The End: Arizona

Our final stop for our tour was in Arizona.  We found a great deal for a hotel on the way and we jumped on it.  Turned out being a golf resort and we so wish we had our clubs...and some spare time.  Here's the view from our room.

The first destination was in the Mesa area.  Central Christian Church (which has 5 campuses) brought Trent in to lead worship and for special music.  They have a Saturday PM service and 3 Sunday services, so it was a long weekend.  But a great one!

I hung out in the choir room during worship and therefore was only able to get a picture of the screen.  Trent led with a full band.  It was fun to see and hear him with all the extra music!  

At a certain point in the service I would join him to do "Rise" and I was very nervous each time.  I had to carry my cajon, shaker and tambourine while another guy carried all my microphones all while the pastor is talking about communion.  I was scared I'd drop something. All was well, though, and every service I made no unnecessary noise.

We left Mesa and went to the Phoenix area to stay with a family (The Whitens), whom we had never met.  Some people think it's crazy that we can do that - stay with strangers - but it's just what we do and we have made some fabulous friends doing so.  Anyway, this family has a guest house that they let us stay in for 6 nights!!!  They offer the guest house to bands and it was neat to read all the guest book entries.

And this was in the kitchen and I thought it was adorable.

They told us about this place.  Chinese, Mexican and Jamaican.  I still have dreams about it.   

It's been on Triple-D!  If you'd like, watch the episode here.

I look at this and it makes my mouth water.  I wish they could ship.  Or they should just open one in Nashville...which I told them to do on my comment card, so here's hoping!

While in town, we had two shows.  The first was at their church.  The Whitens do amazing home shows and we can't wait to do one in their awesome backyard.  Due to the almost record breaking heat, they thought air conditioning was better than outside.  We agreed.

The other show was at the Elevate Music Festival in Peoria, AZ.  Tons of bands there.  We played the outdoor stage in the afternoon.  It was very hot.  And I wore black jeans.  I wanted to say, "I'm not a hipster!  It's just that if I don't wear dark colored pants, you'll see my sweat that often looks like a peed my pants!"

Anyway, it was a quick set and then we headed back to the guest house to get rested and packed up for our departure.

Did I mention they had fruit trees?  We got an apple and an orange and they were yummy.

They also have a precious golden named Moxy and we fell quickly in love.

We left Phoenix and headed to Tucson to be with Northminster Presbyterian Church.  In true Monk fashion, we found a local Vietnamese restaurant and OH MY WORD.  This bowl of goodness was life changing.  I wish they could ship, too.  

We shared special music during the contemporary and traditional services on Sunday AM.  The traditional service was, as you can imagine, filled with older people who like their traditional music with a lot of pipe organ.  They were all precious and loved the song, but, during "Heavy Load" (Trent's more hymnal-ish original) there was an old man with his hands on his ears.  Ha!  Trent saw it, I didn't.  I so wish I had.

After church, we went to the hotel and enjoyed some pool time then we went back up there to sound check for the show.  And this is our "last show of the tour" photo.

If you follow me on instagram, you saw this.  Oh I want it so bad.  It's about as modern as I'll ever get, but I can just picture it in my home someday.  A girl can dream...

Before the love offering, the pastor did an impromptu Q & A.  It was cute!  It gave people a chance to know a bit more about us.  Trent did great; he's quick on his feet and adorably witty.

Trent and Timothy (the worship leader's hubby).

And the 4 of us.  Julia was our contact and an absolute pleasure to deal with.  (I wish that was always the case.)

Whew!  That was a long time on the road.  We appreciate every place that brought us in and every sight we saw.  The tour was a learning experience in several ways, that's for sure.  Mostly, it was fun to have a tour/vacay before Baby Monk comes.

  

YAY!!!  I can now talk about the baby on here!

(My mom calls it Pickles, due to my craving for all things pickled.)

Again, thanks for traveling with us!