Plano youth choir travels to the West Coast

Revelation, a high school youth choir from Plano, Texas, will embark on its annual summer choir tour Thursday, June 14. This year�s tour, �Water in the Word,� takes the students to the West Coast. On June 14 the group will leave their home church, Custer Road United Methodist, and make a one-way flight from DFW International Airport to Los Angeles. They will begin to make their way home by charter bus, stopping to sightsee and perform over an eleven-day tour.

Students in the choir wake up bright and early to sing every Sunday morning in Custer Road United Methodist Church's 8:30 worship service, but their commitment doesn�t end there. It gets pretty expensive to send 128 kids to California, and the students work throughout the year to raise money for the trip. They participate in a work program called Revelation EARNS (Eager and Able to Render Needed Service) to earn money for their expense accounts by doing household chores for neighbors and congregants. Students also get rebates from a gift card sales program, and receive credits for rehearsal participation to lower the trip cost. Scholarships are also available, so that any student who wants to participate in the tour can do so.

The trip includes daily performances and overnight stays in churches, college dorms and private homes in between. However, it�s not all work for these students; they�ll be taking in the sights as well. This year's California stops include Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Grauman�s Chinese Theater, Kodak Theater, Griffith Park Observatory and Hermosa Beach.

The choir's schedule also includes performances at the California-Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church being held at the University of the Redlands, where more than 1,700 laity and clergy from across Southern California, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan will gather to talk about new ministries, and at Sunday morning worship services at First United Methodist Church, Bakersfield.

By June 17, the group will have arrived in Las Vegas, with stops at the Grand Canyon and Slide Rock State Park. On the trip home, they perform in Phoenix. Back in Texas, they perform at First United Methodist Church, Canyon, before cruising back into Plano. The choir presents its homecoming concert at all three Sunday worship services, at 8:30, 9:45 and 11 a.m. at its home church, located at 6601 Custer Rd. in Plano, on June 24.

Audiences of the annual tour performances are rewarded with a high-quality production, which demands extensive rehearsal time and energy during the spring � the busiest time of the year for students. "Tour is all about the transformation we achieve in getting beyond ourselves when the collective is so much greater than the sum of the individuals," says Rev. Tim Morrison, associate minister of music. "Rehearsals are important if we are to continually progress as a group toward quality performances. Rehearsals give us an opportunity to get to know each other and bond as a group before we leave." The program has a rich history spanning three decades, and this year�s students will carry that tradition with them to California.

For more information about the tour, visit www.crumc.org/SrHiTour12. For more information about their home performance, call 972-618-3450 or email info@crumc.org.

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