Darren LeBlanc

I mentioned a couple weeks back that I wouldn’t be on here much this month. It seems, I predicted right. I am sorry for my lack of communication, but I’ve been locked in a room working on the new anthem of hope website and a few other hot items.

We had a launch party for the site, with our team, at the Nauvoo Grill Club in Fair Haven. (They donated the food and room for the party..I’ll write more about them later. They were great) Since we had the whole team coming in for that we also took staff pictures and had a bunch of productive meetings. Click the picture below to visit the new anthem of hope Flickr page.

 Anyway, I’m tired, but we are getting there. I have such a great team (see them in the staff photos gallery). http://anthemofhope.com goes live the morning of April 1st at midnight.

It’s about 10:30pm and I’m driving back to my hotel from a meeting (I’m in the boston area for work). Getting a little tired, I decided to stop at Dunkin Donuts for a green tea and a chocolate frosted. It’s not very hard to find a dunkin donuts place…there is basically one on every street corner across this fine donut and coffee lovin country.

So I pull in and spring out of my car, and quickly lock the door. I’m in a new blue Prius Hybrid and I’m not all that comfortable in the car yet….its kinda quirky. So I get my stuff and come back outside. Something was funny….I had left my lights on. Hmm, and I left the engine on.. Now, it took me 10 minutes to get this thing to start, and I almost freaked when I stopped at an intersection and it sounded like it turned off..so I’m not putting anything past this car. I get in the door and pull it shut next to me. The seat feels a little different too. And wait…oh man….my keys are in my pocket still…

Yeah, so I snuggled up on some random guys nice blue car. I quickly jumped out and got in the right one! Funny thing was that it really didn’t look anything like mine. I’m just a bit scatterbrained :)

Everywhere I go, good things happen to me. You know…its like God wants to remind me that in middle of some of the suckiest events in life (well, I guess we are in the aftermath of the worst of it) he is still there.

Tonight, I let Olivia go over Grandma’s to play for a couple hours while I work on the anthem of hope website. We are all set to launch April 1st, so there’s still much left to do. Well, I decide to multi-task and go somewhere to get dinner while working. I bring my laptop into Jesse’s Cafe in West End (Long Branch, NJ) and who do I see but an old friend, Derek. He is sitting there about 90 seconds away from starting his jazz set. Derek used to play guitar with me when I led worship at Calvary Lighthouse. He is a wonderful player and I’m not sure I could have picked a better background to have while I sit here and work. I’m almost done my quesadilla’s now and have to get working…so I’m going to go.

But this was nice. And you can see a video of my man Derek in the right hand column…just scroll down a little, below my twitter updates. I just sent it from my phone.

— —

UPDATE: I just got home. Two quick things:

1. Derek played “I get Misty” – and it was beautiful. Have you heard that song? One of my favorites for obvious reasons :)
2. I had a great dinner. There are really only a few places that go all out bringing you the most healful food possible; Jesse’s Cafe is one of them. If you are in the mood for eating well, and in a nice little place by the beach stop in. Let me know if you go.

Ok, so I’m basically in overdrive working on stuff for the anthem of hope website launch. You won’t see me much this month. But mark your calendars: April 1st is the big day that we launch http://anthemofhope.com Then just a month after the website launch, the English version of the Encouragement Disc will be available.

Also, look forward to our logo t-shirts and wrist bands being available at the site launch.

In the mean time…track me with twitter (if you have an account) – http://twitter.com/darrenleblanc

I’m terrible at remembering life. I mean, there are times when I remember lots of details (like what you got for dinner when we when to friendly’s in 9th grade) but for the most part I forget everything. I recently bought myself a blackberry curve so I had a Internet and a camera with me at all times (i have a work blackberry too…but that’s supposed to be used for govt business only – and there is no camera). My goal is to do a better job of documenting little bits of life so that Olivia and I can look back at this 20 years from now and remember silly little stuff.

On the right of this page you will see a new widget from utterli.com. For now, this will display the newest video I post from my phone. I am trying to post something up there most days (we will see if that happens). Anyway that’s all for now…just filling you in on the weird video box I added :)

If you want to watch the video just click the little play button on the screen. This one is funny cause its olivia quoting her favorite show Word World.

Sheep accusing Ant (who is all red) of stealing a pie:

Sheep: I caught you red handed

Ant: well, my hands are red, but so is the rest of me…so what?!

Today is my best friends birthday. Scott Parker has held that role (alongside my brother) for about 18 years. He and I grew up together and then actually married 2 young ladies that happened to have been best friends with each other too (yeah, kinda weird…but nice). He and his wife Ann have been the most incredible friends that Misty and I could have asked for. Since Misty has been gone, they both are still very much a part of my life.

Scott,
Happy Birthday.
I love you and I’m proud that you are my friend.
–Darren

I went a lunch today for a group of pastors in my area. Someone spoke briefly and encouraged the group that we all need to remember that if someone isn’t a Christian, it may just be that no one has ever told them. Well, in his case, that was true. I’ll never question his story. And in many other cases, that is also true. But, I dont suspect those cases are the majority. A couple weeks back I read, Unchristian, by David Kinnaman. I mentioned it before and the discussion today brought it to memory. Here is a clip from that book: >> Listen to the Audio Clip

See, I would tend to agree with Mr Kinnaman here. And from that this is what I suggest…The major problem today isn’t lack of information. The problem isn’t what people don’t know about Christians, its what they do know. It’s the image that people have that is constructed of the lives they observe. The overhwleming image of Christianity is one that is not appealing…and for that, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Comments? I will discuss this more soon…

So, I often get looks from people wondering what “takes so much time” with Anthem of Hope. This inevitably comes when I tell them I’m up till 3am working everyday. (its 4am now…sometimes its a little later, others a bit earlier). So I wanted to give a little insight into a couple things from this week alone.

Video Shoot: We are doing 3, 15 second video clips for our website. Thats it…just 3 clips that are 15 seconds each. This is what that took:

• 15 hours online casting
• 1 full day of casting calls (team of 7 people)
• 6 hours of script writing (team of 3)
• 5 hours prep work for the shoot
• 8 hours, the day of the shoot (team of 10, plus 4 hired actors)
• Now, we have probably 20 hours editing and motion graphics left to do, and professional voice over narrative for the end and background music that has to be made.

Another thing this week was hiring the voice for the 3rd section of the Encouragement Disc. This is going to be a disc with 3 sections of scripture reading relevant to healing and faith. For this we got custom auditions from 67 professional voice talents before we found the perfect voice. If you want things to be be perfect, it takes time :)

Anyway, we have a great team. Please keep praying for us. We are hoping to launch our website very soon!

PS…I had such a good day today. Olivia and I played in the snow for an hour till her face was so red I made her go in (she wanted to stay out more..haha). It was nice.

For those of you local to me here in Long Branch, NJ – it is likely you are either annoyed that you have to shovel for 30 minutes to get to work, or…you are home from work. For me, it is the latter :)

I wanted to show you all some images from the video shoot we did on saturday. Click below to see the gallery:

Images taken by Vanessa Joy.