Derek Sandstrom

Derek Gets Nerdy! (That's a switch!)

I love marching band.  There, I admitted it.  Not only that, but I write music for marching bands.  Wanna hear some?  Click here.  You'll find I a show I wrote called "Behind The Waterfall."  You can find audio samples there.

And if you like that one, try this.  That's my show, "Megalopolis: A City Under Siege."

A New Song! Check it out!

World's Worst Mini Golf

I didn't want to see a guy wearing a Speedo and dark dress socks. It just sort of happened. 

I had just finished taking the boys mini golfing in a town near Crotch Lake. This is without a doubt the very worst mini golf course I have ever used. The wooden structure is rotting and falling apart, and the astroturf is bunched in areas and slippery with black mold in others. To make matters worse, artistically it makes no sense. It's called Wizard Rock, but has no reference to any wizards in any of the holes. In fact there are no structures or decorations with any theme whatsoever, except a guillotine on one hole. I guess that's a nod to Canada's French heritage. Not sure what it has to do with wizards. 

So after eighteen non-descript and fungus laden holes, they do have an ice cream stand, like that's going to make me forget the whole mess. It worked. I happily ordered and ate my ice cream. And so I counted it a delightful outing. 

Until Speedo/dark socks guy showed up. 

This is our annual mini golf outing for Daddy and the boys. We do this because we are evicted from camp! We are evicted because it's the also-annual Ladies Tea. Ladies only, that is. The men are shooed away and the ladies enjoy tea of many kinds, and sophisticated snacks as you would find in a tea house. It's very girly! All the ladies wear hats, too. It's their short time of being free of their responsibilities to husbands and kids, and to enjoy a little culture in the back woods of Ontario. For my part I helped prepare the area by removing wet leaves, and creating a playlist to be their soundtrack. It was mostly classical music, a little new age music, and "YMCA" and "His Cheeseburger" from Veggie Tales thrown in to see if anyone was paying attention. 

They were.

The Truth Ain't Pretty, (a.k.a. Summer Blog part 1.)

Some guy I know (me) wrote a song called "Today." The final words of the song go like this: 

 Every day is full of wonder, if we just look around. 

 A million tiny miracles right out there to be found. 

 This life's a celebration. Don't forget to join the dance. 

 The Lord has given everyone today, another chance. 

I believe those words. I really do. But, as we all know, life is also a struggle. Otherwise people wouldn't have written books with titles like Where Is God When It Hurts? and Why Bad Things Happen To Good People and also Cruddy Things That Happen To Christian Musicians. That last one a work in progress! Seriously, things are a struggle right now, and I don't think it's spiritually weak or inappropriate to admit it. For one thing, what would I be saying if I told you that life was a bowl of cherries every day? You would look at your own life and think, what's wrong with me, then? No, life is a balance. It's a wonderful explosion of experience, of blessing, of goodness. It's also a sin-infested psycho ward where the inmates seem to run the asylum. And I think there's power in telling the truth. I'm tired of trying to spin things to make everything sound great when sometimes it's not. Honesty is the best policy, as they say. So, while I don't discount the astounding and beautiful life God has given me, I'll tell you what's been going on with us. 

This ministry is an incredible blessing to me, and I'm so grateful for it. But the truth is that it isn't paying the bills right now. It never has. After four years I'm no further ahead than when I started. It has become clear that we can't keep things going the way we have been. We just can't afford it. 

That's a very painful realization. I had two goals for this ministry. Sing to as many people as possible of Christ's love, and support my family with enough. I didn't ask to be a star, or to play in the biggest churches, or to win Grammy awards. I just wanted to sing about God and make ends meet. And it hasn't worked. 

But of course, that's my human wisdom talking. God fed Elijah using ravens to deliver bread like some sort of insane mobile bakery. If He can do that, He can take care of us, too. But, normally He asks us to work and earn a living. So the natural thing to think was for me to go back to teaching. Especially since I had heard that there was a year-long job open in the district where I used to teach. Seemed only reasonable to think of that. Besides, I really enjoyed teaching, and I did it pretty well. However, we still had a tour to do and then vacation at our annual home-away-from-home, Crotch Lake, Ontario. So we prepared to leave for three concerts in Ohio and two in Wisconsin. 

Also that last week before we left I interviewed for that teaching job. The interview didn't feel good. I didn't feel like I had distinguished myself at all. My only hope was that they all knew me and knew what I had done four years ago. 

 Part of getting ready to go was to finally get the backup completed for our computer. I tell you, my whole ministry and all my other music business is on this computer. I have become VERY dependent on it. Well, the backup wasn't working, and I spent MANY hours on the phone with tech support. Many, many hours. Still, it wasn't working. Hold that thought. 

So, we went out on the road, and made our first stop with Jay and Joann, our good friends in Akron, OH. We are so blessed to be friends with Jay and Joann. They are truly in our corner. I hope you have friends like that, too. Also they don't mind us parking our camper in their driveway, which you may never need in a friend, but it's handy for us! While with Jay and Joann we played two concerts in the Akron area, which went very well. We enjoyed a wonderful July 4th fireworks display in Akron...maybe the best I have ever seen. And Morgan and Carter enjoyed playing with Emily and Tara, Jay and Joann's daughters. The tour was starting off well! 

 Then we moved on to western OH, and stayed with our friends, Mark and Gina. We met them two years ago while we were making this trip. Mark farms 1500 acres of soybeans with his brother, and Gina is a nurse. They have the kind of home that's always open to anyone. They have been great friends to us in the short time we've known them, and it was a blessing to be with them. I must make this clear, that Mark and Gina were very friendly and good to us, because it is no fault of theirs that this is where things started going very wrong. 

 Our computer died. I hear that from people all the time. It seems to be just a matter of time that they all will, even Macs like I use. And now I lose the ability to be a smart aleck to all my friends who have problems with their PCs. I usually just send them this link: http://www.apple.com/store. Ha ha. Joke's on us now. Well, as you may know, it's not easy to get repair on Macs because there aren't as many repair sites. Macs usually don't fail, for one thing, and not as many people use them. I made one last, desperate attempt with tech support to remedy things, but to no avail. We knew the computer would need the help of experts ninety minutes away. 

And, to make matters worse, I got the call that I did not get that job I had interviewed for. 

It felt like everything was crashing down around us. So we took the computer to Dayton to get fixed. They told us that everything on the hard drive may have been lost. And when I hear people say things like this in regard to their computers, I think, "aww, that's too bad." Now I understand. To lose everything is crippling. If I had lost everything, it would have been tragic. I have thousands of email contacts on this computer which I could not get back. If it had died for good, it would have been like starting over with the ministry from scratch. And the exasperating thing is this: I was trying to be responsible by backing things up when it crashed! But the hard drive had worn out, and it didn't care how responsible I was trying to be. 

 At the store, they shamed me for trying to find a free solution with the help of tech support. "You may have made it worse, " he told me. Great, thanks. He told me that it was probably beyond saving, which filled me with dread. But we left it in his hands and prayed for the best. And we stayed in Dayton, waiting for the diagnosis. A few hours later I got a call which confirmed my worst fears. They were not able to recover anything. It was a complete loss. They had put a new hard drive in, and reloaded the system software. It was as if it were a new computer, right from the store. I was sick. I asked what the chances were that if they tried some more they might recover at least the email. They told me 20-30%. And I should also mention that since we needed it right away, the charge was higher for all their work. We didn't have the money to spend, but we couldn't afford not to do it. We told them to spend one more hour. And we prayed. Oh, my, did we ever pray for this computer. We basically needed a resurrection, a rebirth. 

I remember walking around a Salvation Army store in Dayton, waiting for the news. I couldn't even look at the items for sale. All I could think about was the computer, my muscles tense. Well, God came through. We went back to the store when the techies had left for the day, and we asked for the report from the owner. He shrugged and gave me two thumbs up. I was so relieved. He told us that the repair tech said, "no, way," when we asked for the extra hour of trying. And yet, (I believe this is a miracle) on the final try they were able to find the data. Wow! They said they may be able to find Sheri's data, too, but it would take an extra hour at the expedited rate. We thought about it and told him to hold off, but if it came out in the time we were ready to pay for that we would be happy. We left the computer to converse with their computers overnight. Then all the old data would be copied onto the new hard drive. There was still a chance it would all fail, but it looked good. 

The next day we got it back, and it was completely restored, even Sheri's data. Even better and faster than when we left it. The we thought about it, and the cost of the computer repair was just about exactly what we had made in the two Akron concerts. Break even. Well, there was still hope for coming out ahead with the Wisconsin concerts coming up. We made the rest of the trip to Wisconsin, and stayed at the home of Mark and Cathy Manthei, our good friends. This is the third year we have stayed with them, and their home is an oasis to us. Like with our other hosts on this tour, they understand and support us completely. That is like healing balm for the soul. And did I mention the pool and hot tub? The boys love swimming and playing with the 1,326,789,403 pool toys Cathy has amassed. The concerts, though. Not good. One pastor forgot I was coming and shuffled me to a very small church that had 12 people in attendance. The other was a concert in the park where fewer than 20 attended, even though I had made a tour that morning of five local churches, singing a song and letting them know about the concert. I would guess I had sung to and announced the concert to 500 church goers. It was very disappointing, and at a time when we're asking God for any kind of signal to tell us what He wants us to do. He shut the door to the only real teaching lead I had going, and the last three concerts were all tiny, enough to pay for the gas money to get there, and nothing else. 

So we're left wondering, what about the mortgage? What about the electric bill? What about our lives? What are we supposed to do? So, if you're reading this and you lost your job or you're wondering what to do, please know that Sheri and I can relate. I'm not just some happy, singing guy with no problems, singing to you about some fluffy, cotton candy God who sends us rainbows and lollipops when we ask and remember to say please. However - and please hear this loud and clear - I remain convinced that God is, that He is loving, that He has a plan for us, and that He will reveal it at the right time. I hate the waiting. We all do. But I will continue to trust that He has our best in mind. Check out this line from Job 13:15. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Woah. The New Living Translation says it this way. "God might kill me, but I have no other hope." I want that kind of faith. If this is what we have to go through to build that kind of faith, then...gulp...okay. We don't love what we see right now, and we especially don't like what we DON'T see, but we trust in God for the long term solution. He is cooking up something for us. And I remain committed to living my life, learning the lessons God wants me to learn, and writing songs about it. This ministry will go on, one way or another. 

Take that, devil.