New Recording - Grace

Last night, a friend of mine, Erin McGough, joined me in my "home studio" to record some songs. Of everyone with whom I've sung, her voice is my favorite. She's been student teaching this semester, so finding time to record together has been difficult, but patience pays off. Last night Amanda made a wonderful dinner (as always), Erin joined us, and afterward we recorded the vocals to this song.

It has been several years since I wrote Grace. The chorus spontaneously came to me in a time of worship at a small bible study, I immediately began penning the rest. It has mostly remained the same despite my several attempts to rewrite the verse.

The song is about recognizing our own frailty and great need for God's help. It's tempting to try to use the strength of our wills to be better people, but in my experience this only leads to disappointment and failure. The great beauty of the Gospel is that it frees us from the shackles of always trying to measure up. God loves and accepts us as we are, and through his grace and the strength of his love he takes the "broken vessels" of our lives and makes us into something beautiful.

My prayer for you is that as you listen to this song, that you would, humbly go to God and receive all the good things he has for you.

I may continue to fiddle with the recording, so consider this a "leaked" version. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments!

Grace (Featuring Erin McGough) - Ben Brenner
(Download - mp3|5.8MB)

Grace by Ben Brenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Not Going Yet...

As Amanda posted on our shared blog (www.benandamanda.com) we got caught in the medical screening and will not be able to go to central Asia in September. So we will be in Mobile for a little longer. We are still planning to visit my sisters and friends accross the country. Once we get medically cleared, then Peace Corps will offer us another invitation to another country and program. We could leave as soon as this winter or more likely sometime in May or June 2009. Please feel free to subscribe to www.benandamanda.com or sign up to our E-mail updates on the site.

Fourth of July - FOI style

We took a bunch of students to see fireworks down at the Battleship on Friday. We all had a lot of fun, though the ants were biting... Thanks to Jim for the photos (I forgot my camera).

my phone's broken

I meant to take a picture of it before I came to the coffee house, but I forgot. I've had the phone for 3 1/2 years and it shows. I noticed a week ago that a section from the hinge area of the clamshell had broken off. I thought that was a sure sign that the phone was getting old. Yesturday, as I was talking to an international on the phone at the same time as I was preparing my bicycle for a ride out to my parent's house, I dropped the phone. The impact separated the two sides of the clamshell and tore the data ribbons, making the phone rather difficult to repair. Since I've had the phone for so long, I am eligible for a new phone from Verizon. In fact they would give me $100 over the price of their free phones. The problem is that I plan on canceling my service when I leave for central Asia in September. Fortunately my Mom still had her old Nokia which originally was my Nokia that I got when I first signed up with Verizon four or five years ago. It was not working very well for her when she upgraded, but it does work better than my broken clamshell. Another fortunate aspect to this whole adventure is that the base of my clamshell still works. So when I plugged it into my computer I was able to download all of my contacts! I was afraid I would lose most of them, and not know how to get in touch with people. Anyway. If you have an extra Verizon phone laying around that you're not using and would like to lend to me for the next few months, that would be awesome. Though as can be seen from the above paragraphs I'm not the best at keeping phones looking new. Hopefully I'll post photo soon.

Bicycle

I'm finally posting this picture of my new/used bicycle. A friend had it sitting in his garage, and gave it to me. It's a 10 speed Schwinn that's a few years old. I took it to the local bike shop and had it tuned and have new tires put on it. I love riding it to the University or to the FOI house for work. On days I ride the bicycle and Amanda drives the scooter to work we use next to no gas. (Though Amanda does spend her work days driving a big Nissan Titan.)

Pizza Night

On Thursday night Amanda and I had 4 Japanese students over to the house for pizza and ice cream. These students came last year and are sticking around for the first summer term before heading home for a few weeks of vacation. Classes for the summer term do not begin until tomorrow (Tuesday), so they have had a a couple weeks of just staying in the dorms. It was a great opportunity to get them while they had extra time. We had a fun time making the pizzas and ice cream together. Then we played a game while we waited for the ice cream to freeze. I think everyone had a good time, and I was happy to get them out of the dorm for a few hours.