Bio

Hi, I'm Adriel! I'm a born again Christian, growing in my faith and life as a believer day by day. I am so thankful to the Lord for His sacrifice for me, that I could be free from sin and death and live freely for Christ. I am nothing without the Lord and am more than a conqueror through Him. It's an amazing journey as a Christian!

I have been married to my very caring and devoted husband for fourteen years and we have four kids. I love my family very much.

Along this amazing journey, God encourages me with new songs that strengthen me and bless me. I write down the songs the Lord gives to me. He just puts the words and music on my heart - no charge, no cost - just free gifts that bless and encourage me, many times when I am in great need of that encouragement. My prayer and hope is that these songs would bless and encourage the Body of Christ as I share them, delivering them to believers the same way God gave them to me: freely.

Two years ago I experienced a complete health collapse out of nowhere. I still don't know exactly what happened. The first few months were very trying, confusing and agonizing on all fronts - spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. Doctors didn't know what was going on with me and I continued to decline, coming close to death around the end of December 2012, hovering there for a few weeks. I could feel my life slipping away and death's grip pulling me to the grave. My doctor told me, "Your body is shutting down...your body is shutting down." I don't think I will ever forget those words.

I was prepared for death, accepting that this was just what was going to happen. I couldn't help but feel, however, that I was leaving behind unfinished work. I thought of my family - my husband and our four children - the youngest at the time was around 9 months old. That was probably the hardest part for me when I was facing death - wondering how my family was going to cope without me and thinking of my children. I suppose that may sound weak, going to be with Jesus being so wonderful and glorious, but I'm just being honest. And I truly know that if death at that point in time was God's will and plan for me, that He would have given them the grace to walk through that. I do believe that.

But God. I love to say that! But God intervened and slowly pulled me back from that brink of death, using one doctor in particular as an instrument for healing. I've spent the last year and a half slowly and steadily recovering. I've gone from being bedridden and hardly having the strength to stand, to being able to take a shower, do my hair and makeup and still have steam for the rest of the day. And I can hold my little ones again! I really missed that! In the short amount of time that I was in such a weakened state, I lost so much of my muscle strength, even my ability to sing. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be regaining that strength back and to be able to sing again. I wasn't sure if I would be able to do that again. It's funny. I don't think of myself as a singer. I just sing the songs because I'm the one who knows them. And I used to ask the Lord why He hadn't given me a better voice. After this ordeal, I've been learning to be content with my voice and thankful for it. Just having the breath and strength to sing to the Lord is a blessing in itself!

Coming face-to-face with death changed the way I look at life. It made me reevaluate so many things. Which brings me to the here and now. God has been giving me songs for many years now and I did record a few of them about nine years ago with the plan to share them with our church family. We were part of a small church at the time, having been serving there for all of our marriage, my husband going there some years before we were married. But right on the heels of finishing the recordings and giving away a dozen or so CDs, we were forced to leave our beloved church family. We began meeting in homes with some families we knew and I would share songs with them, but we really didn't know very many other believers and I wasn't sure how to share my music. My brother has been working on a website for me where I can put my songs up and anyone can download mp3s of their choosing for free, because that's how I want to keep it - free. Our worship leader where we are currently attending told us about SoundCloud and that gave me instant capabilities of doing what I've been wanting to do. I'm so excited about it! I don't want to hoard songs that have been such an encouragement to me and keep them to myself and bury the talent, so to speak. I really want to reach others with the messages of encouragement God has given to me through these songs. My prayer is that they bless you and encourage you in your walk with the Lord.

Please keep me in your prayers as I am not fully recovered. I've come a long way and have improved so much, but whatever is wrong isn't fixed yet. I am very thankful to be alive, recognizing that life is so very fragile and a precious gift that I have taken for granted and even still do. No part of our life - our heartbeat, our breath, our strength, or even our sleep - is dependent upon us. We are completely and utterly dependent on our Creator God and we belong to Him. Please pray that God's will be done in my life, whether that be complete restoration of my health or staying in a weakened state. Whatever it may be, I want to have a heart of contentment and gratefulness. Pray that God would give me the grace to accept His will, even if it is not what I would like. I have so much to be thankful for! God is good and does good...always! =)

If you want to read more about me, continue reading. If you've found out enough, then you can stop here. =)

I've loved music since I was really little, even writing some cute (also funny and embarrassing) songs as a little girl that are not worth sharing with you. Just fun memories for me. No, you will not pry them from me. My lips are sealed.

I started taking violin lessons when I was five from my next door neighbor, an elderly man who loved music too. He heard me singing in the backyard, approached my mom and told her that I had "perfect pitch". Please, do remember he was elderly - his hearing was off. I know because I've heard myself sing and I do not have perfect pitch! Regardless, he was so convinced of this truth that he offered to give me FREE violin lessons! What do you think my mom said?

Yep, so I started lessons with him on a little half-size violin with four colored strips taped where my fingers needed to be to make the thing sound right. After a little while, the strips came off and I knew where to put my fingers to do my scales. Hooray! My teacher played viola in the community orchestra where we lived in CA, so when I was somewhat proficient of a player, I had the wonderful opportunity of playing in the community orchestra for a number of years. Mind you, I was in the 2nd violin section... yeah, I wasn't all that great. Oh, and one Saturday at practice when I was there all by myself with the orchestra, our area had a good-sized earthquake that made the lights in the gymnasium where we practiced swing from the ceiling. That was scary exciting and I made it out alive (obviously), but that is beside the point. That time in the orchestra influenced my musical tastes and preferences to a degree. I enjoy classical music (the pretty stuff) and almost everything that I have arranged/recorded has strings in it somewhere. I am a strings fanatic! =)

I kept at it until we moved away from my CA home when I was twelve and then the beautiful handmade violin that we were renting (I had grown out of the half-size by then) from its maker/owner was left and lessons went by the wayside for a brief interim. We settled down in our new home and my great-grandmother bought me a brand new violin. I know, sounds awesome, right? Brand new and everything for only $60... or was it $80? I don't remember, but 20 bucks doesn't make that much of a difference in this instance. If you know anything about violins (which we did not at the time), cheap is NOT good.

We found a violin teacher, who helped me first unlearn some bad habits that my old teacher, bless his heart, had let slide. Firstly, my wrist. I played with my wrist flat up against the neck of the violin. Big no-no! Second, holding the bow. Wow! I had no idea there was a special way to hold the bow. Your fingers have to be precisely like so or it just isn't right! Don't forget that pinky finger being extended at the end. And third, she had me get this attachment thingy that held the violin closer to my face so I wouldn't have to angle my neck so much. That was awkward and hard to get used to initially. Okay, so I had some significant adjustments to get used to and I did. But it didn't seem to matter how much I practiced and practiced and practiced, I couldn't seem to get my "touch" back. The tone was not good and I put a whole lot of effort into improving that tone as much as I could. One day during a lesson (I will never forget this), I began to play a piece for my teacher that I had been practicing for a loooooong time. I had only played a few measures when she abruptly told me to stop. Without a word, she got her violin and placed it in my hands and told me to play, which I did. I could not believe the difference in the quality of the sound! I actually sounded good! I was amazed. My violin teacher's instrument was at least $10,000, if I remember correctly. Maybe more than that. Crazy!

So of course, there was obviously a problem with my violin. It didn't matter how hard I tried, I could not make that thing sound good. The violin was a piece of junk. Seriously. My teacher encouraged my mom to get me a better violin, but at the minimum, a decent, not great, but decent violin was around $1,000. We didn't have that kind of money just lying around. I had begun to experience wrist pain and a lot of neck pain, probably from straining so hard to make pretty music which didn't end up sounding very beautiful. =(

My teacher was telling us about how she had wrist problems where her hand would just let go of things involuntarily, without notice. Yeah, we're talking holding a glass of water and *crash*. That was slightly alarming. I started to evaluate the whole violin thing. We couldn't afford a better instrument. It was much too taxing on my body to try to make my junky cheap violin sound decent. I was already experiencing early wrist and neck problems. Was it worth it? I decided to walk away from ten years of violin.

I was around fifteen then. That was a tremendous loss to me and I felt as if I had wasted ten years of my life. What did I have to show for it? And I had this music still inside of me and needed some kind of outlet to release it upon. I had tinkered here and there on the piano, but couldn't play for real. My mom taught me some basic music theory and chords. The piano became my musical outlet. No, it wasn't the violin, but it was better than nothing.

Then, my dear grandma who I was very close to, who I saw at least every other day or so, was diagnosed with renal cancer. Her right kidney had to go, it was so engulfed by the cancer. The prognosis was not promising, the cancer being very aggressive and having progressed very far. She began treatments that made her very sick, which ultimately did little to help her. The cancer spread, she began coughing up blood, and about a month before my 18th birthday, she passed away.


Sometime during this time of struggling with her diagnosis and watching her suffer, God gave me the words and tune for "Speak to Me". It brought me a lot of comfort during that time of pain and encouraged other people our family knew also. A friend helped me record the song at his house. He had a keyboard, a microphone, and a computer. We are talking super high-tech, man. This happens to be my humble set-up as well. {wink}

Touchingly, my grandma was able to hear the finished product before she died. I'm so glad God allowed that in His perfect plans and timing. You can click HERE to hear "Speak to Me" (this version is not the original one my grandma heard. This would be the "updated" version, even though it's nine years old).

And then God just kept giving me songs! I kept playing away at that piano, getting more comfortable with it and improving little by little. I am certainly not an accomplished pianist, having no formal teaching or training, I just play chords and wing it most of the time. If I've got chords, I'm good. If I've got sheet music, I am not good. Does that pretty much explain the extent of my abilities in that area? Good, I'm glad we're clear on that. Whew!

I have a very supportive and encouraging husband who bought me a good microphone, let me spend some extra money on a keyboard, bought cakewalk home studio, a USB audio/midi interface and a nice pair of headphones about nine or ten years ago. He made sure I had the very best home studio possible, let me tell you. He's sweet, huh? In addition, he is very outgoing, confident in who he is, uninhibited by what people may think about him, saying and doing things I would never dream of doing or saying. We are opposites. I am shy, but I was homeschooled, so being polite and friendly were not optional, they were expected, no matter if you were shy or whatever. I'm glad my mom was so insistent about that, because it was a good habit to form. So, I may not seem shy, but I really am. I just hide it, and not always very well. I am so uncomfortable sometimes that I act completely unlike myself, going way overboard with the friendly thing, laughing loudly when there's really nothing to laugh about. That's probably when people think I'm weird or hyper. But at least I try, right?

And I worry way too much about what people think about me. I'm that gal who is embarrassed when my kids and husband are loud and rowdy in public, imagining glaring, angry eyes from people. Let's say that I've learned to lighten up and still am learning to do so. The embarrassment level is more around "uncomfortable" now and not mortified. That would be a step toward meeting my husband half-way, I would say. I've still got more steps to take to get to the middle, but then we wouldn't really be balancing each other out then, now would we? ;)

So my husband is the extreme extrovert and I'm shy, but try not to be. Are you with me? Good, because it would be easy to lose you with my ramblings. My husband will just flat out mention to people that I write songs and sing. I am learning to not be mortified and embarrassed when he does this. He's my official promotional agent! It's great, because his services are free, which goes along perfectly with my vision for these songs from God. Free is the word, people!

About nine years ago I finished the arrangements of several songs for the project I Exist for You. Those are the songs I'm sharing first. We all start somewhere and I want to share from the beginning with you. I did them a long time ago, I was an amateur (and still am), and they are dated. That said, I still wanted to share them because it's where I started. Plus, it gives me some time to get some newer ones together. It took me a long time to do just those few songs. Arranging doesn't come naturally to me and I'm no midi sequencing pro or even amateur. I am a SNAIL. Read that word slowly to get a better idea of what I am trying to communicate to you. And drums... don't even get me started on those. I am terrible at putting those into a song!

I was a mom of two when I first did those first recordings and with arranging and midi sequencing being so time-consuming (for me), not to mention homeschooling being in the mix, it just wasn't a very conducive environment for hours and hours of recording. I would record a song here and there, but I never got back into the full swing of it, which I think was proper. Raising and training children in the Lord is no small task. My energy needed to be directed to that endeavor and still needsd to be.

God kept giving me songs, and then I got my brother on board. My brother, Daniel Tekunoff, is an amazing musician. I could use so many other adjectives to describe him and they would all be true, but "amazing" sums him up very well, and not just in music. Daniel is an amazing young man, but more importantly, an outstanding, exceptional, Godly young man who loves God and walks the talk. He is serious about God and such a good example to my kids and myself as well. My brother is a talented classical guitarist and has his own business, playing for weddings and other events. You can visit his website and listen to samples of his talent on the guitar HERE.

Okay, enough bragging on my brother already! Well, a couple of years ago, maybe three even, Daniel started helping me with the arrangements of newer songs that I was writing at the time - one in particular - "Treasure". It's been a blessing to hear what he's done with the rough recordings of the songs I send him. He's very patient about making alterations and with ideas that I have. He does this on his own time for free. I'm very blessed.

I plan on taking a journey soon back to the beginning of when my health collapsed and sharing the songs I've written chronologically through these past two years. God continues to use my health challenges as a blessing in my life, even though at times it is terribly frustrating. I just want to be better, it's been two years, I want to be normal and be able to do normal things without limitations...blah, blah, blah...I say all this stuff to the Lord. God is very patient with me and speaks peace into my heart, reminding me to look past now and look at my eternal future. I'm secure in Christ, I have peace with God, I have been washed and saved by the blood of Christ...I have what matter: eternal life through my Savior. I am learning to look past what I've lost and focus on what I'm gaining.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I pray that it is an encouragement to you.

Blessings to you,
Adriel