Will the stories ever end?

The other day I was busking and this guy walked past.
I can't even remember what he looked like. When you're playing on the side of the street, you really get a good chance to take a good look at the variety of life. But unless it's someone you know, or someone who looks really intresting, you can't really remember everyone who walks past you.
This guy didn't do anything in particular. Didn't drop money in my hat, didn't stop and listen (nobody does these days....), didn't do anything out of the ordinary. But as he was walking past, his eyes glanced up from the pavement and met my gaze. I couldn't help but smile.
While it seemed like such a brief connection, and not something most people would even bother remembering, let alone writing down, that brief glance was one of the most insightfull things about that morning's work (the others were when this random biker gave me $10 (!) and when I nearly got evicted by a security guy :] haha.) It really made me wonder. Who was this man? Did he maybe hear something in whatever I was playing? Where'd he come from? Did he like music, or did he not really care? Did he really see me, or was I just another street performer?
There are so many stories out there. Real, made-up, believed, lived.... humans each have a story. I am still amazed by the creativity and skills we have. Truly God created amazingly talented beings.
This blog you're reading now is part of my story.
This is where I download: all my hopes, fears and dreams. All my successes, and my failures. The things which break me down, and the things that build me up. (Also there's a couple of random blogs here and there by my brother :) ... na jj half of the stuff on here is by Nate!) In reading this blog you are getting a window: albeit a pretty small one, into the life of Jordan.
Right at the moment I'll let you into another part of the unfolding drama.
Lately I've been feeling so much like there's something out there for me, but I'm falling vastly short of wherever it is. I've been searching so hard that I've forgot everything else in between. I've been so lost in the looking that I've missed the words between the lines. I've been trying to find a way out of this hopelessness. But hope is found in the most unlikely of places.
I think I've finally got it (whether I remember it remains to be seen!). It's like when you're looking for something in the cupboard, and you look and look, and then you say "Mum! I can't find it!" and she's like "In front of you." and whatever you're looking for is right in front of your face.
I need to just let all this go. All this worry, all this despair, all these doubts, all these fears. Just let them go. Stop asking, and start giving. Stop looking, and start showing others. And maybe, just maybe, I will find the answer right in front of me, and that it had been there all along. I've been pushing squares into round holes, trying to dig myself out of the hole which I excavated. This quiet has been so long. But now it's time to break this silence. But not in the way I've been trying. I'm giving up, giving it all over to God. May he do with me what we want. It seems like such a paradox trying to change the world when I can't even help myself. But God works the best when we give him control.
Just as I realized this, I had the most boringest days EVER! It seems whenever you finally understand the problem, there's always something which comes along and tries to knock the stuffing out of you. It's SO annoying, and it almost got to me today. But I'm not giving up yet.

Just a final word before I go. I know this blog has been such a massive ramble, but it's been so good writing it. I'd call it "blog therapy" :). If you've stayed with me so far, read all this blog then I want to just say thanks. Thanks so much. It's amazing really. I never know what to say when I'm on Facebook, but whenever I blog, I feel like I can literally write for hours! It's such a relief just to be able to come on here and write down all my struggles, to share them with you. Your support is outstanding, to both me and Mayday. Give yourselves a round of applause!

Jordan
Ps. If you wanna say something, please, please comment! I love hearing other peoples stories!

Boring

unfortunately today has been one of the more boring days of my life.
Jordan

just stuf...

yeah i know i spelt stuff wrong :D suck at spelling.!
okaay so the all whites drew with world champions italy!!! :O awesome match. we went to our mates house to watch it live at 2am..it was pretty fuuun.!!
we've been out of band practice for a few days cause guitarest Jordan restrung his set of strings - which you apparently have to change them after every gig.... and he hasnt since he got the guitar a year ago!! :DD but should be practicing again tommorow...
i got my new boom stand yesterday... its mean...!!!!
also getting ready for rockquest... the regional finals are in just a month..! :D
...aaaand thats abowt it! :)
nate

Save The Stomach!!!!

The Stomach is a recording place for young bands like us wanting to do a professional recording to produce a cd. So far that has been our plan..and we have $300 of the $500 we need to do so.
Unfortunately, The Stomach may be closing. However, there is a petition to sign in order to save it.
Please click on the link below to sign a petition..it will only take a minute. And it would mean a lot to us.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savethestomach/
Thanks,
Nate

on our way...

$297!!!!!
we're slowly getting there.. and looking forward to reaching our goal of $500..
and as you can see we've edited our blog so now it looks mean.!
jordans also wroten 2 more songs that are next to write on the list...
thats about it at the moment....
nate

transformers camp..

last friday i got the chance to go to a transformers leadership camp in Foxton with a few members of our church. it was a great weekend! i had lots of fun and learnt a lot out of it :) except i ate too much chocolate fish :) but we got to look at stars..they were really pretty..also went on a flying fox in the dark..very scary but a lot of fuun..
the end.
nate

Courage

This blog all came about because I had to tell someone about something, which while actually was not actually a big deal, was something which really took ages for me to do because I talked myself out of it so much. In the end it came down to me saying to myself: "Right are you going to be a man and speak out or be a chicken and stay quiet?" So I finally did it, and it was all totally under-rated by myself anyway cos it took like 2 minutes to resolve. But actually making myself speak up was so hard.
The whole thing got me thinking about this newspaper article and how it really struck a chord in me. It was talking about how fear creates all these negative attitudes, like anger, and jelousy, etc. Then it said how the opposite of fear was love, but it takes courage to love.
And I thought about this for a moment, and I really actually understood it.
See what gets me is this.
It takes courage to love. It takes courage to step out and help those who can't help themselves. It takes courage to stand up against the ways of this world, and really live. It's no easy task we face, but did God ever say it was going to be easy?
Sometimes it takes courage just to go over and say to "hi" to someone you've never met before. It can be as easy as that. Or maybe it's just loving those who are a little bit weird, a little bit strange, a little bit on the outside. I know what it's like on the outside, and it's not the best place to be there.
So today, are you going to stand up, and make a difference?
Stick your hands up if you're with me!!

Jordan

whoo go the blogs!

they smash up any other social networking site! (not that i've tried them all or something.) you can just ramble on for ages about nothing, and there's no annoying status' which say "what's on your mind?" i mean what kind of dumb question is that? immediately when you see that your mind goes blank. but other times your mind can be so stuffed with thoughts that if it was possible to upload them all onto said nerworking site, it would probably explode from overuse!
alright, now i've finished my little ramble about the awesomeness of blogs i'll get onto things.
the cuckoo clock just rang, announcing the time. but i forgot to count the cuckoo's! bother bother bother!
annnnyyyway....
the good news is i've taken on yet another guitar student (2 actually!) so that's pretty sweet. massive responsibilty really. dosn't seem to long ago i was learning myself. it's amazing how everything changes.
on the recording side of things, the total is slowly creeping up. but it's gonna take at least another month before we get nearly enough! oh well, at least we know we'll be ready for it!
probably the best thing so far is that we've had contact from the outer world! first of all battle of the bands isn't gonna be on this year, so it looks like Rockquest is gonna be the comp. of the year. :( oh well it was great to hear back from the pastor from Primal Church in Napier.
secondly we got a reply from Crossroads saying they'd passed it on to their youth pastor! extremely excited about this! hopefully the opportunity opens up, God willing. i'm really starting to get this feeling that after the big gap since Parachute, things are finally starting to fall into place. and if God is for us, who can be against us?
blessings in Jesus' name

Jordan

One of the more intresting days of my life...

...was TODAY!
I actually was pretty surprised about this, because it didn't start off to well. It was frosty & cold, and I woke up late then had to pile in the car in about 20 minutes. Talk about rushed!
Anyway, the reason we were in the car so early was cos we were gonna visit Poppa as it was his birthday!!!! So we made the trip up the bay, and had a little party with him. He had this mean fire going in a big metal drum, and we roasted marshmallows and sausages over it. It was fun! We then went on to film some extremely failed movie before going to get some fish & chips for lunch. It was awkward as, cos we were waiting around for ages while they were cooking and they basically told us to go home and come back when they were done. Rude. So we sat outside in the gutter and listened to Underoath. Mean. I'm not a heavy metal fan in the slightest, but I think I'm beginning to at least understand the genre. Either way Writing on the Walls is an awesome song. Go listen!
So then we went into the shop and while we were waiting around I started humming this song. And it was a line in it which says something like "Why don't we, sit right here for half an hour,....and how they let us down!" (then it goes into the screaming bit) and so I was singing this out loud when I suddenly realised the shop-owners could easily think I was singing about their poor service! Therefore I instantly shut my mouth, and luckily no-one noticed. It was pretty funny though.
We headed home shortly after lunch cos me and Nate had a soccer game on that afternoon. The trip was all good up till Waipuk where there was this random rusty wheelbarrow in the middle of the road. All these cars kept swerving to miss it and so Mum was like jump out and grab it! So there I was running down the middle of the road (it was actually a bridge) pushing this wheelbarrow and all the cars going the opposite way were looking at me like I was some kind of lunatic! It was awesome! At the end there was this guy who's trailer it had obviously fallen off and he was like "Oh man I am so ****** sorry!" and I replied "No worrys" then hopped back in the van. Then not long after we saw this random plastic can thing in the middle of the road and all these cars were swerving to miss it. So I jumped out and grabbed that too, and tossed it over to the side of the road. We FINALLY got home without further incident and then went to soccer.
Our soccer game was so RANDOM! We got a goal in about the first thirty seconds, which is probably a world record for our team, no offence, and then kept doing all these mean attacks. About halfway through the first half this random bus pulls up with all these rugby guys in, and this streaker leaps out and starts running across the field! (thankfully he wasn't fully naked!) So our goalie starts chasing him seeing as we had no security to hand. Then all the rugby guys hopped out and stood on the sidelines cheering like crazy when ever anyone touched the ball. It was so funny!
After the first half, we were down 3-1, but the game was pretty even, and we were playing mean as! The second half went about the same - except for several members of our team started getting a little aggro with aggro members of the other team. It came to a head when one of our defenders got wiped out by their winger, and then they started slugging it out! Next thing you know, the entire fields become this massive scrap! Me and Nate were like "What the heck?" and we stayed well out of it. They were scrapping for like about 5 minutes before the ref finally managed to break it up. We had to call the game off cos of it :( , and it almost started again cos the defender who got wiped out in the first place was getting real hungus to smash them up. Then we started shaking hands! It was so weird.
After that we came home and after a shower did some band practice. It was sounding good, even though we hadn't really practiced for about 5 days. =O
Anyway, that was all pretty much most of my very intresting day.
Hope your days been just as awesome!
And if it hasn't remember that tommorrow is a new day. It will be what you make it. So go out there and make it awesome!
God bless,

Jordan

so.....

we're almost halfway to our goal of $500!!!! getting there slowly, but at least we're getting there.
band practice has been a bit slow lately..but we've hammered most of our rec. songs.
let us know if you spot out any places we could play at or whatever cos we are desperate for a gig!!!!!!!

Lyrics!

ok i've decided i ought to blog more instead of constant facebook facebook facebook so i've decided i'll put the words up for MAYDAY's brand new song!
this song is a little complicated. basically i wrote it about two years ago, when someone i knew very well was going through this massive personal struggle in a relationship. this is just my thoughts looking on from the outside. some people might think of it as a "break-up" song, but i prefer not to put it that way seeing as i've never been unfortunate enough to be in one of those situations. instead, it is yet another example of how God uses your circumstances to draw you closer to him. He is strongest when we are weak.
if you're going through this situation right now, i want you to know that whatever happens, you are not alone. your world may be falling to pieces around you, but there is a light at the end of every tunnel, you have to face the clouds to find the silver lining, and there IS hope at the end of it all.


DISAPPEARANCE (With or Without You)


Don't run, don't hide/ Won't you stop for a moment and see that I tried/ And I'll confess that I'm a mess/ but that's about to change/ Just take the best, and leave me the rest/ I won't make the same mistake


I've tried to bring you round/ But you just don't seem to hear/ So don't you make a sound/ Because I'm going to disappear
And I've made my disappearance/ But I know that this is true/ This time I'm moving forwards/ With or without you

I'll run, I'll hide/ I won't stop now I'm sick of all the lies/ And I'll confess it took some time/ For me to come around/ But this time, I've made up my mind/ I'll start all over cos it's over now.

There is hope when you've hit rock bottom/ There is hope when the light's forgotten/ There is hope in the blackest hole/ There'll be hope at the end of it all

And it's too late to go back/ But I know that this is true/ This time I'm moving forwards/ With or without you/ With or without you/ With or without you
(c) Copyright Mayday 2010

Jordan