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With so many worship musicians on campus and such a vibrant community of believers at USF, this night was born out of a desire to grow our campus community both spiritually and musically. We also just wanted a space and an opportunity to worship via music consistently every single week. This is an area I am very passionate about. Music is one the times I feel most connected to God and at peace with his plan. I was asked to join the leadership team at the end of last year and had the pleasure of serving with Cristina Adams, Allison Carmany, Elizabeth Enalls, Matt Harsch, and Andrew Carmany. With this many prayful and determined minds at work, worship night was a great success this year.

My role included going to weekly meetings to plan the night each week and reflect on the past weeks night. I also made and hung up signs and advertising. The second half of the year I spent a bit of time recommending and finding student speakers to add some teaching and/or testimony to each worship night. I sometimes ran the lyric slides or helped set up. I also played from time to time, piano, bass, and cajon. I basically just helped out wherever needed and also gave my feedback throughout the year in an effort to improve the event. It was a good experience overall.

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What an incredible experience! This was easily the most elaborate senior theatre show I have seen during my time at USF and I was absolutely honored to be apart of it. I played drumset in the pit band. For this service endeavor, I wrote my own music, attended many rehearsals leading up to the show, and played in 4 sold out performances. As a pit band, we had to get pretty creative because the only music we had was the piano part. I spent a good chunk of time just listening to the music and getting familiar with the style and the layout of the musical as a whole. Another challenge we faced and conquered was balancing our volume with the actors. None of the actors had microphones since the venue was small and they weren’t super necessary. It is hard to play drums super soft though as they are, by nature, instruments that require striking and striking is not a gentle action. I had to play around with different types of sticks, brushes, hot-rods, etc. and find the right sound and feel for every song.

The team we had for Nunsense was great to work with. Early on, I decided to make growth in my ability to work with others my focus in this service opportunity. My fellow bandmates were fabulous. We communicated time and time again about who was covering what parts and whether or not we could hear everybody well. Also, working with the cast proved to be a stretching experience. If something was clashing or not jiving quite right,  I would ask them what they imagined or what they wanted for that certain section and then I would try to adjust and provide that for them. Overall, the team was encouraging supportive and helped to make the hours melt away. We all put a ton of work into this, but the time flew by.

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Faith Baptist Fellowship Worship Team - drumset - 17 hours

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Faith Baptist Fellowship Worship Team - drumset - 17 hours

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This service opportunity includes a practice session on Saturday, another practice session on Sunday morning and then playing at two services on Sunday. I do this generally once a month. It has been a wonderful way to share my gifts and worship our great God!

I play with a different team of people every month which was once again a great experience in working with a group. I gained listening skills and communication skills as I had to express thoughts and needs such as whether or not I was hearing certain parts loud enough in my monitor. I just started going to this church at the beginning of the year, so being a part of the worship team has been a fantastic way to get to know more people. I really enjoy the intergenerational aspect of Faith Baptist’s team. One week I was with a 75-year-old guitar player and a high school bass player and the next time I was with two middle-aged moms. It is fun to make music and do ministry with such varied people!

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Rehearsing part of Rockin' Rickie Rocket. Working to add enthusiasm!

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Purple Thunder Percussion Club = 9.75 hours

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Purple Thunder Percussion Club = 9.75 hours

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This club means so much to me! Three years ago I had the crazy idea to start a percussion group on campus. My amazing friends and fellow percussionists, Rachel DeBoer and Rachel Polson came beside me, supported me, and soon my dream became a reality. For our first performance, we put together a rag tag group of about 10 people and shook up the status quo of the spirit of excellence awards with a rocking rendition of "Trading My Sorrows". Despite our small size, we had an absolute blast, a fire was started, and "Purple Thunder" was born. Two years ago, our group grew to around 20 members, we won Cougaret (the homecoming variety show), played at a variety of other events and just had a great time all year long! My main hopes and goals for the group came out of Psalm 150:5-6, "Praise Him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals, let everything that has breath praise the Lord". I love percussion because anyone can do it, especially with instruction, making it a very accessible instrument of praise. One of my favorite parts of Purple Thunder is that only 5 or so of our current members were ever percussionists in the past, but now we are all capable rockstars! This year at Cougaret, after an immense amount of hard work and dedication, 37 incredible people walked out and owned the stage in front of an audience of 800, artistically banging on cymbals, marimbas, anvils, egg shakers and everything in-between, representing all that Purple Thunder is; playing together with oozing passion and contagious joy, all to the glory of God. It was a beautiful thing to be apart of. I am so blessed to be able to lead this group of crazy awesome humans.

My apologies, I had to brag a little bit, anyway, this semester we focused on preparing a few songs for my senior recital as well as to play/do at our final wind ensemble concert of the year. I wrote an arrangement of the Friends theme song and we did a vocal percussion piece, Rockin’ Rickie Rocket. I picked the vocal percussion piece knowing that anyone who could speak would be capable of performing with us. A lot of my song choices throughout these years have been based on factors similar to this. I want anyone and everyone to be able to experience the joy of percussion. My role is to run the rehearsals. I love and hate this because being in charge of your peers is hard. A lot of people come to purple thunder largely for the social aspect. Due to this, I have to balance talking and enjoying each other’s company with getting things done and making progress on our pieces. It is a challenge, but it has been so fun overall and has provided great preparation for my future career as a teacher!

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Spring 2017
Leigh Braun
Music Education
University of Sioux Falls
TOTAL HOURS = 67.5