The Metro Big Band in Italy: A Diary
This is mostly raw journal writing from our trip to Italy with the Metro Big Band, a part of the Global Missions Project. I added a few details after we got home.
GMP was created to give musicians an opportunity to enter the mission field using their God given talent as a tool to reach people. Their first project was to Poland in 2003. Since then they’ve taken numerous orchestras, jazz bands, and choirs on over 150 projects all over the world. This trip to Italy was the fourth mission trip for Cyndi and me. Cyndi on congas, me on trombone.
Whenever I think about Global Missions Project, I’m reminded of one of our mission partners, Manuel Lopez. His ministry, Coro Philarmonico, is an organization in Guatemala City that rescues kids and young adults from street gangs and violent homes by teaching them to be musicians. He said two things that I found especially profound: “In this avalanche of sin, grace has abounded through music;” and “Play with excellence, and wait for the miracles of God.”
I’ve been playing trombone continuously since I was in beginner band in 1968, longer than I’ve done anything except ride a bicycle or read books.
Not only that, music runs deep between Cyndi and me. We met for the first time in a high school band hall in 1973; we started falling in love with each other at a University of North Texas One O’clock Lab Band concert featuring Bill Watrous in 1976. We’ve been playing music together ever since then, for 48 years.
We’re grateful to belong to a church that still uses an orchestra, that has a place for us to play trombone and percussion, that provides a physical outlet for us to worship. We’re grateful to God for the gift of music, and more specifically, the talent and desire he has given us to play. And as always, we’re grateful for one more opportunity.
10-3-24 Thursday
Cyndi and I got up from bed this morning at 3:30 am. We got dressed. Made last-minute additions or changes to our suitcases. We tend to pack very light. We usually have the smallest suitcases of anyone on the tour. Both of our suitcases are carryon sizes.
We each have small roller bags, which is all we need for clothes on a GMP trip when we are always wearing black. Neither of our suitcases were stuffed full. We took an additional roller bag with music stands and percussion instruments, and my trombone, and we both had backpacks.
Tonya picked us up at 4:30 am. She had a flight leaving at 5:00.
The SWA line was extremely long, the longest I’ve seen in Midland. It was Orlando FL long. But we are flying on American and went straight to the counter. The security line was also long – wound its way back to the escalators, but the pre-check was empty. We went straight through.
We boarded and I took my trombone on board and found room in the overhead compartment. That is my plan for the entire trip unless there isn’t room then I’ll let them check it at the gate.
We both slept all the way to DFW.
We landed at Terminal B, took the train to Terminal C, ate at Chick-fil-A, they changed our gate to Terminal D, so we rode the train to D.
Cyndi was in boarding group 6 and I was in group 7, which means she boarded before I did, so she traded her backpack for my trombone since she would board first and had a better chance of finding overhead space. She did. Well done.
While I was in the jetway the man behind me (Mark, from Dallas) asked if I did the Camino. He was responding to the patch sewn onto my backpack. We talked about it while waiting to board. He said he grew up Church of Christ but is now Catholic but attended Baylor. Said his friend is an Episcopal priest who moved to Spain and conducts 100km tours in Portugal. Mark said his wife had been urging him to take the trip. “She says I need it. It’ll do me good.” But it didn’t sound like she was going herself.
That conversation reminded me once again how fortunate Cyndi and I are that we do things together. Like walking the Camino, GMP music mission trips, and all that. Maybe we would do things like that alone, without going together, but we don’t have to. It is a gift from God that we can and want to do things together.
I told Cyndi about the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond I saw last night, a flashback when he proposed to his wife Debra, and How it reminded me of proposing to Cyndi and how grateful I am we are together. I told her I started watching the TV show because it such clever writing, but I am increasingly drawn to the relationships between Raymond and Debra.
I regularly thank God for bringing us together, keeping us together, giving us common desires and skillsets, knitting our hearts together, keeping us together, giving us a common hope for the future, blessing us with finances that allow these trips, blessing us with musical skills and abilities and desire, blessing us with longevity so we are doing them in any mid-late sixties. All of that is a gift I think about often.
We are now on Dallas-Philadelphia flights. We will be on the ground for about 4 hours, then on to Naples.
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10-4-24 Friday
We left Philadelphia about 7:30 pm. We had a window seat and middle seat on row 13. I had no problems storing my trombone in the overhead bins on any of our 3 flights, including the small regional flight from Midland to DFW.
We landed about 10:30 am in Naples, off-boarded outside and walked through lots of switchbacks until finally passing customs and entering the real world. We saw Toni Aruta, or Italy handler and host, holding a Metro Big Band sign. He led us over to join Carl Vinson, bass trombone.
We waited for a few others to arrive, then rode a bus to Fly Hotel. Our rooms weren’t ready, so we all walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant for lunch – which turned out to be too much food (a common theme for the entire week). The Brano Bianco Risto Pizzeria.
Note: I write a lot in this diary about our meals. They weren’t the reason we all went to Italy. We went to share the hope of the gospel through music, but it was during the meals that we bonded as a group. When playing music we’re focused on the music, but when eating, we’re focused on each other.
Naples is the birthplace of pizza (even though their local pizza, consisting of crust, tomato sauce, and mozzarella, was far from being our favorite), and the inspiration for the song, “O Sole Mio.” Naples is the third-largest city in Italy, and Europe’s most densely populated city, with more than one million people and few open spaces or parks. It is set deep inside the large, curing Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius looming just five miles away.
After lunch I went to get some Euros at the ATM but I was unsuccessful. Later, back in the room, I had a message to call MCTU due to a fraud alert. I hope I got that all cleared up. I don’t know why there was a problem since I filled out the out-of-country paperwork before we left.
In the room Cyndi was already asleep. I slept about 2-1/2 hours – we all went back to GP restaurant for dinner. Excellent, again. We talked a long time with Robert McCormick from Norman, who grew up with my old roommate, Cory Nagode. That was a big surprise
Back to the room and down for the night.
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10-5-24 Saturday
Up this morning about 6:15 am for a shower, then breakfast buffet at 7:30 … it was all sweets, like having several flavors of cake for breakfast. I ate a croissant (the least sweet) and some yogurt. The hotel doesn’t seem to have a kitchen, so everything has to be brought in from outside.
Charlie Marks with FORGE gave a devotional, then we boarded the bus to go to the Casoria church and rehearsed. It took almost an hour to get the drums and such set up, then a 3-hour rehearsal. It all came back to me quicker than before.
We have all played with each other, or various members, at different times. Benny was the only first-timer. But this was our first time for this particular combination to be together, and yet, we were swinging at the first note. It always surprises me how quickly it comes together.
From rehearsal we walked to our restaurant, for the third time, for hamburgers and salad and focaccia bread. The food here has been excellent every time.
Cyndi and I stopped at the market on the way back to the hotel for a bundle of water and a large Coke Zero.
We were surrounded by apartment buildings. And not new, fancy apartments. These all same plenty of wear-and-tear showing. There didn’t seem to be much opportunity for exploring the neighborhood and shopping – the stores we saw were all aimed at the local residents, not at tourists hoping to buy gifts for friends and family back home.
(That was one thing we missed on this trip: neighborhood shopping and exploring opportunities. I think we were spoiled on our GMP trip to Hungary where our hotel was in the bustling city and near a large municipal park.)
We met in the lobby at 6:00 pm for the bus ride to the church in Melito. We set up in a large parking lot, which was something of a surprise. Most of us assumed we were playing inside. They had a professional sound company do the sound (they ended up doing the concert sound all week), and a group from the church cooked hamburgers and fries. Their traditional toppings for hamburgers included an eggplant mix, some sort of cooked greens, mushrooms, peppers, and some others I don’t remember. I always chose eggplant because it looked like grilled onions.
It was a very exuberant and grateful and gracious crowd. The church was surrounded by apartment buildings, and I expected to see residents out on their balconies listening, but I didn’t.
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10-6-24 Sunday
Up at 6:30 for a shower. Then down to breakfast. We are down to one electrical adapter (from an original three). The two green ones blew fuses when Cyndi tried to use her hair dryer. The white one, the one that still works, has only old USB outlets, so Cyndi can’t use it to charge her watch.
Breakfast for me was a croissant and yogurt – again – the least sweet of the choices.
We loaded our instruments into two cars, and they drove to the church while the rest of us walked, to join the Sunday morning worship service at the Vita Abbondante Chiesa Battista de Casoria (Abundant Life Baptist Church of Casoria). When we got there our local host, Tony, told Camp we would have to get by with only the congas because it was too difficult to haul the electronic drums down from upstairs (they were the electronic drums we used during our 3-hour rehearsal, the ones no one liked). Camp told him, repeatedly so he’d know it was serious, we need every instrument every time. We can’t and won’t perform without drums.
Finally, Tony relented, and we went upstairs to haul them down to the worship center.
After our warmup, three women – the church’s praise team – started warming up to soundtracks. I was deeply moved to hear them singing praise song in Italian. They started with Jesus Messiah. I had tears rolling down both cheeks. Once again God gave me a peak into how big He is. God is so much more. So much bigger. I get so lost in my own teaching and my own writing and my own reading and study I forget God does Italian, too. And Spanish. And Hungarian. And Hebrew.
During the worship service the power of the Italian praise songs hit me again, a straight shot to my heart. They sang “Che nome potent el,” What a Wonderful Name.
At the end of the service we played Savior Like A Shepherd and Wade in the Water to a great response. As the people were walking out, we played Oh Worship the King.
After tearing down, we all walked to a different restaurant for lunch – bread, a plate with prosciutto and mozzarella and octopus (looked like sliced salami) and red peppers. Very tasty.
After lunch I tried my MTCU debit card at two different locations with no success
Then, afternoon naps.
AT 6:00 pm we all walked to Vittoria Bar and Pizzeria to play a concert. We scared the owner when he saw the size of our band. He was afraid his dinner customers would get mad because we were so loud and leave without paying. As it turned out, we didn’t see anyone leave early. In fact, most of the people we could see stayed through both sets.
About halfway through we took a break for dinner. They had trays of mini pizzas and stuffed rolls and soft drinks. It was perfect. We all stood around a high table and ate and ate. It reminded me of the MC jazz band after the Chamber of Commerce Christmas party and we all pigged-out around the remains of the buffet.
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10-7-2024 Monday
Today was our day in Rome.
We had breakfast, as usual, for me coffee and yogurt. Then got on the bus for about two hours to Rome. We didn’t have a guided tour arranged, so we were all on our own, a difficult process for a place like Rome with too much to see and too many people all in the same place.
Modern cell phones make adventures like this so much easier. We used the maps on our phone. And when they sent in the GPS location of the restaurant, we all, four or five different groups of us, converged on the correct location, everyone on time for lunch. None of that would’ve worked back in the old days 15 years ago.
After lunch, our group of 4 walked to the Spanish Steps, then to Trevi Fountain, then the Pantheon, then followed the GPS to the bus.
Dinner back in Naples was at a different restaurant, Pizzeria Scapicciatriello, across the street from Vittorio Bar where we played last night. Cyndi and I ate giant sandwiches (we each ate about ½ our sandwich) with sausage and grilled peppers and provolone cheese.
Then to the room. Cyndi worked on her laptop, took a cookie order on the phone, and I published this mini journal on my webpage.
Worship in any Language
I didn’t expect Sunday morning to be so emotional for me. I was especially surprised by the giant tears rolling down my cheeks before the worship service even began. Three women were singing to a backing track to Jesus Messiah, by Chris Tomlin. They were warming up for the service, which would begin in about thirty minutes. Our band had already set up, and warmed up, and we were sitting in our designated seats in the first two rows, patiently waiting. That’s when I was ambushed by the music.
I’ve heard this song many times, and played the orchestra part, so it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. But hearing these women sing it in Italian caught me off guard.
Not because Italian is such an expressive and romantic language, which it is, but because it wasn’t English. It wasn’t the language I’m used to.
I get so lost in my own teaching and my own writing and my own reading and study, I forget God does Italian, too. And Hungarian. And Spanish. And Hebrew.
Later, during the actual worship service, the power of those Italian praise songs (that I assumed were English-only praise songs) hit me again. It was a straight shot to my heart. They sang “Che nome potent el” (What a Beautiful Name, by Ben Fielding and Brooke Ligertwood).
Once again, God have me a peek into how big He is, how unhindered by language He is. How geographically unbound He is.
God is so much more. So much bigger
Cyndi and I are in Casoria, Italy, very near Naples. We are here with the Global Missions Project’s Metro Big Band, where we’ll play in several churches and a couple of bars. This is our fourth trip with this group; it’s a ministry we love, and we love to be part of. And one of the reasons we like doing this is because we’ve seen God use music in mighty ways to pierce hearts and open minds.
I just didn’t expect the pierced heart and opened mind to belong to me.
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10-8-2024 Tuesday
We ate our leftover sandwiches from last night for breakfast.
Then on the bus at 7:45, to drive to the harbor at Salerno. We boarded a tourist ferry and cruised around the Amalfi coast, past so many houses built on cliffs over the ocean and steep mountains. We saw several terraced orchards. (On a side note: visiting the Amalfi Coast is on my list of 100 Life Goals.)
The ship took us to the town of Amalfi, where we unboarded the boat. We shopped in the narrow sheets and alleys for 3 hours until we all met for lunch in an outdoor restaurant.
Before lunch, several of us ate lemon sorbet together at tables on the street. The area on the Amalfi coast is famous for giant lemons, limoncello, and sorbet, and candy, and all sorts of lemony things.
For lunch we had risotto with shrimp, and it was excellent. Even it tasted a little like lemons.
After lunch Cyndi and I visited an ancient church, Basilica of the Crucifix.
Cyndi and I stayed together all day, as we do, and were joined by Wanda and Gene. We were happy they did. We don’t mind, and we usually encourage people to join us.
After we returned to our hotel, we wound down about an hour then we all went to the same restaurant as last night for American food. It started raining when we left – walking – and was raining hard by the time we arrived. Our regular interpreter couldn’t be there with us, no one at the restaurant spoke English, and none of us spoke Italian, so it was a struggle to fill our meal orders. Fortunately the menu was brief: hamburger or hot dog, with choices of sides: fries, mushrooms, peppers, or salad.
The owner and Wade were working hard trying to use their iPhone translator aps, but it wasn’t going well. I overheard their confusion and started writing down orders for our table and the table behind us. Robert said, just like an engineer, pulling order from chaos.
As our meal progressed it rained harder, and we could barely hear each other talk. Then the power went out.
We all got to eat; it was a grand adventure.
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10-9-24 Wednesday
Two things this morning
(1) I learned the bi-fold doors to our tiny shower are designed to open out rather than in. It made the shower feel much larger, and explained why the doors squeaked and complained whenever I got in or out. It’s always a surprise when I learn something I should have known all along.
(2) Yesterday I heard from several in the group how much they enjoyed my singing in Italian post from Monday night. Comments like, “I felt the same way, but you said it so much better and more personal.” Having that from fellow musicians was deeply moving.
Robert and his wife told me they had lunch with one of the singers from Sunday morning, in Amalfi, and they read my piece to her. She couldn’t believe someone heard so much from her simple warm-up.
All this was quite moving for me. Like all artists so with their do work, I send my writing out into the world because I believe I have a story to tell, but I have no idea if anyone really reads it. It’s nice to hear from people who do.
We rode the bus for an hour or so to Pompeii, where we took our informative and interesting tour. Especially the coliseum and the gymnasium.
The city was buried by at least 37’ of volcanic ash in 79 AD and was lost. Excavations didn’t begin until the 18th century. Because the city was buried instantly (actually, it probably took most of a day), the evidence of life was frozen in time. They have uncovered frescoes and homes and shops and roads, which have remained unchanged since the eruption. It was a fascinating glimpse of everyday Roman life.
Back to the hotel.
Left again for a concert at the Pink Panther bar at 6:00. The crowd in the bar, which was quite large, was sparce. It seemed most of the listeners were our own spouses or people from the church. But we later noticed the outdoor portion of the bar was full, every table, everyone eating. We wondered if they ate outside to escape the volume of the music. Then someone saw the sign advertising our concert and the charge was twenty Euros. Maybe the people eating outside felt they could hear us just fine.
We finally got home to the hotel at 11:30 pm.
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9-10-2024 Thursday
Up at 7:00
Left on the bus for Gabriel’s school at 8:00. It seemed to be a long drive to Aversa High School.
We set up outside in the parking lot. They had a few chairs out for the teachers, but mostly as line markers. The kids stood the entire time. It’s difficult to entertain teenagers anywhere in the world, and especially when they’re standing out in the sun. But they were polite and not rowdy, and at least those on the front rows seemed to be engaged with what we were playing and saying.
Gabriel said it was the first time ever for them to have a group like us.
The principal invited us all up to his office for coffee.
We played well. It’s hard to tell with an audience of kids, how many pay attention – but probably more than some of those Israel concerts.
We took the tour bus to downtown Naples, had lunch in a restaurant that still had access to an ancient Roman aqueduct. Too much food. So far, every meal (except breakfast) has been too much food.
We rode a city tour double-decker tour bus around Naples, saw beautiful parts of the city and the ocean and Vesuvius.
After the tour and after we drove back to the hotel, we had our end-of-the tour meeting where everyone gets a chance to share about the week.
Gabriel and Tony (his dad) thanked us on behalf of all the pastors and gave us some local chocolate with a thank you note included. It was a sweet time.
Then downtown to Lino Pizzeria for our evening concert. The restaurant was full, and might’ve been our most involved engaged audience, yet. There were at least two large groups (one about 20 people, the other about 30 people) celebrating birthdays.
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10-11-2024 Friday
We left the hotel at 6:45 am and drove to the port of Naples where we boarded a ferry for the island of Capri. The ferry ride took about an hour.
After the boat ride, we boarded a local tour bus and rode an incrediblly winding cliffhanger road up into the mountains of Capri to the town of Anacapri. It was actually a little frightening at times. Looking out the right-side windows meant staring down the cliff, but looking out the left-side windows meant seeing other buses driving toward us only inches away.
The bus let us out at a village square and our group split up – some stayed at that level and toured a church and all that. Cyndi and I joined the group that took a chair lift up higher to the 1,900’ summit of Monte Solaro, up to the highest point, about a 15-minute ride. It seemed a little jicky to me, safety wise, but we all made it OK. (My tour guide said, “Prospective smoochers should know that the lift seats are all single.”) At the top was a garden and a restaurant and we could see far away in every direction. It was beautiful. What a sequence – we rode a bus up the mountain, rode a chairlift some more up the mountain, then climbed stairs the rest of the way to the top.
We all ate lunch in Capri town, the high village where our bus was parked. Bread, pasta with white sauce and clams, salad, then chocolate brownie cake with ice cream.
Then we rode the funicular from Capri town down to the harbor, where they let us go shopping for about an hour. Cyndi and I and a couple more went shopping – Cyndi wanted to buy olive oil for some of her teachers and B&K, but we never found stores like that. The stores here were the opposite of Amalfi – these were all expensive designer stores.
When it was time, we all met in the square. About 10 minutes before heading for the ferry, Gabriel ran up to Cyndi and said he had found olive oil, and he would take her, but they must go quickly. The two of them took off running up the street. They came back with two bags of olive oil just as we were heading to the ferry.
After the boat ride back to Naples, our bus took us to the church (Soccavo) for our last concert of the trip. We played outside behind the church in a grassy area like a big back yard. The church was making hamburgers.
It might have been our largest crowd of the whole week; some thought it was the largest of any crowd of their GMP trips. The people were very engaged and sang along and seemed to have a great time. After the concert they stayed and hugged each other and laughed and danced. No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave.
We got back to our hotel about 11:30 pm. Cyndi and packed our suitcases and laid out clothes for tomorrow.
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10-12-2024 Saturday
Our alarm went off at 2:00 am and Cyndi and I both took showers. We had a long day, a double day, of flying ahead of us.
The entire early group was in the hotel lobby and ready to go by 3:30 am, our scheduled departure time. We scheduled it so early so that everyone would be at the airport at least 2 hours before their flight. But the bus didn’t arrive until 4:30 am. They decided to pick us up 2 hours before the flights. We were lucky to make it to our flights on time. (Later, after telling this story, Rabon said, “This is a case of giving too much information. They should never have mentioned the 2-hours-before-flight criteria, but simply said, pick us up at 3:30, and stop talking.” That’s a good thing to remember.)
We didn’t roll away from the hotel until 4:40 am.
Cyndi and I found the Iberia Airline (partner with American) counter and got our boarding passes. Our line was much shorter than some of the others.
We slept the entire 2-1/2 hours on our flight to Madrid. Once in Madrid we had a 3-hour layover, which gave us some time to wake up and work on stuff.
When we were in line, or in the mob, we were in boarding group 8, I heard them say over the speaker that the flight would be full, and they encouraged any large carry-ons to be checked at the gate. I went forward and offered to let them gate-check my trombone. The woman looked at my case and said, “That’s an instrument, isn’t it?” “Yes, a trombone.” It was clear she was nervous about gate-checking a musical instrument. She said, “You should carry than on board.” “I was only responding to your announcement and worried there wouldn’t be enough room by the time I boarded.” “Well, just get in line behind that man and board now. There’ll be plenty of room.”
So I got in line with group 2, and of course, had plenty of overhead room back in my section of the airplane.
Our seats, Cyndi and me, were about six rows apart. I didn’t remember that we were separated, but I did remember looking at the seats online and realizing there weren’t two seats together for us to move to.
I watched Oppenheimer, Boys in the Boat, and Almost Famous, ate two meals, and read several chapters in my Gun Lap book. For some reason, neither Cyndi nor I slept at all during the 11-hour flight to Dallas.
We had a 2-hour layover in Dallas, which was almost not long enough. It took us the entire time to grab our luggage, go through customs and recheck our luggage for the connecting flight. Then ride the train to our departure gate.
As we landed in Midland, I got a text from American Airlines telling me our two suitcases didn’t make it to our airplane. I filled in the form telling them where to deliver the luggage and all that. I appreciated them sending the email; it saved us from standing around the luggage carousel.
We were both in bed by 9:30.
We didn’t get our luggage until Wednesday afternoon. It must have been loaded on the wrong airplane and traveled far away. It would have been fun to know where it went.
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We heard several stories of people accepting Jesus and becoming Christians, or even taking a few steps closer to Jesus, from the concerts, and even from the hotel staff.
That’s so important for us to hear. We are so focused on playing the music, and loading and unloading, we aren’t always aware of God’s work taking place around us.
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Camp: “God connects the dots (often, dots we can’t even see.)” … He makes coincidences happen.
Camp: “Music is one of the only things that requires 100% right brain and 100% left brain. Full focus. That’s why we are tired when we finish playing. (Maybe that’s why I need a nap after teaching Sunday School. I’m burning both right and left.)
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From Charlie, with Forge:
Want to follow Jesus? Get up close to people. Share meals. Take advantage of small moments.
Bringing people up close to exposes them to Jesus within us.
We can IMPRESS people who are in front of us. But we IMPACT people up close.
Don’t think, “Who can I disciple,” but “Who can I get close to?”
Jesus SAW Matthew, STOPPED to talk to him, and SPENT TIME eating with him.
How do you spell love? T-I-M-E
How often do people hear, “Your gifts don’t fit our needs, so go work with kids …” and their story ends right there.
Charlie said, “I once tried leading worship. It was not successful. It was Saul’s Armor for me.”
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