I’ll be going tonight. Studio Nine, Edward Street, Wellington, New Zealand. Doors open at 10pm, and my guess is Mr Scruff is gonna start up about midnight… We’ll see… I’ll be wearing this really hidiously loud green shirt. Well, it’s not that hideous, and it’ll be dark Maybe you’ll see me there… who knows? Full report when I recover early tomorrow afternoon…

On Friday, I went to Parachute 03, and it ROCKED! Seriously, if you haven’t been to Parachute, you haven’t lived

Friday 24th:
Depart Karori Baptist at 8:30am with Matamata punched in as our destination. Rod was driving our van up. We stopped off in Taihape for a toilet break, and for lunch. We arrive at Totara Springs, the campsite where Parachute is held about 5ish. We put up our tents in the spitting rain, and stuff kicked off about 7:30.
Later that night at 10:40, I went to the Elusive Tones of Wonder, and they played the funky tunes. They had to cut their set short, which was unfortunate. I was wearing one of my various orange shirts, so I caught up with the Moz and Gannett and they gladly signed it W00t! I was pretty tired at this point – road trips tend to do that to a person.

Saturday:
I got up, got dressed, got some brekkie and went down to the main stage to worship. Tony Campolo was talking this year – I really was challenged about what he had to say: Believing in Jesus is easy, but following him as a disciple is much much harder. Then he spoke again on the Politics of Jesus – I don’t remember much of that for some reason. I went to the village and looked around after that. I went to the ParachuteMusic.com tent which was selling heaps of christian music and t-shirts and junk. I was hardly in there for 30 seconds when I hear someone shout out “Brett!” behind me. So I turn around, and there’s Hillary working behind the counter! For those of you who don’t know, Hillary is my ex-girlfriend who I still get along with really well – she’s one of my best friends So we say Hi and hug and stuff and she asks me if I was going to the Jitterbug Swing Dance – I said yeah I’ll go with if you want – so we went and had a great old time! At Parachute 2000 three years before this we had gone together to the Barndance Hoedown where Obadiah and the Minor Prophets were playing classic old country hoedown music and teaching people to doe-see-doe, so this year was a bit of a flashback – but it was a really fun time
I didn’t really do a whole lot till 7:30 so I went down to main stage and got in the HUGE mosh pit where there was easily over 800 bodies, where I listened to Sarah McBride, Rapture Ruckus (who were da bomb) and Detour (who rocked the place!). I was on the bottom of a mosh pit collapse – it didn’t hurt or anything, but it was an experience for sure. Smelly!
Out of Eden came on, and I left the mosh pit feeling really knackered, and I went back the to the tent and crashed.

Sunday:
I got up about 6:30 and went and had a shower. Sweet! The showers at Parachute were actually of a pretty good standard! Constant hot water, only one tap, and decent pressure. Went to morning worship where Elevator, a electronica band(?) played the classics. The sermon by John Burns who spoke about the miracle in a daddy’s hug – Hugging your children can make the difference in their lives – believe it!
After that, I went to Andy Hunter, a christian DJ from the UK – he spoke about having worship as a lifestyle. What I got out of it was how he likened the relationship with Jesus as a love relationship not unlike a relationship with your wife or husband – you have to really spend time with him by yourself to get to know him, and the more you spend time with him, the more you’ll want to keep spending time with him.
Straight after Andy Hunter, the MC on the Atomic Stage where the seminar was came out and said they would be starting a half-hour early for Brotherhood Lush, who weren’t on the cards. Apparently Brotherhood Lush broke up about two years ago, and the three band members turned up at Parachute this year, met up, and decided to do a surprise reunion concert. So I hung around and went and listened to them. They played Sea-sick Fish, Even If, and another song. They also played Mind Your Head. They called out to the minor crowd who was there and said we need background vocalists for this song. One girl put her hand up, and I said yeah, allright, I’ll come up to, so I did, and I sung Mind your head with Brotherhood Lush! W00t!
After that I just mucked around not doing a whole lot, but I caught up with Kodiak and we decided to go see the bands at mainstage who were doing contemporary worship. Orange (formally known as spacedoctrine), Form and then the amazing South African band Tree63 who honestly just played amazing worship songs I really enjoyed worshiping God with. Wow, it was sweet! Then me and Kode went to the Elusive Tones again who got to finish their set this time – they were really cool – then we dashed back to mainstage to hear Andy Hunter – Kodiak didn’t enjoy him that much, but I thought he was awesome! I left about three quarters the way through his set cos I was real tired.

Monday:
Wow, I got up, went to listen to Tony Campolo again, and then came back and helped pull the tents down, took my gear back to the van, and we left headed for Wellington at about 12:30ish.

So over all, the weekend was WICKED! Next year, it’s gonna be at Mystery Creek in Hamilton, so I think I’ll try and take the plane up. Sweet!