushi! That’s something exciting, too.

That afternoon I went to a workshop called “A Vocalist’s A-Z of On-stage Performance”. It was really interesting – the guy who ran it (Tom Jackson, “from Nashville, Tennessee”) really knew what he was on about and I got a lot out of it. Not many notes, however, coz I couldn’t get into the tent it was being held in due to the sheer amount of people there and it started raining and my ink ran. I followed that up with “Things I’ve learnt along the way” by Kevin Max (which was entertaining more than anything else) and then headed off to the “Live Rehearsal Workshop for Bands and Soloists”, in which Tom Jackson used Magnify as guinea pigs and worked on their live performance. Interesting to see his ideas, and how to fix it all in.

Workshops being finished for the day, I headed back to where the boys were staying so I could listen to them on the radio and I even got some tea! I gotta say, Jordan’s mum can definitely cook – and it’s definitely better than all the fast food we had to eat all weekend. At about 6.20 “All That I Can Give” became The Vatican’s first radio single – and I was with The Vatican at this crucial moment in history! Course, they’re staunch guys and were being all cool – I was the one going “guys, you’re on the radio!!! That’s so cool!!!!”… hah, groupie. Something exciting! Anyway, the grande finale of Noise was the concert. I brought Susan and Laura with me – I was staying with them. Luckily I was staying downstairs in the granny flat bit, coz I kind of came and went. Noise concert started with Kevin Max, who did “Jesus Freak” with the PlanetShakers (which was SOOOO awesome) among other things. He had to fly to Holland, I think it was, so he literally got off stage and headed to the airport. After that we had Parachute Band, then Nathan King, then Magnify, then Reuben Morgan, then PlanetShakers! All in all, it was an awesome line-up and I was kind of exhausted by the end of it…

Sunday I slept in, then met up with Grandy. We had a nice family lunch. Saw a cousin I hadn’t seen for five years. The usual. In the afternoon, I headed back to the mall in the suburb I was staying to buy choccies for the friends I was staying with. On my way home, I ran into these kids on the side of the road. Three of them were beating up this other one. They all looked about ten, and I wasn’t sure if it was just kids being kids or something more serious, so I asked if everything was alright. The guy being beaten up replied “What does it look like, I’m getting a hiding.” I then kind of noticed that they’d taken off this kids shoes, shirt, and hat. I continued on about 5 metres, then realised that I really, really shouldn’t be walking away.

Now, I’m rather short and not very scary (until I open my mouth, that is) so I figured it’d be easier to try and talk to them. I managed to figure out why they were beating this kid up – he’d beaten up someone’s little brother (he denied this) and he’d taken some money. Having a grand total of five dollars in my wallet, I asked the kid who looked like he was the ringleader if they’d leave the kid alone if I gave them this money. He agreed almost immediately. I took the note out, and he grabbed for it, but I told him I wouldn’t let go until the other kid had all his clothes back on and had gone back to the bus stop. They agreed to that as well. The kid being beaten up ran off and I was left with these three other boys. I’d been eating ice-cream in one of this little pot thingies, and I offered it to the really skinny looking kid. He accepted, and polished off the whole thing in about 3 seconds.

These kids were looking a little puzzled by now, and they asked my name. I told them, and asked for their names. George, Thomas and Martin. They asked me where I was from, I told them and explained what I was doing in Auckland. I asked them about school (it being holidays now) and they told me that it sucked. One of them liked Science, though, and I told him that if he stuck with it, when he got older he’d be able to choose the subjects he likes. They kind of thought I was weird, but seemed to accept that. I explained to them that I don’t like Maths or Science, but now that I’m at university I can do what I do like – languages. They thought that was weird too (but frankly, who doesn’t?) and asked me to teach them how to swear in French. Then one of them remarked “you don’t swear much, do you, miss?” (By now, they’re calling me ‘miss’, which is kind of strange coz I never hear it, but it showed me that they’d gained some sort of respect for me). I tried to explain that I liked using other words, and they said “we don’t know any other words”. At this stage, it started to rain hard and they told me “you’d better go home, miss, or you’re going to get wet”. I asked them when their bus came – they had another three hours to wait. With the money I gave them, though, they had enough to get home, at least. Before I left, they taught me their handshake. I headed off on the 10 minute walk back to Tricia’s – and cried nearly the entire way. 10 year olds should NOT be walking the streets of Auckland. I hear all this stuff about us helping those in 3rd world countries, and I totally agree, I do. But people, seriously – take a look in your backyard!!!

Monday (ANZAC Day) we headed home. The weather was a little random, but we didn’t have too many probs. We got rid of Tom in Taupo, and got some pizza from the rudest pizza lady! A real charmer, that one… Nathan was getting rather worked up. Good thing he didn’t attack her. Went to see Sam in Palmy – she made spaghetti, but it didn’t quite work, so the hot chips option happened instead. We got back to Wellington at roughly ten pm. And that was my big, exciting weekend away!

Phew. That was exhausting. I should go to bed.

ALP,
Rosie