God's Light Tour Homepage

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was incredible! If you have the least bit of interest in rock music, I highly recommend it! We spent a great couple of hours there yesterday morning, then headed up to Mohawk, NY for a return visit to Mohawk Reformed Church. Mohawk hosted us for a Sunday service last year, and Pastor Brian Engel and his congregation were wonderful hosts. There’s something comfortable about visiting a church you already know, both in terms of logistics and because you know what the congregation is like. The kids performed well again today. Mohawk Reformed Church would probably host us every year if we’d let them. That would be fine with me.

After church today, Pastor Engel led us on a short drive to Fort Herkimer Church. It’s the oldest Dutch Reformed Church in America, and was used as a fort during the French & Indian war. Now it is a historical site, used for historic reenactments, and for events like weddings and the local high school baccalaureate. The choir sang “Mighty Warrior” and “Blessing”, and the Men’s Ensemble sang “Prayer of the Children”. The acoustics in the small church are beautiful and the choir sounded magnificent!

The rest of the day was spent on the bus driving up to Portland, Maine. Tomorrow we’ll tour around a bit in Maine, and then head up to New Brunswick, Canada.

Choir Tour 2016 is underway. Yesterday was mostly spent on the bus, making our way up to Cincinnati for our first performance at Twin Towers, an assisted living facility that we performed at last year. The trip to Cincinnati was calm, and we actually had some time to kill in the afternoon. The folks at Twin Towers were a great audience, as last year, and the choir performed well, an excellent first concert!

It was good to see Katie Pennell again. Katie started with me at Tennessee Tech. We marched in the band together, shared a bunch of friends in the music department, and even dated some during our Freshmen year. Later Katie was Kim’s fraternity big sister in Mu Phi Epsilon, and she even sang at our wedding. We don’t get to see Katie a lot, but we’ve always kept in touch, and of course, she and Kim continue to be close.

Today we spent another fun day at Cedar Point! If you are a roller-coaster enthusiast, Cedar Point is among the top parks to visit. They have a ton of great rollercoasters, including some of the tallest and fastest coasters in the country. The guys that I hung out with at Hersheypark last year asked me to join them again this year, which was cool. Jake Thompson has a cast on his arm for a broken thumb he sustained playing lacrosse, so they wouldn’t let him ride a couple of the rollercoasters, but we still found a lot of stuff to ride and had a good time doing it. Since all we were doing was driving to the hotel tonight after the park, Kim let us stay in the park until 9p. We ended up with about 7 hours at Cedar Point.

Kristen Chittick (formerly Kristen Taylor) and her husband, Gabe, and son, Daniel used our visit as an excuse to visit Cedar Point for the first time. It was great to see them, albeit briefly for me.

Tonight we’re bedding down at the Best Western in Cleveland. Load-up isn’t until 9a tomorrow, which is practically a vacation for tour. We’re visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow. I’ve been trying to get Kim to find a way to work that in for years, so I’m particularly happy that we’re finally going to make it this year.

So it’s time to wrap up the last bits of tour for the journal. I’m never sure who reads the posts done after tour is over, but it seems to be appropriate, if only to put some kind of wrapup on the blog for awhile.

The drive to Lenoir City was pretty uneventful, save for the last few miles after our dinner stop in Knoxville, when Bus 2 decided it was more interested in being a large doorstop than a bus. Andre was able to nurse it to the Lenoir City church with no loss of life, and only about 30 mins lost time. Cal had already scheduled a maintenance guy to meet him in Lenoir City to replace the power-steering pump on Bus 1, which had gone out sometime on the way down to Cincinnati, so they fixed bus 2 at the same time. It turned out to be a broken clamp on a turbocharger hose, that was allowing too much air when the turbo (essential for a diesel engine this size) kicked in. Lest you think that Cal has just been phoning it in for his 25 tours, he and the maintenance guy were up until 4am fixing both buses and testing them. Cal and I started with this group in the same year, so we’re both on 25 tours. Cal will probably retire before I do, but it will be hard to go on tour without him.

Our connection to Central UMC in Lenoir City is through Ric and Melissa Best. Ric Best was the long time band director at Lenoir City High School when I was growing up in Norris, and was at the University of Tennessee with my band director, Rick Hong. They worked on each others’ marching shows, and we always went to band camp together. Ric’s program grew to be one of the powerhouse programs in the East Tennessee area, rivaling some of the most successful Cobb County bands. Ric has been retired for several years now, but still judges marching band festivals nearly every weekend during marching season.

When Thomas first went to UT for band camp, he only knew one person in the band, Andrea Colombo (now Andrea Albritton), who was a Senior when Thomas was a Freshman at Wheeler High School. I called each evening to see how he was doing. The first couple of evenings he was walking around campus trying to figure out where his classes were, but the third night or so I called and he was obviously with someone else. It turned out that night he was hanging out with a new friend from the mellophone section. He said his friend’s name was Chris, and that his father was the band director at Lenoir City. I said, “well it’s been about a hundred years, but the band director at Lenoir City used to be Ric Best”, to which Thomas responded, “That’s him. Chris Best”. So Chris and Thomas and another bandmate named Nick Lefew became fast friends and college roommates, our families became friends also, and I finally was able to talk to Ric Best without him critiquing my marching (which needed a bunch of critiquing).

Central United Methodist Church is a beautiful facility. Micah Nicolaus, the Senior Pastor, and Trevor Smith, the Music Director, are both young and vibrant ministers, and you can see how their spirit radiates through that church. We were truly blessed by Micah’s sermon on Sunday morning, and the choir performed well also. It is great to share in ministry with friends. Lenoir City may become a pretty-regular last stop for us on tour, at least if I have my way.

So if you were at homecoming, you already know this, but in case you weren’t I’ll tell you that the homecoming concert was amazing! This is such a young group to be so musically strong. It’s amazing how the bar has risen over the years. Each group builds on the previous one, and the expectations in the choir just keep rising and rising. It’s like that old joke about the bumble-bee: Mechanically, the bumble-bee shouldn’t be able to fly. Fortunately, nobody ever told them, so they fly just fine. Nobody ever told these kids that they shouldn’t be able to sing as well as they do, or come together as a group as well as they do, or lead internally as well as they do. To be sure it’s work for us as counselors sometimes, and lots of work for Kim, but they do lead themselves a lot too. Nobody ever told them they couldn’t, so they just do it.

It was a great tour. The kids were pretty easy to deal with. There was some drama, but not too much. There was some illness and injury, but fortunately it all got managed. Bonnie Wohl’s fall at homecoming ended up requiring some stitches, and the illness David Lischer was fighting with the last couple of days turned out to be appendicitis. He had surgery last night and is doing well as of this writing. We’re grateful, as always, to our medical staff, who handle everything from routine bumps and bruises to ER visits with grace and efficiency.

So it’s time to put a wrap on this year’s tour journal. Thanks as always to all of you who faithfully support this choir with your time, talents and money. It has a great impact on your kids, and on the people they minister to at every stop. We are so blessed to be part of this ministry.

Until next year,

Jeff

On Thursday we left Hamilton and headed back to the states. We had no problem crossing the border either direction. We had a bit of time to kill on the way to Romeo so we stopped at a park next to Lake Huron to let the kids run around for awhile, incurring some non-life-threatening injuries in the process.

Romeo, MI is not a huge town, and it ended up taking longer than we had planned to get everyone through dinner, so we did our first quick setup of tour. The fact that we’ve gotten 8 days in without having to do a fire drill is some sort of record. No lives were lost and we started the performance only about 15 minutes late. All of our audiences have been great on this tour, and this one was no exception. They sang along and clapped and had a great time, along with the choir! Your kids have been doing a great job in ministry this year.

Michael Hebert’s willingness to cover a solo for an under-the-weather singer earned him a solo spot of his own. He’s now singing a couple verses of the Senior ensemble piece as a solo. Once again, no chance to rehearse it, and once again, he was great.

After the performance we had the annual God’s Light tour talent show, featuring a few serious acts, like Ariana singing a lovely solo and Bella Stoichev doing a dance number (Bella is a truly amazing dancer), and a bunch of less-than-serious acts. Decorum prohibits me from describing most of them. Pastor Lyle was there, so it couldn’t have been all that bad (or could it??).

Yesterday morning we went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. That has always been one of my favorite tour stops. I highly recommend it if you ever get up this way. The rest of the day was taken up by riding the bus to Cincinnati, to perform at the Twin Towers assisted-living home. Twin Towers started as a United Methodist facility, and has been operating for well over 100 years. They were a great audience.

We have had visitors at some of our other stops but we  had several last night, including Terry’s aunt and uncle; Hayden Rhodes’ family; Kristin Chiddick  (formerly Kristin Taylor), who used to be a GL member; Sarah Herring, whose son, James, used to be a GL member. Two particularly special guests for Kim and I were Joe Galyon and Katie Pennell. Both went to Tennessee Tech with us. Joe directs the youth choir that is coming to SFUMC a couple of weeks after homecoming. Katie was Kim’s best friend from college, and her Mu Phi Epsilon big sister. It was great to see both of them, and I’m looking forward to seeing Joe again in a couple of weeks.

Last night we were in a hotel, so I finally got a real shower. You can only take so many sink baths before you start to feel like you’re camping out. Today we make the drive to Lenoir City, TN for our last night. While I’m ready to be home in my own bed again, it will be hard to finish tour this year. This has been a really great group, and I’ll certainly miss them, at least as soon as I get caught up on my sleep.

On Thursday morning we went back to Niagara Falls for a couple more hours. The weather was beautiful, so I was able to get some good pictures. I walked upstream a bit to take some pictures from above the falls. As I walking back, lo and behold, who should be walking the other direction but SFUMC’s own Wes Bunkley! A random meeting to be sure. He was in Toronto on business, but had flown into Buffalo rather than Toronto. He was driving by Niagara Falls on the way back to Buffalo and decided to stop to walk around. Small world.

In the afternoon on Thursday we went on the Whitewater Walk, which allows you to take an elevator down to a walkway along the Niagara River below the falls. There are some Class 6 rapids in that stretch. Class 6 rapids are considered to be unnavigable by even expert kayakers.

On Thursday we sang at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ontario. We sang there on our previous trip to Niagara Falls, 6 years ago. They were a very gracious audience, as they were in our previous visit. The pastor there is Dr. Philip Wilson, an excellent preacher who relates well to the kids. Madison Johnson, one of our 7th-graders, did a really good devotional on 1 Cor 13:4-7 (“love is gentle, love is kind ….”), and Pastor Philip followed that with a short lesson on how that passage is really speaking from the perspective of God saying, “MY love is gentle, MY love is kind …”. We even broke into small groups for a few minutes to discuss it further. Kudos to Madison for leading us into a great time of spiritual discussion.

Andrew Duggins was sick last night and had to sit out the performance, so Michael Hebert stepped in with only a quick piano run-through and sang his solo on the concert! Michael has worked hard in his years in God’s Light, and is well-liked by everybody, so it was a lot of fun to see him get a moment of recognition.

Now we’re headed to Romeo, MI.

On Monday we went back to Cooperstown, and then to Fly Creek cider mill. It’s the wrong time of year to press cider, but Fly Creek has all kinds of apple relishes and fudge and enough samples to be lunch if you want. It rained, of course, because it has rained practically every day we’ve been on tour.

On Monday night we sang at Church of the Resurrection in Fairport, NY. Brian Panosian’s sister, Kathy (I hope I’m spelling that right) is on staff there. They have hosted us once before, when the older Panosian kids were in God’s Light. Cara will age out before we come up here again, probably, but I’m sure we’ll keep coming here anyway because they’re always great hosts. Even though school isn’t out up here yet, they had a full house on a Monday night, and managed to rustle up enough people to host the entire choir in their homes. They’ve been a very enthusiastic audience both times we’ve stopped there, which makes the performances a lot of fun. The services have gone well so far.

Yesterday we made the trip from Fairport to Niagara Falls. Mercifully, the sun came out about the time that we got within sight of the Canadian border. We had no problem crossing the border.

When we got to the falls we made a quick lunch stop, then did the tour under the falls and the boat-ride (formerly known as the Maid of the Mist, but recently renamed to something I’ve forgotten). We had one more group activity planned but Kim elected to put that off until today as we were starting to fade a bit. We’re staying at the Marriott Gateway to the Falls, which overlooks the falls. As in, when you look out the window of our rooms, you’re overlooking the falls. I got up early this morning to watch the sunrise over the falls, which is probably the highlight of my trip so far.

The ladies stocking the breakfast stuff at the Hampton Inn on Monday morning wanted us to sing for them before we left, and so did the folks at Fly Creek, and of course they sang at the falls last night too. In other words, we’ve had about as many impromptu performances as we have had scheduled ones.

Last night I met two young ladies at the falls from a Reformed church in Kalamazoo, MI. They were really impressed with the choir and wanted to get us to come to their church. I think we have a stop for the next time we come up this way.

Today we head up to Hamilton, Ontario.

Today was a good one! We did the full performance at Mohawk Reformed Church this morning. The kids were awesome, and they were a very appreciative audience. The pastor and his wife have four daughters who were tremendous hosts, and kept us thoroughly entertained. They have a pet hedgehog that won the hearts of most of the girls when they brought it to the church late last night. The breakfast they gave us was amazing also. We’re always happiest when you feed us well.

We went to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown today. I recommend it if you have the opportunity. If you’re a baseball fan you can spend hours there. Even if you’re not, it’s still a lot of fun exploring the history of baseball as it’s wrapped around American history in general.

It was cold and wet so our outdoor performance at Lakefront park became an indoor performance at Christ Church, a beautiful little Episcopal church within sight of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. James Fenimore Cooper is buried there. Their sanctuary is in the traditional style, and the acoustics are amazing! Kim decided to have only Jan accompany the choir, so  Ed, Terry and I got to just listen. The bus drivers stayed to listen as well. We had a nice crowd, including one couple that were at the church this morning and drove down to Cooperstown to hear us again!

Tonight we’re in the Hampton Inn in Oneonta. All the boy’s rooms were pretty quiet when I checked them. I think we’ll probably all sleep well tonight. We get to sleep in tomorrow; the drive up to Fairport is only about three hours.