Tour Day 2 – Ogallala, NE to Estes Park, CO

Back to the Future makes time travel seem really cool, but the evidence points to the contrary. Really, I’m not a fan. Yesterday we went one hour back into the past when we crossed into Mountain Daylight Time. It just made me want to sleep another hour, and from the look of it at breakfast, the singers wanted to also. I think what would really happen if Marty McFly went back to 1955 is that he’d just want to sleep for 30 years.

But this morning when we got to the Ogalalla United Methodist Church you would have thought all of the singers had slept for days and pounded a couple of red bulls.  There was a ton of energy!  I wish we would have been able to do the dialogues for the congregation, but this was what Bemo calls a “special music” performance; we just did the songs from the sermon interspersed throughout the church’s normal Sunday service. But the congregation was very appreciative, and I spied the pastor wiping away tears during the performance of “Here I am, Lord”.  He even mentioned that he first felt the call to ministry 16 years ago when he heard that song in another context.

Then it was back on the bus to head to Estes Park, CO. The drive from Ogalalla to Denver is nothing so speak of as the Nebraska cornfields turned into Colorado wheat fields, and then just sagebrush as we “officially” entered the great American west. But when we crossed over into the mountains past Denver the change was dramatic. You could almost feel the bus shift side to side as kids went from one side to the other when one would yell out, “look an elk” or “waterfall!!”. I was talking to Dee Vestal and we both noted how the mountains in Estes looked like they weren’t even real, as if they were backdrops in a movie - unreasonably beautiful.

We dropped all of our gear off at the hotel in Estes and drove the busses to the little tourist trap downtown, and let the kids wander around in groups of four through the shops and restaurants (with stern reminders from Bemo to not blow all of their money here – and some of them did it anyway – dopey kids). Right now, most of the singers are crowding out the indoor pool downstairs.  That should make for a quiet bus tomorrow on the way to Moab, UT.

Day 2 is in the books, and all of the new singers are like old pros already.  Really, this is a great group of kids – so whatever you’ve been doing to make them this way, keep it up! Talk again tomorrow!

-Joseph