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Everlife mission trips photo album:
“We just want to be so genuine so God can shine through us.” - Amber
“The world is so hard with the whole imaging of stuff and our message is that, 'You're beautiful on the inside and out - no matter what.' ” - Julia
MQ: You mentioned about God having a plan. A recurrent theme we see is 'find your passion' - 'find what God calls you to do.' I read that you started by going out and touring Pennsylvania, and then you get a number one single on 'the Fish' (local PA radio station). Can you talk about that - finding your way, finding your passion. Was there any interesting story, or someone coming up and talking to you that made you realize that, "Hey, this is where we need to be - what we need to be doing."
Sarah: Like Julia said, we started in 1997. When we started, we wanted to put the ministry and the music together. Those were both of our passions. At first, we were just having fun like, "Ok, let's just see where God takes this." Then in 2001, we went on a mission trip to Brazil. We've been on three mission trips, twice to Costa Rica, and once to Brazil. And I think that trip - Amber always says - was like a breaking point for us - in our faith, and also with 'Everlife.' We realized when we were there, we saw so many people that had nothing. We went and we were able to go to the garbage dumps there. People were there smiling....
Amber: It was amazing.
Sarah: They were just like, "We don't have anything, but we really do have everything." You know? We came home and we realized that this is just our extended mission trip. We're still on the mission thing and we're going out every weekend performing. That was a point when we were like, "We need to have something deeper than just a positive message." We want to have something to leave people with.
Amber: Definitely. I think that's one thing that we've always wanted to do is not have people to come to a show or listen to the CD and go, "Oh, I really like their haircut" or "I think they're so cool" or "I'm really into the music" or anything like that. But for people to leave saying, "There's something really different about those girls." Whether they think we're nuts or not...
Julia, Sarah: laugh
Amber: - but to be like, "They've got a hope. And the passion they have is real." We just want to be so genuine so God can shine through us. After realizing that, and that all coming together - I think it was about a year after the trip - it was kind of like, "Wow, this is something a lot larger than just us going out and having fun with some songs."
Julia: That's something in our message - to set a positive message for kids our age because we're normal - normal teenagers...
Amber: Yeah.
Julia: Well ... are you a teenager? (looking to Amber)
Amber: Ahh, kind of.
Julia: Sort of? (laugh)
Sarah: laughing
Julia: But we know how it is. You know, the world is so hard with the whole imaging of stuff and our message is that, "You're beautiful on the inside and out - no matter what."
MQ: Cool. Going back to the mission trips, do you want to talk a little bit about what you did or how you got connected with it?
Amber: It was amazing. We hooked up with an organization called Big
World Ventures out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think
they're an offshoot of Teen Mania. Our first missions
trip was in '99. We went to San Jose, Costa Rica
and then we went again the next year. What we'd do is we'd go
out on the streets - there was probably thirty of us in a team
and like five or six teams, and we'd do a mime that started from
the beginning of the world to Christ's death and resurrection.
It was translated into Spanish and into Portuguese. 
But it was
amazing because we'd go out and we'd do this drama just wherever
we could because they'd just let us come and there would be
hundreds and hundreds of people constantly coming. And what's different I think
about South America that really hit us because we hadn't known, is
that people believe in God - whether they live for him or
not. It's kind of like - I don't know what the word is - more of
a sense of you know that there are spiritual things going on.
And, so for us - and to have people come up and say, 'Do you want to
know about God - do you want to know about Jesus?' and them
saying, 'YES I do, I really do.' It was so different from here. So
when we came back it was kind of like we need to figure out how
that we can come into people's lifestyles and not be just like, 'Hey,
here we are, like our song!' You know? And have what Sarah
said, have that 'musician-ary' kind of mindset. We would go to
houses of people and just show up and ask if they needed prayer -
or if they needed us to do anything for them. We actually stayed at
an orphanage when we were in Brazil. So everyday we'd
be out trying to work in the streets. We'd come home
every night to this orphanage of these most beautiful children.
Sarah: It was so refreshing.
Amber: And they'd try to teach us Portuguese and we were trying to teach them English. It was just amazing. It was just like seeing Christ's love everywhere that we went - which was kind of overwhelming - because we were only there for two weeks.
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