Rock Tour 4 - Minehead

After our day off, the team was fresh and ready to begin all over again in Minehead. Roger and Mary have been connected with Minehead for years through their friends Colin and Mavis Mee. The last couple of tours were organised by Ian and Margaret Nevell, but sadly Ian died last year. Margaret was still able to be part of Rock, singing in the choir.

So this time we needed a new organiser, and we twisted Mavis' arm. She then managed to twist some more arms, including that of Jean Armin, who took over the organisation when Mavis became ill. Jean did a fantastic job, alongside Gordon Nichols who trained the choir. It was one of the smaller choirs on this tour, but they made a fantastic sound, and Gordon had also included a large spiritual dimension to the choir practices too.

The venue for the Minehead performance was the Regal Theatre, on the main shopping street in Minehead. The manager of the theatre, Lewis Lintern, is a Christian, and has been hugely supportive. The theatre is currently raising money to be refurbished, so we pray for them that the money is forthcoming and that the modernisation is a success. It is a lovely little theatre, with a decent sized stage. The audience is raked quite steeply, which means that every seat has a wonderful view. We did feel very close to the audience, and could see them all quite clearly, including the goths on the front row and the lady with the loudest bag of sweets in the world.

We were looked after amazingly well - even fed shepherd's pie at the church over the road, which was a huge hit with the team.

The performance went well. We were without Amy on clarinet again - it seems Minehead is an area that is particularly bad for asthma and Amy's flared up quite badly. She had to go over to the hospital halfway through the performance to be checked out.

One of the performance highlights came at the end of song 15 for the prophetic section. For the first time in a performance, Alyson felt God really move within her to sing. So she went forward confidently to the front of the stage and sang some really powerful words. Then God also moved Ann and Devon. So we were left at the end of the song with a tableau of Peter, Peter's wife, and his mother in law. An amazing moment.

Annie's family are from the Minehead area, and so her dad came and watched. He has seen a lot of the performances over the years, and he really loved this one. He said the costumes and drama particularly were excellent.

So huge thanks go to Jean Armin for stepping in to the breach, and also for Gordon's wonderful work with the choir. Our prayers are with Margaret Nevell and with Colin and Mavis Mee.