FarmFest Team '06

Okay, so I guess it was a good thing they decided to eat the blue slushies after we had sung our last song! Nice one!

Jordan - What a great-looking guy! :)

FarmFest was really a blast. I have never been to anything like it! There were probably 400 teenagers there. It was held at a farm near South Bend, IN on Saturday, June 3. The farm had a nice open hill that was pretty flat on top. They set up a few tents - one large one for the meetings, and another large-ish one for the booths and concessions. We set up our booth amongst all the other college and camp booths and then just tried to talk to kids and get them to sign contact cards. There were lots of games set up all over for the kids to get involved with, and then there were 3 preaching sessions. We had gorgeous weather for it too, so that was a blessing!!!
We left Northland around 2pm Friday afternoon. Jordan was our driver, so I was navigator by default! ;) We got stuck in a traffic jam for a while in Milwaukee, but eating at Chipotle totally made up for that!! ;) I loved my Fajita Burrito!!! We made it to our hotel around 11:30pm (which was 12:30pm our time) and unloaded our stuff. Then Jordan, Joy, and I took off to find Wal-Mart (which was supposedly just down the road, take a turn, and it's there). Well, over 30 minutes later, we found Wal-Mart. Jordan talked them into taking my broken straightener and giving me a brand new one in return (what a guy!), but we had to wait in line forever because the man at the cash register only had one speed....slow. Well, we missed a turn on the way back because the road veered off when we weren't paying attention, so it was about 1:30am when we got back. We went to bed a little after 2 (again, keep in mind that this is Indiana time, so to us it felt like 3!).
We had to be in the hotel lobby at 7:35am so we could make it to the FarmFest by 8am. :P So, basically although the hotel was very nice, we didn't really get to enjoy it at all. :( We got our booth set up in between the Clearwater and Maranatha booths. It was fun to get to meet the other teams. :) Although, (sorry, JaJu!) BJ had a really annoying guy on their team!!! Well, the teens all got there at 9am for an 'Orientation Session' with Mike Manor (who is still just as funny as ever!) and then the first preaching session was at 10:45am. Our team was the first up to sing. Joy Thomas was our soprano, Joy Williams on alto, Chad Williams on tenor, and Phil Trach on bass. I was playing the piano (actually an electric keyboard) and because of the way the sound system was set up, I could hardly hear myself. Then, as the song went on, the piano sound was gradually dying until I couldn't hear anything at all. When I realized there was no sound coming out of the piano and over the sound system whatsoever, I stopped playing and the team sang the rest of the song without me! They did great, though! The sound guys fixed the piano after we were done and the rest of the music went very well. :) We left the FarmFest around 4:30, stopped at a steakhouse around 7, and got back to Northland around 12:30.
It was very fun to be traveling for Northland again. Brought back lots of memories! :) I thought it was especially fun to be able to do it with Jordan this time. :)