God's Light Tour Homepage

With the benefit of sleep and a few days to meld back into normal society I’ll wrap up tour for this year.

From Oklahoma City we rode to St. James UMC in Florence, AL, for our last night festivities, and to sing in their two morning services. Arow Taylor’s sister Julie and her family are members there. That was our last stop on the way home from our last Grand Canyon tour. They have been wonderful hosts both times. The services went well, as did our homecoming concert.

A few points, in no particular order:

• Pastor Derek is amazing with the kids and we are lucky to have him as a part of our ministry. I look forward to hopefully working with him for many years to come.
• This year has been a trying one, particularly for our graduating seniors, who deserved better. Even so, they have remained loyal to the choir. I was particularly impressed to see them show up in en-masse for the visiting choir at our church last Friday night. Most senior classes were completely checked out after choir tour. Seniors, I commend you!
• I’m excited for the new leadership in the youth group, and for the direction of the program.

Look for an update to the God’s Light website in the coming months, and a transition to using it more for event and fundraising management. Frankly, the days of journaling tour have come and gone. Everybody can follow us on social media, and the kids all have cell phones, so there’s not much point in journaling tour except for a historical record, and there are certainly better ways to preserve history.

This was my 29th tour. Counseling ministries have become more and more difficult in recent years, as one-on-one counseling is hard to accomplish in a way that preserves safety for both students and counselors. The value of God’s Light as a ministry goes well beyond one-on-one counseling with the kids, but counseling was always my focus. It’s a different world now, and I guess I’m not adapting well. Might be time to leave this to the younger folks. Then again, I always question my sanity coming off of tour. With time to catch up on sleep and appreciate the more positive aspects of this ministry, I may feel different. Ask me next May.

This morning we sang for the worship service at Montview Road Presbyterian Church. They had a capacity crowd, and the choir sounded magnificent with their pipe organ. They have an excellent music program, and similar to our church, music is a principal part of their ministry. They were so appreciative of our kids and the counselors for God’s Light! I would love to go back their again.

They had a picnic to celebrate the completion of their capital funds campaign. They’re raising money to do some renovations to their church and update wiring, plumbing, and other infrastructure; and to fund local missions. Interestingly, they’re trying to raise almost the exact same amount that we will need to raise for our planned capital improvements: $7,500,000.

After the picnic we rode to Cinnamon Assisted Living in Longmont, CO. Our connection there was Sabra Jewel, who was a GL member in the early 90’s, I think. Sabra used to work for United Way, and liked the facility, so she called to get us a contact. We were able to perform for many of the residents, gave away a bunch of CDs, and even pulled some weeds in their flower bed before we headed back to the buses.

This evening we bused to Boulder to grab dinner with our small groups, and then rode down the hotel near the Denver Airport.

Tomorrow we will travel up over the Great Divide and then down into Pagosa Springs, CO, where we will perform at Pagosa Springs UMC. Sabra’s husband, Mike, said the drive into Pagosa Springs has some breathtaking scenery.

Lack of wireless coverage and a need for sleep, coupled with a day spent on the van on Saturday with no wireless, conspired to prevent me from updating on Friday or Saturday. Let me pick up with Friday.

Friday was spent on the bus to First Evangelical Congregational church in Palmyra, PA, pastoral home of our former associate pastor, Charles Walker. It was great to see Charles, Kathy and Alli (Zack is working elsewhere for the summer)! As Charles pointed out, it’s great when you have friends that you don’t see very often but when you do see them you just automatically pick up where you left off. Charles has been very supportive of Kim, in particular, and has stayed in touch even though he left SFUMC 18 years ago (I think). His church congregation was wonderful to us, and we enjoyed our service Friday night very much.

Friday night we had the annual God’s Light talent show, and then got up Saturday to go eat breakfast at Shady Maple. It’s a smorgasbord in the Amish country that boasts a buffet line about 200 feet long. It’s enormous, and the food is amazing! I pretty much skipped lunch entirely, I ate so much.

On Saturday evening we pulled back into Vermont UMC in Kingsport, where we stayed our first night out. It’s nice going back to a church that we already know because everybody knows where they’re sleeping already. We started our last night festivities by about 9:30, and finished by 1a which may be some kind of record. I went through the circle-hug line early and was in my sleeping bag by 12:20a, also probably a record.

Last night we had a great homecoming concert! It was certainly one of the best-attended. It’s always great to see all the old God’s Light members and counselors come up to sing on “Amazing Grace” and “Closing Prayer”. The support for this program is tremendous. We certainly couldn’t do it without all of you who support us.

Overall this trip went very well. The kids were well-behaved for the most part, and we had very little drama, a continuing theme from the last couple of years. This senior class had a number of members drop out for various reasons over the years, but the four that stuck it out, Jeni Vaia, Julia Devane, Parker Wohl and Hayden Rhodes, really did a great job leading this year, and on tour. We had great hosts and wonderful support all along the way.

At every church stop, almost without fail, people will tell us how impressed they are that there are this many kids who are willing to be part of this ministry. In an era where many churches don’t have adult choirs, much less youth choirs, God’s Light’s mission to bring the word to others and inspire others in ministry is even more important. We appreciate your support more than words can express!

Signing off until next year …

The choir tour experience has changed a lot since we were in the choir. Being counselors gives us an interesting perspective, and we figured we would share how it used to be and HOW IT STILL SHOULD BE. [Editor’s Note: Some of this may or may not be slightly exaggerated. Or even way exaggerated. I’ll leave it to you to sort it out].

1) NO CELL PHONES! Nobody had one except that one rich kid and they carried an extra suitcase to lug it around. Everybody else had calling cards. We stood in line for HOURS at each church we slept in to call home.

2) HOTELS. We got one night at a hotel per tour. Only one. This 4 hotel nights thing is making kids way too soft. Hotel keys were keys. Real keys. With your room number. If a 7th grader lost it, their parent paid $25. With inflation that’s like, $217. In Canada it’s 57 cents.

Hotel Key

3) HOST HOMES. About half the nights we stayed in host homes. This was always fun because often the hosts would feed us or give a private tour of the city. Or you ended up with a crazy cat lady. We really miss this. The kids this year did get a taste of this as we actually had a host home night early in the tour. No crazy cat ladies though.

4) SLEEPING IN CHURCHES. Air mattresses didn’t really exist (except for the one Terry fashioned out of duct tape and a tarp). Also, in the old days (pre-safe sanctuaries), everybody slept in the same room, boys, girls & counselors. We had to entertain ourselves by playing with sticks and rocks (see “NO CELL PHONES”, above). Occasionally a church might have a gym, so we might get to play basketball. Ask Chris Whittington about the time he put a soccer ball through the window of a church.

Churches never had showers. If you were lucky they’d let you use the kitchen sink to wash your hair. #takethathealthdepartment Sometimes you put on your bathing suit and used a hose outside.

5) BUS RIDES – Everybody brought a collection of CDs (or cassette tapes) and a Walkman to listen to music (see “NO CELL PHONES”, above). The hardest decision was figuring out which CDs to take with you. AA batteries were a hot commodity…. So many batteries. There was no wifi or power at each seat like we have now. Instead of playing games on phones we used these ancient devices called playing cards and actually talked to each other. Ed Whittington used to bring fireballs for the whole bus. Sleeping on the bus floor was not uncommon. Amanda has been around long enough to remember the days of 1 bus. If you were late, collecting fines was no idle threat. You paid up and you were happy about it. #thomasdugginscollegefund .

Riding a bus for a week and a half gives you life wisdom: Nothing good ever happens in Iowa. It’s where busses go to get stuck in ditches. There was also that time back in the one bus days where we reenacted the tornado scene from “The Wizard of Oz”, only with buses. Traveling to Canada was much less of a hassle, pre -9/11. The border agents would basically come on the bus and wave to us, and we would be along our merry way to go sing to moose and drink maple syrup. In the old days, lunch stops had fewer options. McDonalds was mostly it for a lot of tours, especially heading out west. The whole choir would go through one restaurant.

6) CONCERTS – We sang 3 concerts every day. Girls got to wear blue calico rompers hand stitched lovingly by their mothers with panty hose and closed toe shoes. Boys wore 3 piece suits. Also, the sound system took up half the bus storage. None of this compact run it with an iPad stuff we have now. The front 2 seats were taken up by garment bags with starched uniforms. Spoiler alert. They still wrinkled. Speaking of wrinkles, that was remedied by travel irons. Let that sink in. We IRONED on choir tour.

Not a real choir tour outfit, but close.

 

Doug

 

Doug preparing to shower with a hose beside the church before the neighbors called the cops

 

Amanda

7) DESTINATIONS – At mount Rushmore there were only 3 presidents. They hadn’t yet built horse shoe falls at Niagara falls. The Grand Canyon was only the OK Canyon. The corn palace has not changed. The Corn Palace is and always will be. Corn without end. Amen. Amen.

8) TALENT SHOW – Talent show came about after a 6 night stretch of church nights and boredom. Again no cell phones. What happened at talent show actually stayed at talent shows and became the stuff of legend. Ask Gibson Gray about Herbert Weiner.

9) HEALTHCARE – Nurse Connie didn’t take us to the hospital. Like, not ever. You could be bleeding and missing a limb and she’d give you some raisins and tell you to walk it off. And you better still sing.

10) Kim and Mrs. Deb didn’t buy you water. You bought your own water or you went thirsty. And you better still sing.

11) Kim had a megaphone.

12) There was no google, GPS, or Yelp (see “NO CELL PHONES”, above). Kim packed an extra suit case of atlases and travel guides.

13) The great spaghetti tour of 1997. Never forget. (We were served spaghetti at every church)

14) Surprisingly, the buses still had microphones. (Megaphone year not withstanding.).

15) Since there was no GPS with traffic alerts (see “NO CELL PHONES”, above), sometimes we spent hours sitting on the interstate at a dead stop. Mark Owens, Braves emcee and esteemed God’s Light Alum, got his start interviewing old ladies and truckers with the cordless bus mic during a traffic jam. #whysafesanctuariesisathing

Last night we sang at Westmount Church in Montreal. It’s a beautiful old sanctuary with great acoustics. There were some rough spots in the program, I think because we haven’t performed in a couple of days. Also because folks were tired from two days trekking around New York City. This is a young group and the younger ones don’t pace themselves very well on performance days.

Today we left the hotel and went to La Ronde, a Six Flags amusement park in Montreal. It was only about 15 minutes from the hotel to the park. It’s a smaller park than Six Flags Over Georgia, but they had some good roller coasters, and there were no lines for the first couple of hours. The four hours that we stayed there were easily enough to ride the rides that we wanted to ride.

This afternoon we went down to the old part of Montreal for an hour or so. Most of downtown is preparing for the Formula 1 race on Sunday. There were several *very* expensive cars parked down near the Justice Center. Mclarens are the most expensive street car manufactured today. They run roughly 1/2 million dollars apiece. I have seen one in my life prior to today. There were four lined up at the curb. Also a Porsche 911 in race colors, which is one evil looking car.

Now we’re back in the US, having stopped at a Walmart right across the street from the hotel. With any luck at all, I am mere minutes from being in my bed at the hotel.

Tomorrow we have a long bus day down to Palmyra, PA, to see Charles Walker at his church.