Michael W. Smith Concert in Zürich

Last night we took the kids and joined a bunch of other folk from our church to go see Michael W. Smith in concert at ICF Zurich (International Christian Fellowship, a Swiss-German congregation that meets in a big warehouse). It was our first time to see where ICF meets. It was PACKED. They ran out of seats and we (getting there 40 minutes early) were in the standing area right in front. Emily managed to worm her way to the front row (6 feet from MWS' keyboard). That's the back of her head in the first photo here, down in the front, in the middle. Jason, David and I were about 6 feet behind Emily. Still very close! It made it worth the excessive heat, the ringing ears, the tired legs from standing for over 3 hours straight, and it being so late on a school night. I would have Facebooked the event real-time, with a photo and all, but I left my phone in the car we didn't bring (bummer). I used my regular camera but since I'm a real novice on camera settings and photography, they all came out pretty blurry.

It was a very good concert. Starfield, a Canadian band, opened. Both bands were mostly worship music, including a lot of songs we already knew (Here I am to worship; Above All; Mighty to Save; How Great is our God, etc.), and a bunch more that were new to us. This was MWS's "A New Hallelujah" tour, but we don't have that album or any of his recent ones for that matter. The rest of the crowd seemed to know every song by heart already. At one point MWS said, "You sing, I'll play..."

The Swiss-German interpreter (in the light blue shirt in the 2nd photo) was awesome - how people do that, I don't know. So much pressure to take slang and different accents (he had to translate from a British, a Canadian, and a Tennessee accent) and spontaneous expressions and turn them into another language with just the right meaning conveyed...anyway, I was very impressed. He even repeated the hand gestures as he translated!

The funniest/coolest part of the night was when Michael W. Smith played his really, really, really old song, "Friends" but customized it in a "limited edition" way that most people around the world have NEVER heard and will NEVER hear... at the very end, after the "final" line, "A lifetime's not too long to live as friends..." he added, somehow making it rhyme, "In Switzerland..."