On a warm Friday evening, June 1, 2019, Staci Frenes & Band teamed up with the high school ministry YoungLife to play a benefit concert in the Livermore Wine Country. The band performed a set of old favorites, recent songs and cover tunes amid the backdrop of a setting sun over vineyards that stretched in every direction.

Frenes’s personal connection with YoungLife runs deep. “When I was a 12-year-old, painfully shy wallflower who had just moved from Grand Forks, North Dakota to California I was invited by my 7th grade gym teacher Miss Lopez to go to a YoungLife winter camp where I heard for the first time that God loved ME,” Frenes told the crowd “That one invitation changed the entire trajectory of my life.”

Concertgoers raised $25,000 to send kids from area public junior high and high schools to similar camps like the one Frenes attended. Talk about full circle, says Frenes, who also said she was grateful to be a part of this life-changing work.