Get together

Tonight we'll meet to eat and talk here at My place in Sthlm. I brought Some gingerbread and coffe from the store and i'll hope it meets the expectations of the croud:) off course it Will!

HI!!!

Hello!
Way to long since I was here...
Hope everyone is doing good! I couldn´t join the German tour, but I´ve been following my friends in PU anyway, watching the videos and reading the blog. Right now Sweden is all white and full of snow, beautiful but cold. My new warm jacket is a blessing =)  Take care of you all and don´t forget the real meaning of christmas. We have all the reason to celebrate the birth of our Savior, without him we would be lost.

Love from Josefine

Hello from a winter wonderland!

Hi!

Today it's really snowy here in Stockholm and that really gets me in the mood for Christmas! Only one month to go - crazy!

I've got no grand thought or epiphany to share with you, but I just want to say hello and let you know that I still think about the Germany tour every other day and I miss being out on the road! We've got some really exciting things coming up next year so hopefully there'll be plenty of opportunities to meet you all soon enough!

Who´s side are you jumping on?

                                     

                   We´re jumping on the Lord´s side!

Do swedish christians need a music fight?

My home church has a very welcoming attitude to new styles of music. Maybe it's because all the arguments and sometimes upset discussions that went on when Joybells, our youth choir, started singing with drums and bass back in the 60's. I am proud of the tolerance that my church shows singers and musicians who like gospel, pop, disco, heavy metal, country, hymns and so on. In Sweden today there is a general tolerance for new music styles in the church. But the strange thing is that many swedish christians still show very little interest in making music in church. You still hear comments like "boring", "oldfashioned" and "lame" about church music. Why? How can we live in a country where many churches tolerate almost any style of music, and still be bored? Could it be that we need the kind of fight that Joybells had when they started? The kind of fight that makes you think about what you believe in? Personally I don't like to use the word "fight", but I do believe that fascinating ideas can come from the kind of fights where you don't aim to proove that the other guy is wrong, and instead aim to clarify why you think you are right. You understand the difference? The music battle between generations that we see everywhere can be inspiring, even fun, if you are able to show and receive love as you discuss your different opinions. Could I be right about this?

Early Morning

I'm of to work at 5.30 am and quite tired, realizing that it's a blessing that I'm part of Praise Unit and that I can travel around the world, play drums and praise God, it really is a blessing.

Men only

Praise Unit - men only. 

2011

Last week I was in some meetings, and I also got some interesting requests for Praise Unit projects. Very soon a new year starts and it is time to focus on what to do. Write new songs? Make another CD? Do more concerts? Go to a new country? Make a Christmas CD? Do more Classical Gospel? Move to another country? Stay at home and pray?

The really great things about asking these questions is that I don't feel stress, I don't feel pressure and I don't worry. All my life it has always been awesome and exciting when I let God decide what to do, and I think that is what Praise Unit is planning for 2011!

Different opinions

When I was a teenager I thought that Jesus wanted me make everybody a follower of Christ as fast as possible, so I wasted no time with small talk or asking questions. Today I still believe that Jesus is alive and wants followers, but I know that I can not force anybody to believe what I believe. There are several Praise Unit songs about why we (Praise Unit) follow Christ and why somebody else should do the same thing. But we are very humble to the fact Jesus said "follow me" to the people who wish to spend eternity in paradise. If you search for paradise in another way, then we will not stop you, but we will not stop saying that we believe Jesus is the only way!

Autumn in Vellmar

We went for a walk and thought we were in Kassel. But we were actually in a suburb called Vellmar.

Early morning madness...

Right now, Im sitting in a car going to the airport Skavsta. Me and Edvin (oh yes, he is my boyfriend) are going to London were we are stayng for 3 days. I really like traveling but mornings.
When I think about the last weeks and our tour to Germany, I feel very happy. Its always a blessing for us in PU to visit you and your country.

Best wishes! Emilia

Bass and drums

Last night I was attending a really nice concert with Swedish singer Jonas Sandwall. Guess who played the bass and drums?! I can say they were, as always, very good! :)

The perfect sound!

A Praise Unit concert is sometimes a pretty big project for the sound engineer. The singers love to move all over the stage, three of the musicians have their own laptops connected to the sound system, we have a lot of extra small mixer boards on the stage, and we need three solo mics on top of all the other vocal mics. So there are a lot of things to coordinate to get the Praise Unit sound. And still, sometimes, it is too loud or too edgy or too blurry or whatever, for some people's ears. So sometimes I get the question "can you make it simpler?", and of course we can. There are always ways to make things simpler, and I love simplicity too! I love it when my singers sing accapella without microphones, I love it when Kristian is jamming on the piano in the hallway and I love it when we practice our songs in the tour bus. But for me it is also important to praise God in the best way I can, and I can do that together with the rest of Praise Unit. We try our best when we rehearse the music, when we do our dance moves, when we select clothes and we work with the techniques for the sound. So that everything together becomes a statement of worship -the Praise Unit way to praise God! It IS the perfect sound, because it glorifies God, but it is not better than the simple ways to praise Him! It is just how we love to do it!

Having fun in Düsseldorf

It's such a blessing to be on tour with Praise Unit! We get to meet so many interesting people, see beautiful cities and towns, try new food, have tons of fun together and we get to introduce God to people. I am truly thankful that I get to be a part of it all! On this tour we had a short stop in Düsseldorf, during which almost all of us went into a music store. The store turned into a playground for young adults and everywhere you looked there was a PU-member singing or trying out an instrument. I can only guess what the rest of the costumers must have thought, but I think that you can tell from this little video how much we all love music. And hopefully we didn't disturb anyone...!

Five pics

Der busfahrer!!! The man, the myth, the legend! All stories you have heard about him are true! Thomas is not only "der busfahrer", but also one of the tenors on stage. The tenors were called "the cute one, the funny one, and the mad one". Guess which one Thomas was?

This is Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. On the more trivial side Lotta and Felicia both ordered coffee with milk this day, drank almost the whole thing, and finally realized "hey, this is just milk, no coffee!!!" In this picture Lotta is holding her cup and the others are tasting it to see if there is any coffee taste at all in there.

We did not do much sight-seeing in Berlin, but we passed Brandenburger Tor. Germany has such a turbulent history, and many parts are scary, but maybe all the things that happened in the past are a reason why Germans today are so nice and easy to be with?

Gospel Swingers of Bremen. Great singers and very nice people! This picture is from the after party.

We spent one night in Hamburg. No concert there, but we had time to pray, sleep, play games and just have a good time. Our good friend Rainer got the place for us.

Praise Unit influences

While driving on the autobahn Praise Unit had a music quiz in the bus. Everybody selected five songs from their phones or mp3-players, played them in the bus speakers and asked one question for each song. As it turned out it was all kinds of songs and the questions were very tricky. At the end of the tour I was thinking about how diverse our taste in music was. It was so many styles, and all of us come together in one group under the name Praise Unit to praise God. Does it work? Not only does it work, but it's the whole point of our group. We have no wish to limit our music to one style, whether it be gospel, soul, funk, rock, r'n'b, pop or whatever else. We simply wish to be honest and completely dedicated in every song we minister through. And it feels good!

My father

One of the songs we did at almost every venue on the last tour was "My father", a song about the relationship between me and God as father and child. Since my wife is in Cambodia right now I am a single parent for a week and a half, and I have many opportunities to reflect upon the parent/child relationship. Yesterday my youngest daughter got in an accident when she was in a playground, and we had to wait four hours at the hospital before the doctor finally put a cask on her arm. During those four hours she was sometimes just crying, but sometimes blaming me for all the pain she felt (since I was the one who brought her to the playground). but I could not stop caring for her, loving her and wanting the best for her.

"When she runs from me I don't let go
She needs me more than she pretends to know
'Cause she is still my child!"
(Paraphrasing "My father" from "The mission field" CD)

Live from Kassel: Can't Get You Out Of My Mind

Live from Husby: Time To Celebrate

Praise Unit on tour in Germany

How we made time pass in the bus

Here's a video shot in the bus on our way to Lübeck. This little melody gives you the opportunity to sing whatever lyric you want to sing. It all started with "telefonkatalogen" ("the phone book") and ended with all kinds of tongue twisters. Or wait, it never ended; we kept on singing this melody for the rest of the tour, even in our dreams! What we're singing in the video? "Praise Unit är på turné i Tyskland!" ("Praise Unit is on tour in Germany!")

Now we are in Sweden after an amazing tour in Germany. We love you!

Now we are sitting in the bus and is about to leave Johannes and Lina in Jönköping.

Next stop is in Örebro.

Auf wiedersehen

We're still in the tour bus driving homewards and we probably won't reach Örebro until approximately  1.30 tonight so it's gonna be a long evening... We've all got some funny photos and videos on our cameras and iphones and we'll try to post some of that material on the blog as soon as we've had a few hours sleep!

Thanks to all of you who have come to our concerts, cooked food for us, organised our accommodation, etc etc!

Time to turn experiences into memories

We just crossed the borders to our home country. It's still about six hours in the bus until we are home and everybody is very tired. But we still have a great atmosphere in the bus. One good thing with being in Sweden is that we got connected with the internet through our phone operators again. So I am writing this blog and many of the others check their emails.

Before connecting to the internet we made sure to finish the music quiz we had on the bus through the whole tour. Every member of Praise Unit played five songs from their phones and asked a question for each song. Also Kristoffer made a quiz with questions about everything that happened to us during the tour. Very nice and lots of laughs. But now it's time to watch a movie.

One of us got a sad message on the phone just a couple of hours ago, which affects us all of course. It is hard to mix pain with laughter and I certainly don't have the answer to how you do it. But we pray together and I know nothing stronger than praying together with friends to a God who cares.

More to come here in the next days.

Hello Sweden

Goodbye Germany.