By Celeste Ligon
Contributor
The Baylor Religious Hour Choir is traveling to Accra, Ghana, for 10 days in June to do mission work and record a CD with a local choir. BRH is a student-led choir on campus consisting of about 45 members.
Both of the tour coordinators and four-year members of BRH, Austin senior Johnathon Graves and Sachse senior BB Sanford, have numerous contacts with churches and missionaries in the States and around the world.
“We had options to stay in the U.S. or travel to Germany, India or Nicaragua,” Graves said.
“None of these contacts or places seemed where the Lord was leading us.”
It was through a contact with a BRH alumnus that Graves came across the city of Accra, Ghana.
“Everything worked out instantly with places to serve, travel plans and a great ministry,” Graves said.
Amid the choir’s singing and traveling to various churches, hospitals and orphanages, BRH will be rehearsing with a local choir, Excellent Youth Outreach, to record a CD at the end of the trip. The members of the Excellent Youth Outreach choir are around the same age as the Baylor students attending.
“Each group will sing a few of their own Christian songs, and we will both come together at the end of the 10 days to sing and record several together,” Sanford said.
The theme for the trip and CD is “Someday.” During previous BRH tours the choir has clung to a song titled “Someday.”
“For many, the song portrayed the beauty of heaven and the peace that it will offer, for others it signified the prelude to the eternal worship that will begin on that someday when we enter heaven,” Graves said.
The group also hopes to make life-long connections.
“One thing we have constantly heard and felt was that though we may not see each other again the way we did during the 10 days on tour, someday God will bring us back together as brothers and sisters in Christ from Ghana, Nicaragua, South Africa and all over the world to worship him,” Sanford said.
Another member of the choir, Dallas junior Kylie Rhodes, said she is “most excited to work with the children, and record the CD because it symbolizes worshipping as one body in heaven.”
Twenty-two people are attending the trip, costing $2,400 per person. The group consists of 19 members of the choir, two members of OneWay Ministry and one adviser, Maxey Parrish, a senior lecturer in Journalism and Media Arts.
The students are raising their travel funds in a variety of ways ranging from asking family and friends for support or working a job. Also, this past March, BRH held an annual fundraising event called Dessert Theatre. This show showcased the talents of the choir in an entertaining way while also raising funds for each student going on the mission trip.
Once BRH returns to the States, it will continue to sell the CD and send all of the profits back to Ghana.
“We hope that with our time, prayers, and CD sales, our ministry might last longer than 10 days,” Graves said, “and the Lord will continue to work in our hearts and theirs.”
