Sunday, July 19, 2009

Great Are You

There are no words to express the wonderful time and uplifting experience I had last weekend in Nashville.

For those of you who don't/didn't know, I headed down to Nashville to meet up with a bunch of amazing people! The downhomies, AKA extreme fans of the band downwhere. downhere is a Christian Band (you should check them out at www.downhere.com) and we had our first Downhomie Gathering in Nashville which we dubbed downhomiepalooza. Yah, it's a mouthful, but there was never a dull moment!

I couldn't wait to finally meet the people that I "talk" to daily on the boards. We met Thursday night, hung out and played Apples to Apples. After the first 20 minutes of awkwardness, you couldn't shut us up or separate us the rest of the weekend!

Friday morning, we headed over to Feed the Children to do some service work. I was expecting it to be like Feed the Starving Children where you stand in a line and put your little scoop of food in a bag and it gets shipped all over the world. This was different. We boxed up lots and lots of Crocs shoes and prepared boxes for the next group to fill. Jeremy and Glenn from the band came and helped and I was surprised on our break to see Jason and Marc! It was such a great time. I am sure that they were scared to be meeting up with 20-something "fans". But I hope we proved them wrong and showed them that we really do know how to control our "fan-isms".

Later that night we headed to the Centricity Music building and got to speak with Steve Ford who is the Marketing Manager and John Mays who is the Vice Prez of the Record label. Centricity is the label of downhere. We were asked numerous marketing questions and basically were told that we are now part of the Marketing/Street Team. YAY!

We headed to dinner with the band and the Centricity Staff. I wanted to chat with MArc, since I don't get to talk to him much and I wanted to get to know him more. I ended up chatting and sitting across from Jason and John Mays and I am grateful for that. I had great time chatting with them.

After dinner, we headed back to Centricity and ate THE MOST delectable cupcakes on the face of the planet from Ivey's Cakes. It was like heaven on earth! Once situated, we got a private showing from downhere with a bunch of songs that WE requested. It was awesome!

Then, we were surprised with an armful of goodies!
1. A photo album to write our "yearbook" letters in from Gina.
2. A lovely tote from Jess Lewis who is the owner of www.tolivebeautiful.com
3. A notebook with the Centricity logo from the Centricity people
4. A prerelease of Matt Papa's new CD (which is AWESOME!)
5. Annnnnnddd.....downhere's new Christmas CD!!!!! We have been trying to get the guys talk all day about it, but most were pretty mum...lol

Needless to say, our cool, calm collected selves turned into fangirls. It was awesome. It was hard to go to bed that night and we hung out til 1am

Saturday was "us" day. We hung out all day long, explored Franklin, then headed to Opry Mills Mall and did a scavenger hunt that was crazy good!! And then back to the hotel for more fun. Poor Carson was stuck with Emily, Hannah, Kate and I and downhere Karaoke the whole weekend. Though, I think he was enjoying it immensly!

Sunday we had church in our room and it was hard to say goodbye. I love these people so much like my extended family, I would do anything for them. It was great to finally get to meet them all and hang and I can't wait to do it again. It was an experience I will never forget.

God was moving through all of us and I am grateful that he brought us all together to experience it. We all had one thing in common: downhere, but we left knowing each other better than we could have imagined. And only God could have helped plan something this good. It was awesome to see God in all of us. Thanks to Gina for putting this all together. You ROCK, girl!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

It really was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I feel like a lot happened that I don't even understand yet. I can't believe it's been a week.

(By the way, love the title. ;-))

Gina: said...

Haha. Wow! I get a shoutout on twitter AND on your blog!

I feel so special :-)

I love love LOVE reading everyone's stories about the weekend... I'm still trying to process it all... it was an incredible experience. I am so proud to call all of you my brothers and sisters! Christ was definitely there. God is sooo good.

You rock, Mindy :-) Thank you for posting this!! I'm so glad you chose to come... it wouldn't have been the same without you!

Mindy said...

I was glad I came. It was one of the most exciting and uplifting experiences EVER! ANd if it weren't for you, Gina, we wouldn't have had such a great time.

Emily, I knew the title was going to tickle your fancy...hee hee. I had a hard time coming up with something clever, then, that just popped in my head and I thought of you!

Unknown said...

Aww!

I am happy you came, too! You provided lots of smiles, and lots of beautiful music. :-)

Ahoy! Thanks for stopping by. Sometimes life should be an open book and here you will find that true. My mind is always on full speed and I will be heading over many waves. I hope this journey is as much of an adventure for you as it is for me~ ~Mindy