I hope life has been good to you all. I'm sorry I haven't been posting much here lately--I've been sorely missing my usual flatpick habit, but for a good reason. The past two months were consumed in the effort of recording my first real album. Surprisingly, while there is some flatpick content on the album, it's not really a flatpicking album. It's a Christmas album, featuring all traditional Christmas hymns presented in an array of styles. You can check the album out if you scroll to the bottom of the page.
I had lots of help from a slew of very talented musicians I know, and I hope you really enjoy the album. I'm very happy with it--it's excellent music. We picked "Pure Religion" as a band name (in reference to James 1:27--Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...), and "Hopeful" as an album name in reference to our hopes of helping someone out and in reference to the organization Project Hopeful. I'll explain below!
The reason I recorded this album was in hopes of raising money for a child we almost adopted. The money raised by the album will all be donated to help fund his adoption by a different family. If you would, bear with me and let me tell you a little about my personal history with this boy, whose case name (psuedonym) is Jack.
Jack is in 5th
grade, and he lives in a large city in eastern Europe. He
has been passed over for adoption many times due to his special medical needs and the strict rules his district has for potential adoptive
parents. Seeing other, younger, children
around him being adopted has made an emotional impact on him, and he is really
desperate to belong to a loving family.
My
wife and I heard about him through some of her friends
and a website called Project Hopeful which specializes in adoptions of special
needs kids. We had been thinking hard
about adopting Jack when the adoption agency let us know that another family
who was already approved by a home study agency wanted to adopt Jack. Not wanting to impede Jack finding a family,
we bowed out and prayed for things to work out.
A
few weeks after we had received word of the new adoptive family, the father of
that family came home from work and found his wife dead on the couch—no pulse,
no breathing, no knowledge of how long she had been like that. She was rushed to hospital, and they managed
to get her heart beating again. She was
in a coma for several days with an artificially lowered body temperature, then
the attempt was made to revive her (administering anesthetics and slowly
raising her body temperature). Thank
God, she was successfully revived and is herself again—her memories and
personality were not affected.
Unfortunately
for Jack, this was a disqualifying medical occurrence for that family—they were
no longer eligible to adopt him. My wife
and I knew the call would be coming soon to ask us if we were ready to pursue
Jack’s adoption, and we were praying for guidance and conviction about what to
do. Then we learned that we have a new
baby on the way. This is—of course—exciting news, but it means another complication and
delay for Jack. His region doesn’t allow
pregnant couples or couples with babies under a year old to adopt. So this meant at least a two year delay for
our ability to adopt Jack.
Recently, a family in Maryland has committed to adopt Jack, and we are excited for him and them. However, adoptions can be very expensive, and like most families this family doesn't have the large amount of money on hand that is required to pay for the administrative and travel expenses associated with the adoption.
If you've been wanting to say thanks for the rhythm tracks or tabs or videos, this is an opportunity to do so that I would greatly appreciate. Just scroll to the bottom of the screen to check it out, or if you're a downloading type of person, you can use these links:
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/hopeful/id580738274
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Pure_Religion_Hopeful?id=Bp3k4y36s3fzwumunravtrvr52e&feature=artist-albums#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDYwMiwiYWxidW0tQnAzazR5MzZzM2Z6d3VtdW5yYXZ0cnZyNTJlIl0.
Amazon mp3: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=pure+religion+hopeful
Thanks so much for visiting. I hope you love the album. Happy Thanksgiving!
If you've been wanting to say thanks for the rhythm tracks or tabs or videos, this is an opportunity to do so that I would greatly appreciate. Just scroll to the bottom of the screen to check it out, or if you're a downloading type of person, you can use these links:
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/hopeful/id580738274
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Pure_Religion_Hopeful?id=Bp3k4y36s3fzwumunravtrvr52e&feature=artist-albums#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDYwMiwiYWxidW0tQnAzazR5MzZzM2Z6d3VtdW5yYXZ0cnZyNTJlIl0.
Amazon mp3: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=pure+religion+hopeful
Thanks so much for visiting. I hope you love the album. Happy Thanksgiving!
