Tour Day 12 – Prescott AZ – Albuquerque NM

Friends, I am in Albuquerque in an un-airconditioned fellowship hall with 20 teenagers. It is a time-honored tradition to suck it up sometimes and just have some man cave time on tour (or girl cave time…all this time being married to Emily and what they do over there is still a mystery to me). Often when Bemo is booking places for us to stay the churches don’t have the capacity to house the singers, but they are willing to let us sleep on the floor of the church, so here we are.

Usually, it is nice and quiet when I write these posts, but tonight the boys are playing football with an empty plastic tea bottle, and it has been thrown over my head several times. In addition to that, I am writing this with my buddy Parker Vonfischbach looking over my shoulder.  Say hi to the folks back home, Parker…

- How is it not being in New Mexico? I feel bad not to be with you, but we all miss you and am ready to come see you at homecoming in three days! -

Ok, Give me the computer back, kid!!

It’s Joseph again. This morning, we left Arizona and gained an hour coming into New Mexico. On the way, though, we made a detour through the Petrified Forest National Park. It is super cool, and we tried to narrate on the drive through the park, but the kids have seen so much grandeur on this trip that the visit was lost on some of them.  We made a stop in the visitor center and then back on the road again.

We pulled into the church in Albuquerque today around 4:30 and got down to business. It is always kind of an odd dance when you meet the folks from the church for the first time.  Often, they have no idea what they have just committed to, and you can sense the hesitation.  But once they see the professionalism that we hold ourselves to they start to relax pretty quickly. Tonight was no different, and by the time we were ready to run in, you’d have thought that we’d been friends for a long time.

This was the best performance so far. It was stated on a couple of occasions how impressed members of the audience were at how engaged the singers were. It was one of those performances where the singers and the audience seemed to have this natural connection that just fed off each other. It was quite a sight to see.

Three more days, friends. The weird thing about tour is how ready you are to come home, but at the same time there is a part of you that just wants to spend a day washing your clothes, and letting your dog lick you a few times before you load up the buses again and get on the road. We are all a little bit in both of those places – ready to sing our guts out, and increasingly ready to hug our moms.

Love you all and see you soon.

Joseph