Students Participate in Music on the Menu

Music on the Menu is an annual concert held at Berry and Shelley Bacon’s house. They serve a full meal and desert and allow the guests to pick a song from the “music menu” for the evening.  This year’s Music on the Menu funds are going to help a man named Jean (John) Bosco, from Rwanda, Africa, who is raising 35 orphans all by himself. He has no official organization to support him. Most of his orphans have parents who were killed during the genocide in 1994 when 800,000 people were killed during a period of 100 days. He told the Bacons that two of his younger children were abandoned in the forest and brought to him to raise. He says, “I am obliged to raise them.” He is a man who believes in God and feels that God is giving him this job of raising these kids. He has to pay for their food and for the tuition for the secondary students, which is $500/year for each one. “Our goal for Music on the Menu was to raise 2,000 dollars to send to him,” says Shelley Bacon.

On January 14, Upper Columbia Academy’s Vocal Octet and Trombone Choir went to perform for Music on the Menu. There were other musical selections as well including a violin solo, piano solos, a marimba group solo, and a vocal trio. Berry Bacon also performed a special song he wrote just for the occasion entitled “Children of Africa”. For the price of $100 a song, a guest or a table of guests could choose a song from the “music menu” to be performed for them. Also, there were homemade baskets available for sale in the entryway. These baskets were made by widows and orphans from Rwanda and many of the baskets had the names of the people who named them written on them.

The Bacon’s spent four months in Rwanda last fall while Barry taught for a family practice residency there. Bosco was one of the residents. At 40 years old and as a physician well-trained in surgery, he wanted to learn more about family practice because he sees that as an important way to minister to people in Rwanda who are so in need of physicians. There are 24 physicians in Rwanda for every 1 million people (compared to 2670 for every 1 million in America), so Bosco’s services are very important there. However, physicians make very little money in Rwanda, and therefore Bosco is greatly in need of help to feed and educate his many children. Barry was in the habit of asking various people to tell him their “stories,” and when Bosco shared his story, Barry and Shelley felt compelled to assist him however they could. “We are thankful that UCA has once again helped us raise money for a worthy cause such as this,” says Shelley of the event. “We raised $1,800 during Music on the menu this year and with the donations we have got since then we have about $4,000. We hope to get over $4,000 before we send the money to Bosco.”  UCA and several other music groups are looking forward to participating in next year’s Music on the Menu event which is currently scheduled for December 1, 2012.

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