#ucotour12

Its been a while since I’ve posted.. I’ve had a crazy busy month of April and May (so far). 

School is now over and summer has begun!

This post will be dedicated to telling you about “Tour.”

Being a member of the California Baptist University's Choir and Orchestra I get to travel with the group at the end of the school year for two and a half weeks.

This year UCO toured through some towns of Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

It’s very interesting to see how Tour works.

The first thing you should know is that tour is paid for by the school, students don't have to put any money into the trip. 

For UCO all of the members were flown out from Ontario, Los Angeles, Orange County California to Houston, Texas.

From there, UCO got on charter buses that took us to each destination.

I thought that I would write about certain terms that are repeatedly used during the tour. This will hopefully give you more of a glimpse of what life of a UCO member is like.

Home Stay- This is when the members of UCO are accommodated to stay with different families of the churches we visit, we normally stay with them for one night. Home stays are an awesome way to meet people and build connections. Each night we are paired/grouped up with different people from the choir, allowing us to get to know one another on a better level. I have some pretty fun and crazy stories from the past three years; don’t hesitate to ask for a story :) 

Here's a fun photo we took during one of our home stays
The family we stayed with insisted that we have a photo shoot in their beautiful backyard!

 

Sacked Lunches- These are our lunches during the two weeks. Host families put together a sacked lunch for us to take with us on the road. Typically these are composed of a sandwich, fruit, chips, and a water bottle (normally we all get tired of the sandwiches and we start to get creative).

Dinner- Our dinner is normally provided by the churches prior to our concerts.

Bus rides- These happen every day. The duration of each drive can vary from 1 hour to a 11-hour bus ride. Time is normally spent sitting on a seat either reading, watching movies, playing games, writing a blog, eating, or talking to people on the bus.

Rest Stop- This is the time (the very small amount of time) that is given to use the facilities and get anything that we might need for the remainder of the bus ride. Normally we stop at a truck stop.

Concerts- One of the best things about tour! This is when we, as a group, get to worship with people from other parts of the U.S. Our group leads a church into worship, we guide them with our voices and instruments for a time spent with the Lord. Every concert, this year, for me, was a time spent in heaven! It might have been just glimpses, but that was all I needed to know that there’s nothing more that I want than to spend eternity in heaven worshipping God. 

All the churches that we had concerts at were beautiful! Here's one :) 

Call Time- the hour that is given to us to return to the church from our home stay in order to hit the road and proceed to the next location. Sometimes this hour can be as early as 6 a.m. or as late as 10 a.m.

Free Time- I'm not sure if there was even such thing for UCO.. i'm joking. We did have some free time during tour, although it was not a lot, it was nice to have some time to relax. This year we got to have a recreational day at the Sam Houston National Park. Here is a photo of a beautiful trail. :) 

We had a couple more free time activities; two mall stops and a stop with a shopping center, lake, and a mall. 

I’m sure there a plenty of other terms that other members of the choir can come up with, I just didn’t want to make this blog post too lengthy ;) 

Here's a picture of myself and one of my dear friends in our "choir attire," dress, hair, lipstick and all. 

For the past four years choir has played a huge part of my life. It has taught me a lot of things about professionalism, worship, excellence, dedication, practice, diligence, maturity, I can keep going on and on. 

Choir has helped me improve vocally and as a person, believe me it has helped me grow, it's not easy being part of a 150 member group.

The opportunity for ministry is awesome, whether it's within the group or to the churches we visit. 

UCO will be something that I am going to miss dearly when I move on to the next chapter of my life.