Living Water Scrapbook - Yosemite Minitour, July 5-7, 1996

I met Carol Macaulay at the Mount Hermon Music Conference some years ago, we spent quite a few hours augmenting our long distance bills to set up Living Water's first minitour. We settled on Independence Day weekend because of the holiday and the possibility of taking advantage of vacation from work.

However, it turned out to be less than ideal because many of our families also had the same thought. Susie went to Korea, Julie went to Ecuador, Steve and Kristen attended a family reunion, ... In the end we traveled with half of our nominal complement.

But God promises to fulfill our needs, and He had - we had enough voices to sing the programs which we'd prepared, and God was willing to use what we had. We sang at Ahwahnee Chapel on Friday evening. Ahwahnee Chapel is one of the many small rural churches in the Yosemite area; the sanctuary capacity is about 125, including what appears to be an extension to what must have been the original building. Pastor Jim Beard gave us a wonderful, personable welcome, and after we set up and practiced the church took us out for pizza (yum!). We sang our first minitour concert that night, and it was well-received (sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the church for this page).

Saturday was our "hang loose" day. In the morning we headed for Yosemite, where we took in the spectacular view of the valley from Glacier Point. We were fortunate (read "fortuitously predestined") to arrive early enough to beat most of the crowds; by the time we left Glacier Point, there was a line of about thirty cars waiting to enter the parking lot.

Bass Lake was the next stop. Several of us (7.4, to be exact - Brian went in only to his knees) took advantage of the swimming hole while everyone else (except Brian's upper six-tenths) enjoyed the shade. It was really nice to find a place to cool off!

On Sunday, we attended and sang in the morning service at the Community Church of Oakhurst (Carol's church), which served as a prelude to our concert that afternoon. This program also was well-appreciated, and the Gospel was preached through our singing and acting (we did a couple of John Plastow sketches as part of our program).

For the first time in several years, we were joined by members of a host church's choir! Bonnie Foley, Peggy O'Rourke, and Bill and Gretchen Choate rehearsed the last three songs of the program with us and added their voices in the concert (Waunetta Fuchs also joined us at practice but wasn't able to be there Sunday afternoon - maybe next time it'll work out, I hope!).

It was a wonderful trip. We thank our friends from the Ahwahnee Chapel and Community Church of Oakhurst for their wonderful hospitality and continuing kindness - we were fed well, provided with marvelous accommodations, and above all, were loved and appreciated. I'm hoping that we'll have the opportunity to visit again soon (and yes, Shirley - I hope to have time to learn/relearn some Chopin and play on your piano)!

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Engagements:

Friday, July 5, 1996 Sunday, July 7, 1996

Ahwahnee Bible Chapel, Ahwahnee, California Community Church at Oakhurst, Oakhurst, California