CreationFest West 2010

Sorry this is hitting the internet waves so late… I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep and with life… but here it is… CREATION CRAZINESS!!!

Wow…. So let me just tell you about the best/craziest trip I’ve been on in along time… Okay but first let me tell you a little about who I am and why I get to blog on behalf of the awesome MyFight… My name is  Arieanna Ramage (recently known as Arieanna Fisher)… I have been involved with MyFight for quite some time now, but my current role in the movement deals with the marketing of this crazy passion of ours… Lately, I’ve been helping plan out many of our events, and this last week got to attend Creationfest West… Absolutely amazing! Okay… so back to the trip…

So, first of all I just want to thank all of the wonderful people I got to meet this week.  All of you who bought shirts thank you, thank you, thank you!! But even more… thank you ALL who just gave us the chance to tell you who we are and our hearts and our passion behind what we do to be the end of poverty!

To start the trip off… our team met at 7am on Tuesday morning at Jesse’s house in Billings, MT…. well we were supposed to leave at 7am… but I accidently may have told 2 of our team members we weren’t leaving until the next morning… woops… OH and those 2 that I accidently told the wrong date to just got married and spent 10 hours traveling back to Billings in time to leave with us what they thought was 2 days later ended up being the next morning….again… WOOPS…

Anyways… we finally hit the road… 2 cars packed full of swag (aka sweet gear for those of you who don’t speak my lingo , our booth supplies, and our team of 5 awesome Fighters… (Remi, Jesse, Larissa, Evan, and myself)… Oh and if the trip didn’t start off crazy enough… one of the cars didn’t have air conditioning and was equipped with crank windows…. Awesome… So, the drive to Emunclaw, WA… (Seattle area) was pretty hassle free… EXCEPT…. we get not even an hour away from our destination and what happens… Oh ya know they decide to close the highway for an hour in order to blast rock in the pass…. COOL. Hahah….

So, we roll into Creationfest around 11:30-12:00 at night to find out… we weren’t registered for a camping spot… after another half hour of running around we find “the man” we need to talk to about camping… we get a camping spot. FINALLY…. a camping spot that is maybe a 20′x10′ that we need to fit 3 tents and 2 cars in… wasn’t happening. So, we down graded to 2 tents and SQUEEZED into the spot… We crashed for the night to wake up in the morning to get the party started.. Figured out where “vendors” setup and found our spot… God truely blessed us with the best spot in the house… right next to the door AND the main stage… how…. I don’t know… our first time at CreationWest and the best spot… someone must be on our side…

Selling goes great… people fall in love with what we do… but how could they not… with the hearts we have?? The bands were amazing… David Crowder Band and Switchfoot the first night… absolutely amazing show… the 2nd night a number of awesome shows, but my favorite by far…… HILLSONG… so so good. Amazing to see sooo many people worshiping together… really powerful.

We had 2 amazing families open their homes to us for showers during the week…. Did I mention we were camping this whole time?? Anyways thank you so much for your kindness of opening your homes to us Dianne and Daramie!! (I hope I spelled that right!!)

On one of the days, Jesse’s bud Kristin gave him and I a tour of the World Vision Headquarters in Federal Way, WA.  She was a blast… So peppy and so passionate about what she does.  Very encouraging to see soo much good in one place.  Anyways… more importantly we got to eat some pretty delicious Thai food! Jesse thought he’d be real “manly” and order his meal with spiciness of 3 stars…. which is the “hot.” It was the high light of my day to see him sweating as he was talking/eating!! Haha….

On the 3rd day, Remi and I took a break from the madness of tshirt sales, and grabbed some of the left over pizza while watching Mr. KJ-52 perform…. I have always been a little skeptical of “christian rappers,” but I must say that KJ definitely changed my mind…. the fact that he could teach 50+ year olds to “get their swaggor on” was very impressive to me…. Mostly because EVERYONE was getting into it!! Funny fact from this moment…. Remi is from France…. he looks at me and asks what “swaggor” is…..?? Try explaining that one…. Oh American slang talk…. KJ wanted to give a shout out to one of his musical inspirations qho had “really influenced his love for music and has really affected his style of music”…. then he began to play Miley Cyrus “Party in the USA.”   The reason I tell you all this…. Well my husband did the very same thing when he performed at the MyFight Bday Bash in Billings, MT and wanted everyone to know that KJ copied him Sure…. I love you dear, I do!! Haha… By the end of KJ’s performance there were thousands of socks on stage that people had thrown up there… that he had asked them to do… hilarious….Oh christian rappers…. they are a strange bunch

Anyway…. that night rolls around and TobyMac takes the stage… giving a wonderful performance that included his own rendition of “pants on the ground.”  Also, hilarious! Then a candle light service…. Tens of thousands of candles lit representing peoples faith in their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ…. Absolutely amazing to see…. Gosh… Goosebumps just thinking about it!

It’s about midnight and our team rolls into bed…. Trying to get some rest for one last day of hard work…. Little did we know that this last day would turn into the craziest/most stressful/make you appreciate life day of the trip…. So things go as they had the past few days… Early morning coffee… listen to artists sound check then play… talk to a number of amazing people interested in supporting us in fighting social injustice…. visit with our Project AK-47, Invisible Children, TWLOHA (To Write Love on Her Arms) and BFC (Boarders for Christ) buddies…. sell some shirts… listen to more music… eat some carnival style grub….

The day gets interesting when Jesse says… “Okay guys… I’m heading to Federal Way to meet with one of our board members.”  We all think okay see ya in a few hours… so about 20 minutes roll by and I get a text from Mr. Murphy saying, “Lunch cancelled. Wrecked the car.” I freak…. Mind you we had been giving him the hardest time about being a terrible… I mean TERRIBLE driver the night before…. Anyways…. Everyone involved in the wreck was fine…. Except the MyFight car…. she had been totalled… undrivable…. So…. we are left with one car…. Now remember, we have 5 people with us… hundreds of shirts…. and all our gear used to set up our booth…. We are stressed needless to say…. MAINLY because… we can’t rent a car… It’s Saturday at 3pm… and all the car rental places that are also found in Billings had closed at noon…. AND the airport won’t rent to us because they only rent cars for round trips…. shoot….

What to do… What to do…. Well the amazing people from Yellowstone Baptist College in Billings, MT offer to take our stuff home… THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!! And we all look forward to cramming into one car for a 14 hour drive home…. UGH….

Skillet closes out Creationfest and it’s all over…. We tear our booth down, pack up and go to a local bar and grill and have a celebratory basket of deep fat fried chicken and fries…. That’s all they had left to serve…. I was hoping for steak… but hey at least I have the privilege of eating late night chicken fingers and fries…. We are sooooo blessed to live in America… SOOOO blessed…. After our fried meal we head back to camp for one last night of sleeping on the ground…

We wake up in the morning… load up…. and hit the road… 5 minutes down the road Remi stops us at a gas station… we get beverages, but everyone wants McDonalds for breakfast… so we get back in and head to McDonalds… the I have to go potty… haha… so we pull over at the next gas station… I walk up to the door… “NO PUBLIC RESTROOM.” UGH… So, Larissa and I walk across the street… Same deal… look to our left… restaurant is closed… Awesome… So we walk back across the street and climb back in the little car…. Jesse and Remi bicker about how to get to Starbucks to use their restroom… we finally get there… Then for the what felt like thousandth time crammed back in and hit the road… just an hour later… It’s fine.. really…

The trip to Billings was smooth sailing after that… But I just want to take the time again to thank EVERYONE for all their support… All of you that let us even talk to you, THANK YOU…. Those of you who brought us new designs (Jeremy), Thank you…. All the great families we got to meet, thank you…. Creationfest artists, Thank you… Creationfest itself, THANK YOU!!!!

Oh… I forgot to mention… I introduced the team to the Mad TV skit “Can I Get Your Number!??!”…. Needless to say… All I heard all week…. “Oh dang…. Okay…. Okay…. Excuse me….. Can I talk to you for a minute?!” Haha… gotta love it!!

We love you all!!! See you next year!!