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Group tours the Midwest.
By Joyce Johnston
The Seattle Temple Songsters, led by Ken Lyons, recently flew to Oak Creek, Wis., for a whirlwind Midwest tour at the invitation of The Salvation Army Oak Creek Centennial Church.
On the Saturday of a long weekend, the group sang for the community at a local mall and a large grocery store. Later, they performed at the church, along with the Oak Creek youth band. The next day, the songsters sang in the Sunday morning worship service before traveling by bus to the Oakbrook Terrace Corps in Chicago, arriving just in time to perform in a concert with that corps’ senior band, under the direction of well-known composer Bill Himes.
The songsters’ repertoire included three secular songs to which Lyons gave Christian interpretations: “Fix You,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Keep Holding On.” The Oak Creek’s corps sergeant-major requested that “Fix You,” a hit by the English alternative band Coldplay, be included in the Sunday morning service.
After the concert on Sunday afternoon, an Oakbrook Terrace soldier told Seattle Temple Songsters member Jim Miller that he’d heard many songster groups before, but had never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit like he did while listening to the Seattle group.
The songsters spent Monday enjoying downtown Chicago, before their return flight that evening.
Seattle Temple Corps officers, Majors Dave and Linda Harmon, said, “We were very pleased by the opportunity afforded to the corps songsters to spread the gospel through singing in the Midwest.”
