This past month has gone very well for me. Since my last update I´ve worked on a few violin arrangements that I played on my 2-week trip to the States to help my dad raise funds for our ministry. We visited several churches in west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. After saving up for about a year, I am blessed to finally have an electric violin made by John Jordan. This my first chance ever to have an electric violin of such good quality. It sounds amazing. This along with a Boss effects pedal I got are key to developing the music ministry of our church here in Argentina. Together they will prove to be part of the unique praise and worship sound I´m going for.

When I was in Portales, New Mexico, the assistant pastor had me play my electric violin for a recording he was working on. I thoroughly enjoyed doing so, and it was a highlight of my trip. The recording engineer has a daughter who is interested in violin, so I let her try out my electric one. She was very happy, and I was glad to inspire her.

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We had great missions-inspiring services up there. The people were very kind-hearted and generous. Now that I´m back, I continue all my violin teaching and I hit the ground running preparing our church band for more evangelism in the park. God is good.

Easter

We've done a couple presentations with the band in the plaza. Then right afterwards it's been pretty busy getting the Easter presentations ready. The students have worked very hard to sound their best. On Tuesday, April 3rd, master church planter and an amazing man of faith, Ralph Hiatt came to visit us (http://ralphhiatt.blogspot.com.ar/). The sanctuary was packed. We showed him one of our presentations, an arrangement of Joyful, Joyful. He told me that the violins can attract a lot of attention in the plaza. I pray they will be used to bring many people to a new life in Christ. The sanctuary was also packed the following Saturday and Sunday when we did the rest of our Easter presentations. People were really ministered to. Here are some clips:

Joyful, Joyful based on the version by Casting Crowns

Salvation Is Here by Hillsong United

Pray that many will get to know Jesus personally through our music ministry.
God bless.

New band for evangelism

Summer has gone remarkably well in our church in the center of Buenos Aires. Several have gone on vacation, but we haven't had empty services. God has facilitated our evangelism in the central plaza right in front of the congress building by putting us in contact with Miguel Ángel. He's been evangelizing there for almost a year, showing movies and speaking almost every night of the week. He wants to support our church in any way he can, offering his portable sound system and projector for us to use in ministry in the plaza. This is motivating our church to take advantage of the warm weather in the plaza while we have it to evangelize more effectively. There will be drama; we will show movies; and we are putting together a band to play concerts in the plaza. We have a couple singers, 2 guitarists, and a bassist. We also have a few who are interested in taking up the drums, and several of my violinists will be participating as well. We have already started weekly rehearsals and one of my goals is for them to play in all of our regular services. We have been praying for successful evangelism through this music ministry, we want to reach the lost and bring about a new season in the development of the Potter's Hands Christian Center.

Extreme blessings,
Jeff

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! The Christmas presentations went fairly well. Here´s a video of everyone playing together one of the first songs I put in the new Suzuki Method.

There were 3 students who were unable to participate. Stephany and Roxana prepared Silent Night almost entirely on their own only 6 months after picking up the instrument. They also played a little arrangement, and I played the violin with our band on one of Chris Tomlin´s songs. Presentations like these are important for the students since it gives them a challenge and a short-term goal to work towards. As soon as they´re done, they really feel the practice has paid off, and they realize that they can be useful in music ministry.

We recently had a meeting with members of the youth group to discuss evangelism for this year. We plan on playing music in the street and handing out coffee. I would like to get my students involved in this as soon as I can. Violinists playing something unique with the band could definitely draw more attention. Basically our goal this year is to reach more people than last, especially in these summer months. Pray for us to achieve this.

God bless and have a great 2012.

Hi everyone. I've had some great things happen since my last post. Firstly, after many, many hours of work, I finished all the recordings for Book 1 of the New Suzuki Method. This is key to getting my students to play the violin and cello in a new way. There are so many new things I want to do with the instruments, but I realize that right now the most important thing is to make a way for them to learn how to play cool new stuff. Of course, I've left in some of the original classical pieces because of the experience they have to offer.

The book starts off with a few traditional songs like "I have decided to follow Jesus" and "Nothing but the blood of Jesus" so they have some simple melodies to develop the most basic techniques, but the goal of the second half of the book is to introduce and accustom them to pop music and its melodic characteristics. I have them learn well-known pop songs used congregationally and sung by big Latin American worship leaders like Marcos Witt and Danilo Montero. At the end of Book 1, the students play their first arrangement which is a big step, because up until that point they have only been playing melodies. That's only good as a didactic tool, because in a band, only the lead singer handles the melody. I would say the best thing about Book 1 is that in about a year to a year and a half, it takes the student from knowing nothing about the violin to being able to play an uptempo pop song in a band very well without copying the melody of the lead vocalist and without looking totally out of place as he tries to find a couple notes that could sound good. So from that point on, we work on getting the violin to fit in with the rest of the band and to do it well.

Secondly, we have a new member in CPC. His name is Enzo, and he's 7 years old. He has a very difficult home life. He's been at almost every service with his family and was wanting to start violin for quite a while now. I thought I would have to have him wait until next year while I saved up for a violin for him, but thanks to New Hope Worship Center in Newcastle, PA pastored by Bill Whisel, we were able to get it right away. We're very grateful for their support. This gives Enzo a big opportunity to learn how to serve God in a unique way.

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Later on, I plan to get a cello and take some classes to at least have some knowledge and playing ability on the instrument. This will help inspire people in the church to take up cello and will also let me start them off teaching them myself. It will also help me develop a method and repertoire for learning modern music styles on the cello. Currently, I have 2 people who want to learn cello. Once we're able to get one, I'll be looking for a good teacher right away.

For the last few weeks I've been preparing some music for my violin students to play for Christmas. In my next post I'll be sure to upload a video of the presentation.

Extreme blessings!
Jeff

New students

For the past 4 years I have been working in my home church in the center of Buenos Aires as a violin teacher to train a group of string players who know how to worship God and play with excellence and versatility. Developing good violinists and cellists takes a long time. It's not like learning guitar or bass; there are many more things to coordinate, but strings used in the right way can give music a very unique sound. On special occasions we've done some presentations. Here's one of them that we did last year:

This is just the beginning of a unique music ministry that I am developing. I teach using the Suzuki Method which is excellent except that it only deals with classical music. So I'm taking it and changing its repertoire around so students can learn all modern styles of music. I'm currently working on finishing the recordings for Book 1. Later on I'll upload more info on my new repertoire.

Currently I have 11 students in CPC Ministries. On Saturday, Sept. 17 we had a group class. It was a great incentive to have everyone together to play their violins. Everyone really enjoyed it.

Back row, left to right: Me, Roxana, Rocío, Sebastián, Joaquín, and Tomás. Front row: Arianna, Melina, Yamila, Jonatán, Estefanía, and Débora (click to enlarge)

Aside from Joaquín and Débora, all of these students have started within the past few weeks or months. Joaquín has been with us for about 3 years, and he's just about ready to start playing in some of our services. Soon I'll be arranging some of our congregational songs for him.


So up until now, this is the team with more people to come later on. I'm still looking for someone interested in cello. Hopefully we can work out an arrangement with regards to the costs. Soon we will be getting a presentation together for Christmas.

Prayer requests:

• Pray for each student to grow deeper in their relationship with God.
• Pray that God will make a way for someone in our church to take up the cello. Cellos are around triple the price of violins, and I will have to find a teacher somewhere.
• Pray that we will never get discouraged or lose sight of God's wonderful calling to us.

Extreme blessings and thanks for visiting.