correctly . I didn ' t want to sound like I was from North Carolina , I wanted to sound legit , so I worked at it . And then on my first mission trip ( when I was a freshman in high school ) I went to Costa Rica . That just kind of fueled the flame , not only for the language , but also the culture and the people . I love how family-oriented Latin culture is and how they ' re just so personable and they take care of each other . Whether you are blood or you ' re not , they ' re just very communal and I love that aspect .
And then when I was in college , I wrestled with my major a lot , because I knew that I wanted to lead worship , but I didn ' t know that I wanted to major in it . I actually toyed with the idea of majoring in Spanish but I settled on family and child development of all things .
My plan was to move to Guatemala after college , because I had started going my freshman year of college to an orphanage in Guatemala . They had a school and church and a hospital , and it was all on this little mountain , about four hours from Guatemala City . I fell in love with those people and just thought that this was where I wanted to spend a significant part of my young adult life . And so , I visited there multiple times , I think six or seven , and went to El Salvador , Peru , and the Dominican Republic . I led worship in Spanish when I was in college and just after college . But I didn ' t end up moving to Guatemala , I went to Chicago instead of all places .
And this has kind of come full circle because I ' ve always dreamed about it . I ' m not fluent , so I ' m not to the point where I could actually probably write a song in Spanish , but just having my friend Lucia translate them so that I can sing songs that I ' ve written in Spanish has
Millones de Santos ( A Million Saints ) feat . Blanca just been really special . It ' s been a dream of mine forever .
[ WM ] And your new project , Abrenos Los Cielos , is a full-length , 11-song , offering , including five featured artists . Please tell us about the overall project and working with Blanca on “ Millones de Santos ”.
[ Meredith ] Yeah , it ' s with Blanca . We had several different guest artists . So “ Millones de Santos ” means a million saints in English and Blanca got to sing on it and she just did brilliantly . And so many of the other artists that came on have massive followings in the Latin community . So here I am . This little American North Carolinian girl saying , “ I want to release these songs in your language ”. But they were