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27018: Hermantin (news)Christian rock star sets off on mission (fwd)





From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Palm Beach Post


Christian rock star sets off on mission
Ride for Haitian kids starts in Gardens
By Leslie Gray Streeter

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

PALM BEACH GARDENS — Before Monday, the farthest Audio Adrenaline lead singer Mark Stuart had ridden his motorcycle was the approximately 150 miles between Key West and Miami. But by today, the Grammy-winning frontman planned to have covered almost twice that, between Palm Beach County and Jacksonville — with about 2,500 more to go in the next 11 days.

Even though the singer admitted he was "freaking out a little," a smiling Stuart set out Monday morning on his cross-country "Hands & Feet Across America" tour from Trinity United Methodist Church in Palm Beach Gardens, seen off by waving fans and a parade of about 20 members of local Christian biker groups.



Greg Lovett/The Post

enlarge

Mark Stuart (center), frontman of the group Audio Adrenaline, takes off Monday morning from Trinity United Methodist Church for California, accompanied by members of local Christian biker groups. The singer's 3,000-mile journey is a fund-raiser for the Hands & Feet Project, his parents' ministry for orphans in Haiti.


Greg Lovett/The Post

enlarge

Whenever he looks down at the gas tank of his motorcycle, Mark Stuart will be reminded of why he's riding from Florida to California.
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The contemporary Christian singer's trek will take him and five friends through Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and other states between here and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, making music, raising money for and awareness of the plight of desperate children not far to our south.

"Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and it's just an hour and a half from Miami," said Stuart, whose trip is in support of the Hands & Feet Children's Village in Cyvadier, Haiti, a residence and school for children orphaned by epidemics of political unrest, poverty, AIDS and violence.

About 100 people streamed in and out of the parking lot during a two-hour send-off party sponsored by 88.1 WAY-FM featuring free breakfast food donated by the Chick-fil-A restaurant on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard and a chance to meet Stuart and his traveling companions. Several bikers rode out with the singer and planned to go as far as St. Lucie County, they said.

"We felt this was a good cause to support," said Lynn Jewell of Lantana, who would ordinarily have been working at the U.S. Postal Service but was instead astride her motorcycle with other members of Palm Beach County's Alpha and Omega chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association.

"So many people think of bikers and immediately think 'Hell's Angels,' of bad guys," said Jewell, whose husband, Charlie, is the chapter's chaplain. "But that's not at all true."

Stuart, who signed autographs, hugged fans, and was serenaded with his band's hit Big House by a group of neatly uniformed kindergarten and first-grade students from Trinity Christian School, said that the purpose of the Hands & Feet Project is to "educate and help raise up a generation of young Haitians who will grow up in their own country and one day affect it in a positive way."

He said he first "fell in love with the island and people of Haiti" while on a short-term mission trip in high school, and lived in the country briefly with his pastor father, Drex, and mother, Jo. The couple had moved back to the United States but have now returned to Haiti head up the Hands & Feet Project, named for an Audio Adrenaline song.

Stuart, whose band released its latest album, Until My Heart Caves In, this month, said Palm Beach County was chosen as the start-off point because of its location. Also, like other stops on the tour, it has a major Christian radio station, 88. 1 WAY-FM, to help get the word out, he said.

The local WAY-FM kick-off party included the blessing of the bikes by Rick Barreiro of the Revelation Riders chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association in Port St. Lucie.

"We just always like to ask God for protection to keep their britches between the ditches," Barreiro said.