Phil Wickham, Haiti & more…

Hey everyone, we’re excited to tell you about a few more things happening in the 513FREE arena.  Here they are in no particular order.

1. Phil Wickham (August 16th, 2009)  We’ll be opening for Phil Wickham at August’s Substance event.  The event will be held at Trinity Equestrian Center in Eau Claire.  The evening’s events start at 7PM and the concert will be FREE, yes, FREE to the general public.  Please bring a lawn chair and plan for a great night of worship and music.  For more details, please visit (www.substanceec.org).

2. Haiti (March, 2009) We’re planning an overseas mission trip for the team, to share our talents, serve and to grow as Christ followers.  Many of our supporters are also supporters of orphanages and pastors in the country of Haiti.  We’re planning to team up with Pastor Yves to lead worship for a pastor’s conference held near the capital city of Port Au Prince.  This is a great opportunity for each of us to experience God’s hand in other areas of the world.  It will be a costly trip, please pray for God’s provision as each of us attempt to raise money to go on this trip.  Please pray for our safety and trip preparations as we move forward.

3. Casper Wyoming (December 2009) We just booked New Year’s Eve with our partner in ministry, Pastor Jim Shade.  We’re excited to go back to Casper, to hook up with many of the people we met last year.  We’re planning to book a few events in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Hopefully we’ll make some new connections and we’ll also break up the 16 hour drive.

4. Booking, we’re working on new methods for booking.  God is expanding our territory and we’re trying to be good stewards of our time and talents as we move forward with this ministry.  We’re thankful for Rodney Holum and the Loveliens as they put their time and talents into helping us move forward.

5. Van, we need a van.  We’re looking for a passenger van, something that we can all fit in when we travel.  Currently we are driving two or more cars to each event due to vehicle space.  We’re looking for something in decent shape, high miles is OK.  If you know of a church or business looking to get rid of or possibly donate (wink wink) we’d love to have a conversation, please keep us in the loop.

Finally, we ask that you continue to pray for us as we are constantly following Him.  We’re being presented with more and more opportunities.  We’re so thankful God has given us the opportunity to do what we do.  Thanks again to all of our supporters.

In Him,

Jesse & 513FREE

It’s a Busy Summer…

We had a busy schedule planned for the summer of 2009, and we’re booking even more.  We’re excited to announce these events…

July 9 (The Living Room, Eau Claire, WI).
July 31 (Bible Smuggling Event, TBD) : Ladysmith Area, local missionary benefit.
August 8 (The Living Room, Eau Claire, WI) : The Anniversary Event.
August 22 (Concert with End of December, Eau Claire, WI) : Venue TBD.

We’re ramping up our fall schedule, stay tuned…

New Album…

Just as our blog entries have been long overdue, so has our first album as a band.

The very next thing on our radar is a 513FREE EP.  We’re going to start and finish that project late this summer.  Thanks to everyone for your encouraging words and support.  We’re excited to hear the finished product!

Today is the Day!

We’re so excited to be rolling out our new website today!  It’s been a work in progress for a while.  We’re still working out a few kinks, so bear with us.

This is the start of yet another chapter in the ministry of 513FREE.  At this point we’re refining our vision and focusing on what’s next.  We’re continually getting tighter as a team and as a band.  We’re seeing God open doors we couldn’t have imagined.  It’s been an amazing ride and we’re excited to see where it goes.

Along with this website we’re planning to work on some new print material and other promotional items to help get our name out there. We’ll continue to use the gifts God’s given us to further the ministry He’s entrusted us with.

Thanks again to everyone who’s supported us over the years.  You’re not forgotten.

Jesse

It was a crazy January…

We were all over the place, Wyoming, Michigan, Eau Claire and Osseo.  Churches, missions and coffee houses.  We spent some time working on our new album, and working toward planning our next SUBSTANCE event (February 15 @ Peace Church in Eau Claire).  Along with being busy traveling, we were booking events and having fun.  It was a great month, for the first month of the year, we really built some momentum.  Our calendar is insane and we have 11 more months of booking and events to go. 

Last night (January 30) we hung out with the great people at the Eternity Coffee House (Osseo Community Church).  It’s a sweet venue just outside of Osseo, we met some great people and had a great time worshipping and playing music there.  We were invited back on a date TBD, we’ll keep you posted, it’s looking like March.  At the same time we’ll lead worship at the Sunday morning service.  Thanks to Tyler for all of his hard work and setting up last nights event.  

We were excited to have our friend Chris Atkins (Eau Claire, Wesleyan) join us last night on the drums.  He is a crazy talented dude, he jumped in on the drums and didn’t miss a beat, no pun intended.  Thanks to Chris for hanging out with us.  Of course we missed Nate, who was in Florida on vacation.  

Overall, it was an awesome month and we’re looking forward to what’s ahead.  Thanks again to everyone for your prayers and generous support.  God is really working through 513FREE.

Below are the photos from the Eternity Coffee House in Osseo, WI.

MBTC & SUBSTANCE, an incredible weekend…

We didn’t get much sleep, but this was one amazing weekend of ministry.  

Saturday (MBTC):  We started out on Saturday the 17th at about 12:30PM.  We took 12 people to Mission Bible Training Center in Gaastra.  Our friends the Reids (Nick, Beth, Susan, Lucy & Mary Lou) joined up with us for the weekend, and Monte Eiseman from Grace Community Church tagged along for the ride to Michigan.  The roads were absolutely horrible, it’s about a four hour drive from Rice Lake.  We pulled a trailer full of clothes, food and musical equipment.  We arrived at 4:45PM and helped prepare dinner, thanks to Jason Shatley for the great donation.  Following dinner we led worship and Matt Zacharias (sax) led the teaching time.  We say it every time, but it is so awesome to worship with the residents at MBTC.  While there we video recorded a tour of the facility, we’ll post that soon so you can all see what goes on up there.   The worship time was awesome, it was great to have Nick Reid back in the mix, and we’re excited to have him able to join us more in the future.  We got home at about 2AM.  

Sunday (SUBSTANCE): Most of the team has responsibilities at their local churches, so we got up early and went to our separate services.  We left for Eau Claire at about 1PM.  We all congregated at the Living Room for hangout time, last minute prep and for some Toppers pizza (Thanks Living Room!).  From there we all went over to Peace and prepared for Substance.  This was the first actual Substance event, the previous event was a “test-run.”  We were amazed by the turnout!  We had about 130 people in attendance.  There were young adults, families, and youth.  It was truly multi-generational, that was exactly what we wanted.  Worship was awesome, and Pastor James explained the DNA of Substance.  You can learn more about Substance by going to SubstanceEC.org.  Substance was born by a few of us realizing the need for something of Substance in the Chippewa Valley.  513FREE will be the Substance worship team each month, and joining us will be Sarah Jade.  We’ll be posting each event’s video and teaching materials on that website.   Substance meets the 3rd Sunday night of each month at Peace Church in Eau Claire.  Thanks to our great volunteers and teams at Substance!

A couple other notes, the Friday night Living Room event is cancelled, we are still on for Saturday night (Jan. 24).  We’ll be in Osseo Wisconsin on January 30, we have a couple events setup for February and we’re adding more.  We’ve also committed to MBTC every other month, we’re really excited about partnering up to minister with them!   Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support.  We’re looking forward to what God has in store!

Acoustic @ The Living Room

We want to say thanks to the Living Room for such an amazing weekend.  Matt Zacharias (sax), myself (Jesse Hamble) and Stephanie Joy teamed up for some great worship and music.  We played both Friday and Saturday night (January 9 & 10).  Friday night we had about 60 people in attendance and Saturday 30-40 people.  We meshed well with Stephanie and on Saturday night her dad Dave joined us on percussion.  We had a great time, as usual.  Ron and Michelle are amazing hosts, and we’ve really enjoyed building this relationship.  There will be another acoustic weekend in January (23rd & 24th), same time same place.  Some of 513FREE will be there and a few more musicians will join us, we don’t have that finalized yet.  So, if you’re in Eau Claire, stop by the Living Room.  Just off of north Clairemont (US 12) on Cameron Street.    Here are the photos from the event.  

Casper Wyoming Trip Summary & Other News…

First off, Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone who helped see 513FREE move forward this past year. We are greatful for all of the prayers and support from all of you all over the world. Thanks!

A Few Upcoming Things…
We pretty much booked up for January, check the schedule to see where we’re playing. As always, the events we do are free so it won’t cost you anything to come and out experience some great worship and fellowship. We’re playing on January 30th @ the Eternity Coffee House in Osseo, and we’re in the process of setting up some events over by Madison WI at another coffee house / church. Substance will be on January 18th @ Peace Lutheran Church. If you can make it, we’d love to see you. On another note, our YouTube channel now has videos on it. It’s our goal to post videos from each event we do, so check it out.

Casper Wyoming (Trip Summary)
We were invited to Casper Wyoming by our great friend and partner in ministry, Jim Shade. We set out on Tuesday December 30 drving sixteen hours to Casper Wyoming, arriving there about 3PM their time. The team was Jesse, Jonny, Nate & Shelby. We were scheduled to play an event for New Years Eve at “The Link” in Casper at 10PM. We arrived, setup, rehearsed and played. It all seems like a blur, we were so tired. The event went really well, we had a small group of kids, but they were the craziest we’ve seen, it was a blast. Following the music we played football, volleyball and basketball with the kids and made it back to the hotel about 3AM. We slept for a while after that.

Throughout the week we spent time with the Fuhrers, the Shades and other great people from the Christian Church of Casper. We helped Jim with some web development and spent some time just dreaming and planning ministry events. We (513FREE) love to work with Jim Shade, his heart and vision is the same as ours, and his preaching is incredible. We traveled into the mountains and toured Casper. We had some great meals and were able to meet some new people and friends.

On Sunday we led worship. We had the great pleasure of having Jim & Tom Fuhrer join us (guitar / piano). Tom is the worship leader at CCCasper. He and his dad (Jim) are great musicians and a lot of fun to work with. Worship was great, Jim’s message powerful. It was a great Sunday. Following church we set out on the 16 hour hike back to the frigid temperatures of Wisconsin.

Overall the trip was amazing, as a team we had time to connect and develop. We met some great people who were really excited about what God is doing in Casper and through 513FREE. We were seriously blessed with the generous donations from the folks in Casper. Because of their gift we’ll be able to purchase the recording equipment we need to put together our next CD project. We’re running out of our current stash, so it’s time for a new one. Our music is always free. With us having our own equipment, it allows us to continue to do that without shelling out thousands of dollars. It opens up many doors. So to all of you in Casper, THANK YOU!

We’ve already planned our next trip out west, we’ll be posting that as soon as the dates become available. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this trip possible. Some great people in Turtle Lake helping to get the vehicle and trailer up to par. Thanks to Grace Community Church for your faithful contributions and support of this ministry.

Casper Wyoming, Day 2 & 3…

(Thursday)

The day was short, we slept until about 1PM. It’s about 10PM now. We had a great afternoon though. I (Jesse) spent some time with Jim Shade and his brother David. We brainstormed and did some dreaming about ministry, and worked a bit on his website. The rest of the crew took off and did some Casper exploration. You’ll see some photos posted here. After that we spent some time practicing for Sunday and then went to dinner. We hung out with the Fuhrers. It was great, we had dinner and played Catchphrase. Super cool and fun family. It was a blast, thanks Fuhrers! We were able to share with them about 513 and all of the exciting things that have happened and were happening. We also had some great conversation about the lock-in last night. There were a few kids that just walked in off the street and we were able to minister to them, it was cool.

(Friday)

We pretty much just hung out today and explored Casper. We went up into the mountains and shot a video clip. Checked out some thrift stores where Shelby finally got that tie he wanted so badly. We had some band practice, figured out what was up for Sunday and then had dinner at Guadalhara (sp?). A mexican restaurant similar to Casa Mexicana or Cancun. It was super, we hung out with the Shades, Fuhrers and Nathan. Good times, now we’re going to watch football and sleep…we did add some more photos and there are some cool funny new videos at (youtube.com/513freetv).

Sleepless in Casper (Wyoming)…

Happy New Year! It’s 11:53AM in Casper, and the crew is all still sleeping. It’s about 45 degrees with 100 mph wind gusts. After being awake for 30+ hours, we finally got to sleep. It was a long scenic drive from Wisconsin. The night we left (December 30) we got about 10 inches of snow, making the drive from Rice Lake to central Minnesota very interesting. We got into Casper about 3PM MST. We unloaded and setup for the concert, played at about 9:30 until 10:30. After that we played some volleyball, football and basketball. There were about 20-30 kids in attendance for a lock-in at “The Link.” Even though the group was small, we had a lot of participation and we all had a blast. Look for some video clips soon. Today we’re going to catch up on some sleep, and then spend some time with Jim Shade (Christian Church of Casper). We’re helping him with a bunch of different things including web development and some tech work at the church. We’ll keep you updated as the trip goes on, it’s been great so far.