Sunday,
June 23, 2019
It’s
our final day of tour. Kids are bringing their luggage to the bus, searching
for misplaced wallets and phone chargers, lost room keys and water bottles.
Kind of a typical morning. Once again, I can’t say enough good things about our
dedicated luggage crew. They are climbing inside of the hatch below the bus to
get all of the suitcases stacked inside. They remind me of cave dwellers. I
love those boys!
Our
choir is singing in the Sunday morning worship service at Cross Lanes UMC. After
our rocking concert last night, they wanted us back for the morning service
too. I took my spot in the balcony where I could take birds-eye group photos. One
of the audiovisual helpers approached me. He told me how impressed he was with
our youth choir last night and how awesome they were. When he asked me to send
him all of my photos, I had to smile. (He doesn’t know that I take hundreds of
pictures!) Instead I directed him to our Blog where there are plenty to choose
from. He wants to post them, along with some videos of our group singing. He
was ready, cell phone in hand, to record them.
They
didn’t disappoint. In spite of many of them being up late last night (of their
own doing), they rose to the occasion and sang their hearts out. If that wasn’t
enough, we found out that their church organist had broken her foot and they
asked our own organ genius Steve Kalnoske if he would substitute. It was his
turn to shine too, with his own style of hymn-sing ruffles and flourishes. The
best of both worlds! Do you know how proud we are of our youth? These are some
of the comments we have heard throughout the week:
You don’t see youth choirs like this anymore!
I can’t believe the large number of boys with
fabulous voices who are singing in a choir!
I am amazed at the sound quality and harmony of
their singing!
This group has given me hope for the future of
our country!
My faith has been renewed just listening to
them!
Their singing brought tears to my eyes.
My heart has been so touched. I believe that
God directed me here tonight, so I would be encouraged by the words in these
songs.
Yes,
we are very proud of our youth.
The
ladies in the kitchen had a nice lunch waiting for us after the service. Connor
Shifflett’s grandmother was there at the church and so was Connor Dennie’s parents.
After they ate, the kids changed into
their traveling clothes and we headed home. We had two sets of Greeters this
morning because Tom and Polly wanted everyone to have a chance to greet on this
last day. The Greeters were Taylor Cappeluti & Troy Moskowitz and Charlie
Bratburd & Maxwell Donaldson. Our large group of boys have jokingly called
themselves the Frat Tour Team this week. They actually DO seem like a
fraternity to me.
Yesterday
we didn’t have time to present Matt Miante his fork award, so we had the
presentation ceremony today. His fork had purple ribbons and said “peace” on
it. I’d like to think it is because he has such a peaceful spirit about him. Or
perhaps he can now have peace in the bathroom when he goes home without someone
switching the sign on him? Karalee taught us our new rural word for the
day: skedaddle, which means to depart
quickly as in, "The concert is about to start so you’d better
skedaddle!”
During our bus ride home, Helena Colborn of the
Sunshine Committee gave out Tour
Awards. She spent a lot of thoughtful time coming up with the perfect award to
match the personality and character of the recipient. I’m not going to list
them all, but here are a few of them: Loveliest Smile Award; the Strong &
Silent Award; Having the Warmest Heart Award; Hoopster Award; the Brother We
All Love Award; the Living Sitcom Award and Best Bromance Award. You can see
pictures of the awards on the blog.
We stopped for a break when we reached
Maryland. Most kids made a beeline for a Cinnabon stand that was there and the
bus had a delicious cinnamon smell the rest of the way home. Our final Greeters
of the 2019 CWS Tour was Arthur Hulcher and Stephanie Greer. I’ll have to tell
you that Arthur’s award was the Living
Encyclopedia award because he is so knowledgeable about so many different
things and always has fun facts to share. Stephanie’s award was Everyone’s Best Friend Award because she
is so friendly to everyone.
The last leg of our drive home was spent
watching Teen Titans on the bus
monitor, courtesy of Calista Kibak. The best thing about pulling up into the DUMC
parking lot were the happy faces of parents and siblings (even dogs) and Mama
(Deborah) Bowe standing there with a large poster that said, “Welcome Home
Charles Wesley Singers!” She doesn’t
even have any kids who were on tour this year! How awesome and supportive is
that?!!!
Tomorrow night is the Welcome Home Concert. It
is always the best of all to be singing for the home crowd. Be prepared to be
amazed and blessed! Give them the best reception they have had all week,
because YOU are the ones that really matter to them!
I’m going to leave you with these words from
Karalee:
Since we’re fixn’ to return home, we will
recall a few trip highlights:
·
Lollygagging around Audra State Park
·
Being fearful of drawing back a nub if we
visited that insane asylum in Buckhannon
·
Vigorously mashing the elevator buttons at
DePauw and various hotels, in between concerts and the Slugger Museum
Good
Lord Willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will see everyone at the Welcome Home
concert before we skedaddle on over to the pool party!
~Sue
No comments:
Post a Comment