It is with much anticipation that I began my first spring
tour with the Bryan College Chorale and Chamber Singers last Friday. During Spring Break of 2014, I had spent the
entire break, watching and keeping track of the choir’s spring tour via social
media, and desperately wishing I could be there with them. Not only were all of my friends (with a couple
exceptions) sitting on that tour bus having fun together without me, but they
were having the opportunity to sing God’s praises all over the states they were
touring through. It was on that break
that I decided that, whatever it took, I was going to be in Spring Chorale the
next time they went on tour.
Now, just a year later, I sit on the tour bus with 39 of my
best friends in the world, en route to our next concert. I’m so thankful to the Lord for allowing me
to be here this time, and I’m thankful to the chorale for accepting me as one
of their own, almost as if I had always been one of them. But with all of the fun that I've had so far,
I never expected to get the flu on day two of tour. Nor did I expect that over the course of the
next week, so would nearly every other person on the bus.
They tell me this is a unique tour with the number of
complications that we've had so far. We
have yet to have a single concert with every single member of the chorale
onstage. Even many of the people
onstage, have had to mouth the words because they either can’t hit the notes,
or will break into a coughing fit if they try.
Between the sickness and intense performance schedule (yesterday we had three
concerts in a single day), there isn't much of a chance for voices to recover
before they are needed again. In between
each song , we all use the audience’s applause to mask our cacophony of coughing
and sniffles.
