Song Share Sunday #9: "Ode To You (All My Friends)"

Happy Sunday!

Since I missed Song Share Sunday last week, this week, I'm sharing with you a very special song that won't be on the album, but will appear as a bonus track. This is a reminiscence of my childhood friends from the days of colored pencils, crayons, and legos. To all my friends, especially my OG buddies from Francis Scott Key Elementary and Noriega Childcare, this is dedicated to you.

"Let brotherly love continue" -Heb.13.1

Until we see each other once again,

Peace, love, and curry over rice,

-Brandon

Song Share Sunday #8: "I Love You, Lord"

This week's song is very simple. I love the Lord, my God. He made me, He knows me, and He loves me.

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." -Rev.4.8

Peace, love, and pork sung bao,
-Brandon

So What's Been Going On With "Run, Love, Run"?

Hello, my friends!

It has occurred to me that I haven't told you much about what's going on with the "Run, Love, Run" project? Whoops! Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like you (I do very much!), but I've been trying to schedule in as much work as I can before school starts, and I am dying to tell you what I've been doing!

For starters, every week, I do "Song Share Sunday", where I share a new song that will be on the album every Sunday! Most of these videos are the first time anyone's ever heard that song!

So there's that to keep you busy! But if you would like to get an exclusive preview on how one of the new songs are sounding, join the MWR Mailing List, and you will be the first to hear it! Join now, because the exclusive email will be sent out next Wednesday!

I want to take a moment to thank the people who have been so graciously helping me with this project! Thank you so much to Kevin Baek for playing drums and giving the songs life, to Aaron Agudelo for playing guitar parts and ripping solos, to Rachel Chen for playing some sweet piano melodies, and to Alyson Yee for designing an awesome album cover (*hush hush* it's top secret!). All my love and gratitude go out to you! I am blessed to have such talented friends!

Early on in the project, we had the acoustic guitar tracks all laid down, paving the way for drum tracks. Between drum recording days, I found some nice pads for some songs and recorded those first. I spent a good day sitting my living room with Allan's keyboard, flipping through piano sounds and different pads to fit the mood of the song. I also found a pretty interesting patch called "Hollywood Edge FX" which turned out to be a bunch of different war sounds (machine guns and explosions). I think I could hook up some large speakers behind my garage doors and scare some people who happen to be walking by. ;)

We had some good drum recording sessions once camp ended. We figured out a nice way to record the drums so that I could pick the sounds afterwards. I learned a valuable lesson from recording drums: don't forget the sticks and the drum throne. For our first session, I found a thin dowel in my garage and snapped it in half, then Kevin wrapped the tips in electrical tape to protect the drum heads. How's that for frugal? At least it worked!

After recording some electric guitar parts with Aaron, I spent a couple days recording some vocals and redoing some acoustic guitar parts. And after recording some keys with Rachel, all the songs have their foundations. Almost all the songs are ready with drums and bass, so the grooves are all set.

So what's next? Well, as for recording, I plan to finish drums and bass this week, all vocals, harmonies, and electric guitar parts next week, a gang vocal recording day sometime next week, and it's on to mixing and mastering from there.

This is such a huge project for me, and I'm so thankful that God has given me the strength to push through and for the help and support I'm getting along the way. If you've made it this far in this blog post, thank you for believing in me and supporting me even just by taking the time to read this. I really appreciate the thoughts and prayer you put in for me too! I really want these songs to be more than just ear candy, and to bring people together. That is why, sometime further down the road, I will be announcing two very special places where the money from this album's sale will be going. I am extremely excited for this aspect of "Run, Love, Run" because it will serve as a reminder that we can all do something to help those around us. So stay tuned for that announcement!

In the mean time, listen to the acoustic videos of the songs that will be on this album! About half of them we sang before at an Allan and Friends Concert, but the rest are completely never-heard-before new songs! I try to do one every Sunday, and hope to keep it going even after "Run, Love, Run". Do share this with other people! That will help a lot! :)

Please continue to pray for me and this project, as we're about halfway through. I can't wait to see how this turns out and what new doors God will open for it!

Oh, and did I mention that there will be a bluesy melodica solo? :)

Peace, love, and Costco pork chops,
-Brandon

Song Share Sunday #7: "Unfixable"

This Sunday, I share with you an old song. It may be new to you, but it's old to me, which makes it that much better. :)

This song is from the "Chapter 35" EP, and if you haven't heard it yet, head on over here to get for free! Without money and without cost, it is my gift to you!

This song is especially precious to me because it came in a time of desperate pleas and painful cries for God to fix the things that were broken in my life, many of which I had my own hand in messing up. The beautiful thing about the valleys in relationships is that it shows me how much I need Jesus and allows me to tell God through lyrics and a gentle picking of my guitar.

That part of my life was getting increasingly stressful and frustrating, and the one thing I kept asking God was, "Why would you keep putting me in these situations? What's the point?" Ties were breaking here and there, and we were setting bridges on fire. All I could do was to sit and watch as this relationship ate me up from the inside out. Fixing was beyond my reach. Healing was out of my sight. And all I wanted was for my Father to come in and clean up my mess.

Growing up in a fellowship and discipled for a growing spirit, I've stored three truths inside my heart. The first is that God is always good. My doubts and fears would never change that. The second is that God has His own way. The cliched saying that everything happens for a reason holds true to me, because my good God was a purpose for everything that happens in my life. The last is that God will always love me. My sins and iniquities would never change that.

These three truths are where the core of this song comes from. Even though I could not fix my life, and it felt as if nothing would ever get better and that it will only go in the opposite direction as long as I breathed, I knew that my God is bigger than all of that. My God is bigger than my fears and pains. That's because this is His world, not mine. And I am His child, not my own person.

I pray that this song will encourage you to always know and believe and God will never forsake you and leave you in pieces. We may fall, and we may stumble, but God will pick us up and heal us, even if He has to drag us, kicking and screaming, out from the sorry mess we call OUR life. And He will show us a better light.

He gives. He takes away. But blessed be His glorious name.

"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." -Heb.13.5

Amen.

Peace, love, and the bitter melon that Kevin loves,
-Brandon

Song Share Sunday #6: "Your Secret Place"

Happy Sunday, my friends! I present to you another song from "Run, Love, Run" called "Your Secret Place", which is also coincidentally the sixth track on the upcoming album!

This song is about enjoying God's presence and wondering in awe of His majesty and glory, and adoring Him as our creator. How wonderful is it that the Lord of all creation, of water earth and sky, would create a being such as ourselves in His own triune image! It's about how God's beauty is not something to be directly seen, but to be felt by the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is unlike anything we have ever felt before!

I wrote this song on the last day of our summer camp last year. We started the day with a morning worship service with our counselors. We let go of all the activities and plans we had in our heads for our closing ceremonies, and took the time to simply enjoy God's presence — not to ask for anything, but to just praise Him for all that He is. We sang our last song, "Set a Fire", the counselors were dismissed to start their day, and we kept playing for a little bit. Our worship service had ended, but the Holy Spirit still had something lingering in my heart. So I started singing, "You make me. You take me away. You swept me off my feet, off my feet again." I just kept singing those lines over and over again, and every single time, the last line would strike something really deep down in my heart. God, you sweep me off my feet over and over again, reminding me that You are my Creator. Thank You for making me.

In the words of Matthew West, "What love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called His children!" ("Hello, My Name Is" by Matthew West)

And to close, a psalm:

"One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." -psa.27.4 

Peace, love, and pan-fried ramen,
-Brandon

Song Share Sunday #5: "Love Break Through"

This week's song is one that's really fun for us to play when Allan & Friends does concerts!

"Love Break Through" is a celebration of God's love and an invitation for the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts and to break down our chains, our walls, and our uncleanliness, so that we can worship the Good Lord with everything that He has given to us. These words of praise didn't come from something big that happened to me, but from a prolonged desire to feel God's hand in my life. I was tired of trying to control my destiny and fix things that were beyond my abilities. I simply sucked and needed someone who knew exactly what he is doing. I needed God and His love.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that love is the greatest among the three everlasting (for lack of a better word) things. And the greatest love of all comes from the Good Lord (Can I get an AMEN?!?). Such great love pours from God's own hands and flows into our hearts. It's a love that is not addressed to the entire world, but to each and every individual whom God has made and calls His own.

We are all buried at least knee-deep in sin. Most of us are overwhelmed with our sinfulness that we haven't seen the daylight in years. Sin, simply put, is what keeps the distance between us and God. No shelves stocked with self-help books, no never-ending counseling bills, nor servers holding countless gigabytes of motivational YouTube videos can ever stop us from steering further and further from our Maker. And it is a solid concrete wall, unpenetrable by our own strengths. But praise be to God that his great love reaches our hearts no matter the distance and no matter the cost! Only by God's love can the walls between us and Him be broken down so that we may be with our Father once more! 

Once again, our worship to God is a response to the simple (yet so great and grand) fact the God loves us so much that He gave His son Jesus Christ to step down from heaven and die for our sins (Everybody say HALLELUJAH!!!). If the Good Lord gave it all, holding nothing back, then we MUST worship with it all, holding nothing back. It is the least that our God deserves.

Go on praising the Lord. 

Hallelujah.

Prayz the Lord.

Prayz, prayz, PRAYZ the Lord!

Amen.

Peace, love, and inconspicuous mangoes (will be the end of me),

-Brandon

Song Share Sunday #4: Summer Day Camp Cover Song & My Love For Leading Worship

No song from the upcoming album this week. I've lost my voice in this last week of our summer camp, but it is all worth it! Instead, I will be sharing with you a video I made as a message from our counselors to close off this year's ministry, as well as my role this year as Worship Coordinator. Enjoy this video of us embarrassing ourselves, with special guests Wesley Chew and Aaron Agudelo.

I've led worship at our summer camp for a couple years while leading a middle school group, but this year, I have the pleasure of focusing my energy in our morning worship services as Worship Coordinator.

The reason I love to lead worship is very simple — I love to worship my God. Everyone has their own unique relationship with God and their own unique connection with God. As I grew in faith, I've discovered that I connect with God the most through worship and praise.

I especially love to lead worship with our youth groups because so many of them are just beginning to experience God, and I have the honor of leading them to a secret place with their Father in heaven, where they can simply enjoy His presence.

This year, I got to work with such a wonderfully passionate team of worship leaders. God blessed me with team mates with hearts passionate about sharing the gospel. The Holy Spirit guided us, and through that, we put a lot of emphasis on personal prayer and finding that secret place in your heart which only you and God can find, and to just dwell in the presence of the Lord, in His sanctuary and in our hearts. I truly believe that the best type of worship does not take place in a corporate setting, but rather when there is no one around and you just adore the Lord for who He is.

There is so much joy in our worship to God with young children. Jesus calls us to have faith like little children, and when we offer our worship to God, we can just praise Him with all that He's given us, and we do it like no one but God is watching, because that is all that matters. We encouraged the kids to just jump, dance, sing, and go crazy in worship! And sometimes, it's just simply so much fun to have worship dance parties in the middle of the sanctuary, with those who want to join us, stomping and clapping like there is no tomorrow.

Lord, prepare me
To be a sanctuary
Pure and holy
Tried and true
With thanksgiving
I'll be a living
Sanctuary for You

Peace, love, and Rachel's chocolate pudding, sprinkled with cocoa powder, topped with a mint leaf, and a Yogurtland spoon to match the leaf!
-Brandon