Shaun Groves – Third World Symphony (Ethiopia Story) from Shaun Groves on Vimeo.
If you’ve read this blog for long, you might know I’m a little obsessed with music. There was the time I listened to Brooke Fraser’s album Albertine for an entire 27 hour road trip. Or my entire childhood listening to Amy Grant.
Well, on my flight home from the Philippines I had one album on repeat. Shaun had handed it to me on a USB flash drive in the Tokyo airport. As I stood in line to board my flight to Seattle with Stephanie and Ryan, I held my laptop and my iphone, cables everywhere trying to transfer it to my phone before we got on the 10 hour flight. I succeeded and listened to it the rest of the trip home and much of the time since then. It’s that good.
It’s been so powerful to have a soundtrack for that life changing trip. Though the days move me farther and farther away from those experiences, Shaun’s album continues to bring my heart right back to the homes of the children we visited.
Today, Shaun’s album, Third World Symphony, releases on iTunes and on his website. Take the simple action of getting his album and you’ll be inspired…
Three of my favorites from the album are All Is Grace, Awake My Soul and Downhere. If you’ve heard the album, what are your favorites?
Amazing Blog Tour
Check out the incredible blog tour for Shaun’s Album. Ann Voskamp is up today. Check it out.
Got my copy via iTunes this morning! I’ve been listening to it for a while now on SoundCloud. Love all the songs so much! My faves are Enough, All Is Grace & Awake My Soul.
This album is such a comfort to listen to… balm for my soul… since returning from 3 weeks in the Philippines visiting our Compassion child and seeing her home, meeting an LDP student whom we ended up sponsoring and seeing her house (broke my heart!), visiting the Compassion offices in Manila, visiting CDCs and meeting Compassion workers/volunteers.
The trip was such a blessing for our family, especially eye-opening for our two kids who’ve never been to the Third World. It has changed us…
Aimee,
What similar experiences we had!
How fun that your whole family went. I’d love to take my kids there. Can I ask what prompted your trip and how you managed such a long trip for your whole family? If you have a blog post about it, I’d love for you to link to it. Thanks!
Hi Kat.
What prompted our trip was really our desire for our kids to see how people live in the Third World. Since hubby and I were both born in the Philippines, we thought it’d be a great destination.
I’d recently become a Volunteer Advocate for Compassion (Canada) so we thought it’d be awesome to schedule in Compassion-related things.
Three weeks was actually just about right so that the kids (they are 14 & 10, by the way) had time to adjust to the jet-lag first before we went full-speed with our places to go & things to do list. We also went to three different cities: Manila (Compassion office), Masbate (where our Compassion child lives) and Cebu (where the LDP student lives), plus seeing relatives we haven’t seen in a while or met before! 🙂
Of course, we had to pre-arrange a lot of stuff with my job & hubby’s business before we could be away for 3 whole weeks. All worth it though… as God had things He wanted to show us in the Philippines!!! 🙂
I wrote a lot while there! Here are a few of the most descriptive blog posts:
http://mamaof2greatkids.blogspot.com/2011/08/thoughts-reflections-where-do-i-even.html
http://mamaof2greatkids.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-make-sense-of-this.html
http://mamaof2greatkids.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-meeting-florianlyn-jhon-julius.html
http://mamaof2greatkids.blogspot.com/2011/07/finally-in-masbate.html
http://mamaof2greatkids.blogspot.com/2011/07/compassion-philippines.html
—Aimee.
I need a like button to click…wait, I’ll go over to FB to do that.
I haven’t got a time yet to download copy of the album, but hearing the music from the clips convince me that it is really inspiring. The video by the way is moving me to do good and even better on my life. Thanks for sharing this.