No Germany Tour.....

......for me this time. It's only two days before Praise Unit leaves for Germany and sad enough for me I won't be able to go with them. I've recently started studying and I can't skip school for that long. I've known from the time we started planning the tour that I probably not gonna be able to go so I've been preparing. But from time to time I've forgotten that, like when we've been rehearsing , it's been so much fun working on the songs, new arrangements, new dance moves and just a lot of singing. And then I've realized that I won't be there to perform them, at least not this time. Sad but true.

Well I count on all of you German friends to take good care of my friends in Praise Unit. And I'm sure that you will. If you'll be half as nice as everybody were the last time we toured Germany, it will be more than enough.

Actually I will be joining the first part of the tour starting tomorrow. I will give the musicians a ride from Stockholm to Örebro where the bus is leaving from on saturday morning. So technically I will join the tour....sort of...a little. I guess I won't see much of Germany though.....

Well I hope to see all of our German friends soon, and all of you others reading this blog.

Bless you all!

Buisy week

This week is really buisy for us Praise Unit singers. As you may know we´re doing the Classical Gospel concerts with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra this weekend. We rehearsed monday and tuesday and today we´ve had the first two concerts for school kids. I´t feels quite good actually. It´s very different for us singers to be backed up by a big orchestra and no drums....a few problems with the timing but we worked it out quite well.

The orchestra is so awesome and it really feels like such a privilege to do this with them. I hope you all have got your tickets ´cause I know there´s not many left, so hurry..... Tomorrow we´re having two more school concerts before the real deal on friday. Exciting!

God bless you all!

Time to go to Oslo

In a few hours we´re leaving for Oslo, Norway. We´re playing at a big concert with some other artists/groups, Safari, Oslo Soul Teens, Per-Erik Hallin and Isaac Carree (Kirk Franklins backup singer). It´s gonna be great hearing all of them.

We´re all looking forward to it....it´s been a while since we played together....

Don´t forget to get the Mission Field CD for all your friends and loved ones for christmas....you can buy it at www.joakimarenius.com.

See you

Long time, no....

Hi everyone. It´s been a while since last time I wrote something here. But now I feel like it´s time to post something, and share a few pictures from our release concert that my wife, Anna, took. So enjoy.

This saturday we will play in Örebro concert hall, you´re all very welcome to be there.

God Bless!

/ Jakob

Dance around

Tonight the singers will meet for a dance rehearsal in Stockholm. Since I live in Örebro I can´t make it to rehearsal tonight. So I will work on my moves alone at home. I hope I can remember everything I need to remember. I really don´t know how I´m gonna do it without disturbing my wife to much though. She´s supposed to study but I guess it will be hard for her to concentrate with me jumping around to the Praise Unit songs.

Well, I´m gonna give it a try and it will definitely be interesting. Why don´t you join me whereever you are, at home, in school or at the office....even though you have to dance to the Whole CD for a few more days. But soon you can get a copy of the Mission Field to dance to.

Good luck and God bless

Excited

I actually got really excited to see the post below with all the guests. That might seem strange since I´m part of Praise Unit and I should be aware of these guests already. And I am...aware I mean. It´s just that it struck me how many people are involved in the Mission Field CD. And I can guarantee that all of them can sing, I mean they REALLY CAN SING. They are all sooooo awsome and it feels like such a blessing to have all of them helping us out. You won´t be disappointed. I promise.

I just got inside after a walk downtown Örebro. I went out to pick up some concert tickets. The tickets are for a Kirk Franklin concert in Stockholm, Sweden. And not only with Mr Franklin, both Praise Unit friends Samuel Ljungbladh and Ole Börud will play before him. I belive it will be a unforgetable evening. The concert is held November 8th in the Ericsson Globe, the biggest indoor arena in Sweden. It´s really cool that a christian event will take place there and I hope the tickets will sell out. If you´re interested check out www.ticnet.se and get your tickets there.

But before that it´s time for another concert......one week left to the release. Hope too see you there.......

/ Jakob

.....

Why is it soooo hard to write a good headline to the blog post. It feel that it has to say everything about what is written below. Well this time Ijust gave up.....

As you probibly noticed there´s not much going on here on the blog. I guess it´s because everyone is soo buisy doing everything else....a lot to do. Schools starting, back to work after the summer and of course getting the Mission Field CD ready before release date.

I´m excited about meeting the other singers on saturday to rehears, and see if I can keep up with all of them even though I missed out on our last concert. I will let you know how it worked out.

Please help us out in prayer....the CD needs to be done and we want to make the release party a memorable evening where God is present and touches peoples hearts.

Thank you all and God bless!

/ JAkob

Nashville, TN

Right now I'm in Nashville....I'm on a roadtrip with my wife and her sister. Everything is so great and we're having a great time. And at home the work with the album seem to proceed real good. Even though I'm not home and even though I won't be able to join PU on the first gig with the new songs I get the emails about it....it's so exciting to see the progress.
And I almost regret I'm here instead of there.....almost. It would be so nice to be there but....what to do. I have my sheet music with me and I'm trying to take a minute here and there to rehears.

I'm so excited to hear the album and I hope you are too....

Please keep these following weeks of work with the CD and the release in your prayer.

Bless you all!

/ Jakob

I´m back...but tomorrow I´ll leave again

I´m back in Sweden after a tour in Spain with Joybells gospel choir. We´ve had the best time and it´s been such a blessing to see what God does today....and what God does through music. We pray that God blesses Praise Unit and our new CD and that he will show in the music, the lyrics and in our lives.

I have just heard the first song that´s entirely finished (or very close) and it really sounds great if I may say so. I can´t wait to hear the rest of the songs.

After a few days in Sweden I´m actually leaving again tomorrow. I´m going for a six weeks trip in the United States with my wife and her sister. I´m soooo excited! I will try to give some reports from our trip on this blog when I can.

blessings

Sweden = weird

What´s the matter with this country I´m living in??? How can it be close to 30 degrees centigrade and sunshine from a clear blue sky one day and 8 degrees centigrade and rain the day after? Sweden is a weird place in some ways.... I wonder what God was thinking when he gave us weather like this. Well, maybe it´s a good thing that it´s changing so often. I think I get more greatful the sunny days now than I would have been if it was warm and sunny every day all year around.

Just a hi....

Hi!

It´s been a while since I wrote something here....time flies this spring. One of the reasons I havn´t been writing for a while is that I havn´t been doing anything with the CD these past weeks. All choir tracks has been recorded and now it´s other things on the schedule and I´m sure Toe-B and Joakim is working just as hard as before. About the photos we took a few weeks ago I can let you know that Mattias, who is making the CD cover and booklet, was happy about them so we don´t need to have another photo session. That feels good!

Now I`m gonna go out and shoot some hoops in the swedish spring sun.

Bless you all
/ Jakob

the photos

As you´ve already heard we had a great weekend together. I have just taken a brief look through the 800! photos we took this weekend and there are a lot of good ones and some not so good. I will give them to Mattias who will make the design of the CD cover and booklet and hopefully he finds something he likes and can use. Otherwise I don´t know what we`ll do.....

Here are some photos that we won´t use......






/Jakob

After a day in the sun.....or

After a long day in a sunny Stockholm it feels nice to soon have a good nights sleep. Today we spent most of the day in a studio in a dark basement far away from the sunny parks. But we had a great time anyway, we did som live tracks for some of the Mission Field songs. Some things weirder than other....maybee someone will post some video clips here.

Today Stockholm was filled with christian people doing a manifestation for Jesus Christ. About 15 000 people from different churches gathered for a service in the heart of Stockholm city. Awsome!

Now I need to sleep so I look good tomorrow.... when it´s picture time.(We will take the pictures for the CD cover and booklet.)

Good night and God bless!

/Jakob

Photos

I´m back after meeting with Mattias Käll, the designer of the cover and booklet for the Mission Field CD. He´s a great guy with lots of creative ideas and I´m sure that he will do an awesome job with the CD cover and booklet. We shared som ideas and thoughts about the photos for the booklet and many of our ideas were the same. It felt like we had a quite similar view on what they should look like. That´s a good start I think. Lets just hope that the photos turn out the way we planned ( I guess that´s my job).

The photosessions are planned for next weekend, we´ll get back with reports from there...........

Check out Mattias homepage to see what he´s done before. www.mattiaskall.se

Now I really want to go out in the sun.

/ Jakob

CD cover

This friday I will meet up with Mattias Käll who will do the CD cover design. We are going to talk about pictures in the cover. Even though I´m not a professional photografer I´ve been asked to take pictures of the group for the CD. I´m very excited but also a little bit nervous about doing it. So it will be nice to hook up with Mattias and take a look at some of his ideas, and hopefully the result will be great. I think so since everyone is so beautiful.....it´s hard to mess it up. I don´t know who will take my pictures but I guess we´ll work it out.

I`ll let you know how the meeting went.

Blessings

/ Jakob

Feels good to be back

I´m back home after one week of work at a camp for people with autism. I´ve had a great week and I always feel very blessed after these camps. I learn a lot from hanging out with those people that looks like me in many ways but that also are very different from myself. And after one week without a computer and internet it feels good to enter this blog and see what my friends in Praise Unit´s been up to. The recording is obviously continuing acording to plan. Exept working with the album we are trying to schedule for conserts this summer. We have many invataitions and now it´s just the matter of making sure we have singers and a band that´s available these dates. If you want Praise Unit to visit your city, don´t hesitate to contact us.

bless
/ Jakob

There will be a CD....

As you can hear below we delivered some really nice lines this past weekend. Sadly Johannes got sick but me and Jacob had a great time. It´s quite challenging to sing three days straight and I actually didn´t think it would work out as well as it did. But we started every recording session by putting it all in the hands of the Lord and I´m sure that he carried us.

We´ve been talking, planning and rehearsing for the CD but it´s so hard to believe it actually will be made untill your in the studio. After this past weekend it feels real and I´m really looking forward to hear the final mix, I hope you are too.

A dream....

Last night I had a really wierd dream. I dreamt that it was time to record the tenor vocals for our CD. We went to the "studio", but when we got there there were just three microphones hanging from a tree in a small forest. And there were also a bunch of teenagers running around there. Anyway, we were about to start the recording and we just heard the voice of Joakim giving us directions from the control room which were somewhere else. Even though the kids were running around giving us a hard time we started. And when the music started I didn´t recognize the song but i figured it was just a new intro that I hadn´t heard before. But all of a sudden the other guys started singing something I´d never heard before. It was really weird. I don´t know what it means, maybe that I´m nervous about the recording....

Well, hopefully it will work out a little better than in my dream.....

Please continue to keep our work in your prayers. Thanks!

/ Jakob

A quite nice way to rehearse

This past weekend we had rehearsals both saturday and sunday. And we couldn´t be where we usually are so we had to find an other solution. We ended up in Kristians 3 room apartment. I thought it would be hard to sit back in a sofa and sing the high tenor notes but it was really nice. We had a nice relaxed time and we did get a lot of work done. And Kristian was a really good host serving us coffee and "vaniljlängd". Just hope he won´t be evicted from all the noise. The next day we met at Felicias place instead, maybe this should be the new way of rehearsing so we get to go home to everyone in the group?

Well, here´s some pictures from the two days.

Blessings
/Jakob

Just a picture

I just wanted to post a picture from our rehearsal in Örebro yesterday. We are the Örebro part of the singers.

God bless