New Light

New Light 2009 is wrapping up the gigs next week with a trip to California! We’re flying out to sing at the Upland Centennial Celebration and we are so excited!! We’ll also get to see our good friends Pat.

We have had a very busy fall semester. We sang at all three open house events - with the last one being just yesterday - and we sang at the Trustee’s Legacy Dinner during homecoming week, and we sang at the MainStage performances on homecoming day. We also went to perform at the fall festival at Messiah Village, and we have sung in four different chapel services. We also had out home concert, which was a great success! It’s definitely been fun, but I think we’re all ready for it to slow down…

And just when it begins to slow down… auditions for New Light 2010 are scheduled! The group will be auditioning just after Thanksgiving break for next summer - we’re excited to see what happens and to get the new group together!!

We’ll give a post California update and then that will be all for New Light 2009!

Last night we led worship at Ignite, which is an organization sponsored by Brethren in Christ World Missions. It was really cool! None of us had been before except for Melissa, but we all really enjoyed it! And there were tons of kids from camp there, so that was really fun.

Just a reminder - our home concert is next Sunday - September 13 at 6:30 at Grantham BIC. It will be fun - hope to see you there!!

Today we went and sang the National Anthem at the Harrisburg Senators game. It was really fun! And we were on the big screen. FUN, right?! Then we went to Panera for dinner. That was also fun.

Tonight we’re rehearsing for chapel - we’re leading both tomorrow and on Tuesday. It will be fun to do some stuff together again. Just like summer

SATURDAY we will have a special visit from SAM CASSEL!! It will be so fun and we’re really excited that she is coming. We work with her at MHC in Ohio. She’s awesome. It will be great.

Ok, we’ll update soon!

It’s been a long time since we updated last! Sorry about that
The camps were awesome, the summer was awesome, and we’re all sad to be done… but FORTUNATELY we still have tons of gigs for this fall, including a trip to California in November!

Just as a reminder, we have a HOME CONCERT at GRANTHAM BIC on SUNDAY, SEPT. 13 at 6:30 pm! I hope you can be there!!

We’ll try to update every now and then throughout the fall and hopefully we’ll get some pictures up from the rest of our summer tour!

Tomorrow we start our first camp - Camp Men-O-Lan in Quakertown, PA! We won’t be able to update during the week, but hopefully next weekend we can put some pictures up!

This has been quite a week with June coming to a close! I can’t believe how fast the summer is flying by! Things continue to be amazing though, and right now I’m so thankfully to be sitting at home for just a few days off. I can’t speak for the whole group in that, but I know these 2 days to relax are quite a blessing! Although, there truly isn’t ever a day totally off! Always more planning and preparing to do, but the excitement of our first camp is pending.

We made the trip out to my house in Perry County to work on our fire building skills to prepare us for camp next week on Tuesday after a surprise mini concert for Kim Phipps and a little caroling around Old Main. The boys built the first one and later the girls got it going again, so we should be all set! We made massive amounts of mountain pies and s’mores, got smoked out a few times, and tried to keep the mesquitos away, but had a great time. After a few rounds of ladder golf, taboo, and atari, we headed home.

Wednesday we had two concerts which both went really well! The second was at Eunice’s church and the acoustics were amazing! I would probably rate it as our best one yet. Lots of parents and friends were there, so that was really fun and afterwards we got Bruster’s in the pouring rain and talked with Tim’s parents and Eunice for a while. What a lovely evening!

It’s funny because these two days are the most time our group has spent apart since we’ve started, so it feels strange not being with them, but I look forward to our reuniting tomorrow night! Then on to our next big adventure….camp!!

Thanks for all of your continued prayers! God’s blessings continue pouring down on us and I hope that you can feel his presence with you as well! Remember, what a friend we have in Jesus- you can take everything to him in prayer!

Melissa

By: ED WISMER
Ocean City Sentinel critic
June 18, 2009

“OCEAN CITY - The Ocean City Tabernacle continues to expand its campus and its many services to Ocean City and surrounding areas. Under the direction of Tabernacle President Dr. Richard Stanislaw, the programs at the venerable and growing seasonal place of worship at the Tabernacle continually expands its offerings of high quality music and highly qualified and respected speakers and youth activities keeping the general public awareness of the Tabernacle high. An important innovation has been the Kull Youth Center which offers Christian entertainment and youth activities unequalled in this area.

Last Friday evening the Youth Center hosted a concert by the New Light 2009 Summer Music Team. The septet of singers and performers is from Messiah College which is located in the Harrisburg, Pa., vicinity. The personable talented and wholesome young singers utterly enchanted their sizable audience with a largely a cappella program of traditional sacred music in unique modern arrangements, contemporary hymns and some intriguing African songs sung in Swahili dialect. Some of the music featured unusual percussion effects and dancing gestures.

Tim Agnolutto is a junior public relations major from Dunkirk, Md., while Richard Chagnon is a senior theater major from Windsor Locks, Conn. The other two male members of New Light are Jonathan Eastburn, of Chalfont, Pa., who is a sophomore at Messiah College majoring in music education, and Bryant Vance, of Lowville, N.Y., a senior theater major. Erin Smidt is a sophomore music education major from West Milford, N.J., while Melissa Shumaker of New Bloomfield, Pa., is a senior church music major with a soprano voice that would earn her an operatic career. Sarah Wingard is a junior music education major from Harrisonburg, Va., whose bio says she is very fond of Oaxaca, Mexico. Whether as soloists or when singing in ensemble they were all superb.

Their harmony was perfect and they continually changed key without once going astray. On Saturday morning New Light performed again for a large Tabernacle sponsored breakfast gathering.”

Tomorrow we head to Washington D.C. to sing at the World Vision Headquarters office! It sounds like a really neat gig and we are excited for it. After that we will head to Virginia, spend the night in a hotel and then Thursday we will go to the Highland Retreat for the day to lead worship and work with the kids!

Today we talked about all the different camps and took some time to learn some camp songs. It was fun, but we got a lot of strange looks when we were doing hand motions and weird dances in front of Eisenhower Campus Center… haha.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll get a little bit of time to walk around D.C. tomorrow, but if not, our hotel has a pool! We’ll try to post some pictures later this week! Sorry we have been a little slow with the updates - we’ll try to be better!!

so we had a little bit of extra time because we ended up not having any service projects to do. so that was nice! But come tomorrow we will be very busy! Tomorrow we have three gigs and they are in PA and MD. So lots of van time tomorrow. Then we have some gigs in the early part of the week and then Wednesday we head down to DC, then spend the night in VA and go spend the day at a camp working with younger kids… should be a fun week though!

We went to see Bryan and Karah’s baby - pics will be posted shortly! Our concerts this past week went really well! We have our entire set memorized so we don’t take our music with us anymore which is really nice.

Anyway, we’ll most likely post again soon with pictures and a longer update!
Hope you are all enjoying summer!

Well, it sure is nice to be home after the long trip this weekend, but the beach was wonderful! We arrived before lunch on Friday in Ocean City, NJ. It rained part of the way down, so we weren’t sure if we would actually be able to enjoy a sunny day on the beach, but it cleared up as we set up the system in a sweet new youth center at the New Jersey Tabernacle.

What a great space! After eating a delicious lunch, we headed to the beach for a few hours. In spite of the freezing water, we body surfed for a while and then crashed on the beach. Erin and Sarah built a nice little sand cottage while Melissa and the boys slept.



In spite of taking plenty of sunscreen, Jon and Tim ended up with some pretty bad burns…
But it was still wonderful! We ate a quick dinner at a Greek diner before running back to change for our concert. We had no idea how many people would show, but we had quick a crowd and an exciting concert. Visiting was great and then we headed off to the boardwalk for a nice of cotton candy, caramel corn, and deep-fried oreos! (which were quite delicious!) we walked the whole stretch of the boardwalk and then enjoyed the cool sand on the walk back before crashing on the huge bean bags upstairs and calling it an early evening!
Breakfast the next morning was delicious! We sang for some VIPS at the tabernacle and then enjoyed a few more hours on the beach before packing up and setting off for Erin’s hometown. Somehow God really blessed us with great weather, because it started raining again on our way!


After some yummy picnic food and setting up our system again, we all went our separate ways to our host family’s houses and enjoyed a relaxing evening there! Although I must admit, it was quite strange being separated for the evening! Our reunion this morning was nice with our concert at Erin’s church and a picnic after that as well. The sun finally came out right before we left and we enjoyed a sunny, almost 4 hour drive back for our Harrisburg concert this evening. Meeting up with old friends as well as new was great as we sang in the outdoor pavilion and watched a gorgeous sunset on our ride home.


Now we can settle in and enjoy a day off!
By the way, I’ve finally figured out how to upload photos (as you can see!) so check out our group photos page for some more! We’ll upload them as we get a chance! Thanks for all of your support and prayers!
Melissa