Hillsong : Week 1

"Thoughts on being on tour with a band, when you have no idea how to be on tour with a band."

My first week on tour with Hillsong was a blur. So much was new and unknown that I can't remember feeling so lost and out of place in a long time. I didn't want to forget my first impressions navigating this world so I wrote down my thoughts from my first three days on tour. Although so much of this has become familiar now, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to share my first impressions of this experience with you!

So I'm out on tour with Hillsong right now and this whole experience has been Bonkers! Even that sentence alone is the weirdest thing to me, "I'm out on tour with Hillsong." What? Why?! Because Hillsong is using their voice to get people involved with World Vision and helping the refugees that have been displaced because of the war in Syria. World Vision is working in countries surrounding Syria to provide food and water and creating safe spaces within refugee camps for to learn and work through what they've experienced with art therapy. I'm here on this tour with Hillsong helping World Vision get others involved with the work that this band has been so touched by. 

And... my first week on tour was the weirdest! I could not feel more like a fish out of water in this world. I realized as I was talking to a friend the other day that I would have felt more comfortable leading a group of strangers through a foreign country than on this tour. And that is because everything is foreign to me and everyone speaks a tour language that I am just now finally learning.

Day 1 for me was like being a kid in school and having no clue what to do. I followed around my fellow World Vision rep trying to take in as much as I could and attempting to not feel totally lost. Thankfully my World Vision counterpart is keen to this rockstar scene and showed the ropes to me. Honestly, at some point it just became humorous because even life's basic tasks were unfamiliar to me!  

This is a whole different world and you have to learn the way it works and the lingo to operate here.  Until I got the routine down, the first few days were rough! Let me give you an example of the questions I found myself asking the first three days just in case you ever find yourself on tour with a band:

- How do we know where to go? gaff tape - seriously, in the arena gaff tape is key. It leads you everywhere and is put down every morning by production like arrows on the floor to lead you where to go.
- Where do we eat? Catering
- Where do we shower? Female staff room
- Where do you get your towels? The box in the hallway
- Where do you put your towels? I'm still not positive ;)
- Where do we sleep? In a bus (that changed multiple times for us the first 3 days)
- How do I get into my bunk? Stair step from bunk to bunk
- How do we get onto the bus? Passcode on the door / That is written above the door

And on. And on. And on....

And then I got the run down on bus life etiquette and all the bus rules and about "bus food" after the show and how this bus is like our tour family.  And despite the constant lack of sleep that seems to go hand in hand with this tour, I'm excited to get to know these people and become a part of this crazy tour family.

It's so strange to be grown and to find yourself in situations where you have absolutely NO  again. You feel like a little kid wading their way through the hallway on the first day of school. But it is so good for my spirit to be humbled and to be in situations where I have to learn all over again. This is growth. And this will never be totally new again. It's already becoming familiar; so I wanted to take the time to write this experience down for when it is no longer brand new.

God has led me into a lot of places in my life, especially during this season of "Confidently Wandering." This isn't an experience that I ever thought I would be in, but I'm so grateful that I am. I want to take in new experiences like water; to grow where I am lost and to become stronger in my weaknesses. This tour has definitely brought out all of the above in me.