Wow! What a great night of worship with the current REACHers at the Rosedale International Center in Columbus, OH.

The R.I.C. is a training center for young adults who are running to the nations as missionaries. It is a beautiful place and it was encouraging to worship our great God with brothers and sisters in Christ who are serious about giving themselves to the LORD. what a privilege to be a part of it.

Just for fun, we lowered the price of our CD’s to $5 and sold a ton. Please join us in praying that God will use the songs to encourage the hearts of the listeners and draw them into a deeper love and adoration of the One who has lavished His love upon us even while we were dead in our sins.

Nick was with us again tonight. He must have survived the wedding. It was good to have him back.

Next stop: Athens, TN.

It seems like it has been forever since we have played together, but we plugged in and had a blast last night at the Living Water Community Church youth room in Dalton, OH.

A highlight of the evening was being reunited with the original drummer for Polen. Nick was unavailable due to a friend’s wedding, but Eric Kaufman jumped in and helped on the drums (technically on the cajon, as it was an acoustic event). It was good to have Eric on stage with us again.

Now we are heading out to Columbus, OH to lead worship for the REACHers at the Rosedale International Center. Then on to Tennessee Wesleyan College for a concert on campus.

We are not exactly an acoustic band, but it is fun to occasionally break the full-band music down to just the essentials. On Friday night we put on an acoustic concert at the square in Berlin, OH.

A concert in Berlin is always an interesting thing because the town is located right in the middle of Amish country. The majority of the crowd were tourists. Some in the audience were from as far away as Oregon. Some were from Wisconsin. Most were not from Berlin.

We had a really great night of worship and fun. Thanks to everyone who came out and hopefully we’ll see you again on the square in Berlin, OH.

-polen

Polen will be performing as a part of the 2014 JPM 5k & Musik Festival on Saturday, September 20 in Fredericksburg, OH. It is a great opportunity to get your running or walking shoes laced up and then hang out to listen to great local musicians.

Jeff Polen Music Ministry is a non-profit ministry that Polen has worked with for years. The sound system that Polen typically plays through belongs to JPM. The 5k and 1 mile Family Fun walk registrations will serve as a fundraiser for JPM, and the Music Festival featuring local musicians will be absolutely free. “Early-Bird” registration is available until thru Friday, August 15 -so sign up today.

Other events have been added the schedule, so be sure to check out http://www.polenband.com to see when Polen will be performing at a venue near you.

This past weekend Polen took our first road trip to Iowa. We left Ohio late Friday night because Jeff Kaufman had obligations with his church VBS, and then we headed for the Hawkeye State.

Driving through the night is always interesting, but we stopped somewhere in Indiana around 2am and got a few hours of sleep in a comfy hotel room. We hit the road again after a “complimentary” breakfast (that we surely paid for with the price of the room) and stopped along the way at a Guitar Center in Illinois. (As it turned out, our drummer somehow managed to leave his cymbals and kick pedal at home. We won’t name any names to save him the embarrassment… but then again, we only have one drummer so you can probably guess who it was.)

We arrived at Lower Deer Creek Mennonite Church on Saturday afternoon, a little later than we hoped, but we began setting up for the concert immediately. We were excited to be there and were met by incredibly friendly and helpful people at the church.

Jim Hersberger is the man who set the whole event up, and he was there to meet us with a handshake and a smile. Jeff Polen met Jim several years ago at Little Eden Christian Camp in Onekema, MI while Jeff was the guest speaker for the week. Immediately after that week this event in Iowa was being talked about, but it took several years for it to come together. Jim got the ball rolling in 2013 when he became a “Backer” for the “Kickstart Seasons” campaign. Thanks Jim!

We are in the middle of day 2 in the studio with Mark Townsend. Yesterday we nailed the drums and bass and today we are working on guitars and piano.

Tomorrow we will go for the vocals and we are hoping for the best. We are really excited about what we are hearing so far.