It's taken me a while to get around to finally writing this... day 2 of the Franklin Graham Festival was pure awesomeness! I didn't make day 3 tho, but I heard it wasn't that good anyway :P.
When I first got there and got backstage, I sat outside the catering room with Joy again to take people's tickets. We started talking about how hot Manwell from Group 1 Crew is (they were there that night, and so were the Newsboys). We sat there for a while and talked about him. Then Joy was like "Violet! They're coming!" Joy had been taking everyone's tickets the whole time so far, so I decided it was my turn (since Manwell was coming and wanted him to hand me his ticket... yes, I realize that I have loser-ish tendencies :D). So I was like "I want the tickets Joy!" and she gave them to me so I could take Manwell's ticket. Then, they walked around the corner. Blanca said hi to us, and then they just walked in. They didn't even have tickets. It was insanely disappointing.
After that slight disappointment, we decided to go eat (in the same room where Manwell was, of course). I was sitting like 6 feet away from him while Joy was eating and I was... sitting. Then I ate a cookie. While I was eating the wonderfully delicious chocolate chip cookie, Blanca got up to get one and Manwell told her to get him one. She didn't though, so he kept asking her. It was quite entertaining. Then this other guy got up and went to get one, so Manwell told the other guy to get him one. Then he changed his mind and told him to only get him half of one. The guy brought back half a cookie and Manwell said, "This isn't chocolate chip! What, are you trying to poison me with this oatmeal?" So the guy went back to get him a different one while saying "But this was the only half of one that was up there!" At this point, I had a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie in my hand, and I almost jokingly offered it to him. It would have been awesome and then I could have talked to him, but of course, I didn't. But I should have. Of course, there are other things I should have done that night that I didn't do :'(.
A little later, the Newsboys got there and Joy and I immediately saw our next target for a hug and picture. We didn't know who he was because we didn't know who any of them were. She actually called her brother and had him look them up on wikipedia and tell her their names so we wouldn't seem clueless when we met them! All we knew about the guy was that he was tall, blond, and hot. Who better to take a picture with?
We did some more random stuff for a while, we got to go inside and go on the floor for the Newsboys' concert, we walked around... just stuff. Oh, and we met Peter Furler (lead singer of the Newsboys). When Group 1 Crew was on stage, we just kind of walked around and what not. Then we saw our target, who we were calling "blond guy". Yeah... nothing really eventful.
I don't remember when this happened, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't during a concert. Joy and I were sitting outside the catering room again just because there were chairs there. Her mom was standing there talking to us and telling us we needed to ask people for pictures, because we had let so many people just walk past us. While we were talking, Joy suddenly pointed out that "blond guy" was walking towards us. He walked past us and looked in the room, then turned around to walk away, when Mrs. Brenda stopped him and said "These two girls would like to meet you." I almost died, but now I'm glad I didn't cuz that was the only time we ever got to talk to him or anything. So he shook my hand and said his name was Ben and asked what my name was, so obviously I told him my name, then he did the same thing to Joy. He asked if we liked the show and we said we did. And then he left. We never got to talk to him again, which is tragic. Insanely tragic.
So anyway, after all the concerts were over and everything was done, we took a picture with Peter and waited for Group 1 Crew to come back. Pablo was already in the room, but we didn't really care cuz we wanted to meet Manwell and tell Blanca we loved her shoes. We waited and waited, and finally Manwell came back. Someone told him we had been waiting for him, so he came over to say hi, and I told him, "We just want a hug" and he was like "Okay!" and gave me a hug. Then he hugged Joy and we took a pic with him. Of course, I had to get him sign my shoe (the still unsigned one). He gives insanely awesome hugs.
While we waited for Blanca (and Ben... we were waiting for him to come back too), we decided to go hug Adam, the guitarist that no one knows. He signed my shoe too. We had already met him earlier, first when he was going in to the catering room and he had already turned in his ticket, so he had to make sure I believed him when he said he was already there. Then we saw him in the hall again and I just said, "Hey can we take a picture with you? You're cool." So we did. He gives pretty sweet hugs too. And I found him on myspace. I don't have an account tho, so Joy added him and sent him a message. Creepy...
After Adam, Blanca came back and we took a pic with her. I asked her if I could steal her awesome shoes, and she said I couldn't, so I told her she had already stolen my belt (we were wearing the same one :o). We talked for a minute, then she signed my shoe, and went back into the room with Manwell and Pablo. Someone told us Pablo was in the room and we could take a pic with him if we wanted, but we just said we didn't care. We didn't. We were too busy waiting for Ben to come back.
We waited a while longer for Ben, and we sang "New Design" by Thousand Foot Krutch while we did. We had been walking around singing it all weekend actually. Manwell came out and talked to someone... Adam I think... and he was standing right next to Joy. It was pretty awesome. Anyway, we waited for Ben while we talked about how hot he was (even though could have walked up behind us at any point). My parents called me and said it was time to leave, so I had to. I walked out to the parking lot, and when I got to the car (about 5 minutes after I left backstage), I called Joy and she said she had seen Ben, but she didn't talk to him or anything. It turns out she saw him like 3 times after I left, but she wouldn't just say "Hey can I take a picture with you?" (she probably wouldn't even say that to me! :D) We both knew that I would have done that if I had still been there, but I wasn't. And now I'll probably spend the rest of my life wishing I had asked for a picture earlier or stayed 5 more minutes. Or maybe I'll just do that the rest of this week... we actually decided to get our youth pastor to book them just so we can take a picture with and hug Ben! Yeah... for real...
When Joy got a chance to get on her computer, she somehow found one of their blogs where they talked about him and found out that his last name is Walton. I tried to find out something but I found nothing. Then she found that in like 5 minutes! :P Anyway... we found 2 pics of him and we think we found him on myspace. Yes, we're crazy, thank you for noticing.
Oh, and by the way, Ben is the Newsboys' tech guy. Hence the title of this blog. He has the most awesome accent ever.
OTHER RANDOM THINGS THAT HAPPENED... THE LAST FEW DAYS: I got a 95 on my english paper! Yay! / A random guy at school talked to me when he was supposed to be in class... it was weird... / I wore by backstage pass to school on Monday / Jimmy got 100 on a test! YAY Jimmy! (Ok that doesn't really have anything to do with me, does it? :P) / KEEP ROCKIN AND NEVER STOP --MC
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