chillin in pittsburgh

we have been in pittsburgh for the past week now and it has been a really fun time for Minda and I. we had the opportunity last weekend to hang out with another camfel team, Johnny and Lacie Vasquez! we just hung out around the city and ate some food with them; to end the night the wonderful couple invited us over to their hotel to play some games. it is interesting when you spend all your time on the road and in hotels how a simple hotel lobby now becomes your living room and entertainment area. so we spent a couple of hours in their "living room" playing "pass the pigs", which if you have never played, definitely need to try! let's just say Minda has the magic touch of the pigs.

the next morning (sunday), we went to The Hot Metal Bridge Church, a cool church with a great sense of community. They held an extremely laid back service outside in the sunshine, it was a great way to spend a sunday morning. i am always amazed when i visit other churches, especially when traveling, about how amazing being a Christian truly is. we literally have family from city to city, state to state, country to country. it is such cool blessing to take part in playing a role in the body of Christ.

ok, onto "business":

our first show of the week went swimmingly! it was a super fast set-up with no technical problems, BUT there were some other issues.....

first, it was an 8:00 show, which means we had to arrive at 6:00am....eww, on top of that our hotel was about 45 minutes away from our school, double eww. so we arrived and of course no one was at the school. we waited about 30 minutes for the school janitor and secretary to arrive, they did, and they were as sweet and helpful as can be.

second, right before the students started filing in, the ENTIRE cheer leading squad came in and started doing their cheers over all of our cords. this could possibly lead to a student tripping and hurting themselves, possibly unplugging our equipment, or pulling our equipment over. we quickly jumped into action and added and extra layer of tape to hold down our cords more securely.

third, after about the first 100 students had found their seats, music started pumping from the schools speakers and around 10 huge beach balls were thrown into the crowd of middle schoolers. i would normally be a huge advocate of what just unfolded before us, but we have 3 very delicate, very, very expensive projectors that are set up on stands in the first and second rows! once again minda and i jumped into action and hurdled 2 rows of auditorium seating to bat away countless attacks of beach balls to our projectors. it was stressful to say the least.

in our next update you will get to hear about Minda's dream come true in getting to see a Pittsburgh Steelers game live at Heinz Field!