By ROWENA PLETT

Staff writer

When Greg Bontrager was vocal music teacher at Goessel schools, one of his students was Braden Unruh. They teamed up Sunday in leading the Kansas Mennonite Men’s Chorus performance at Tabor’s Richert Auditorium.

Bontrager directed the chorus. Unruh, a 2011 Goessel graduate and now a vocal music teacher at Goessel, was invited by Bontrager to direct one of the pieces on the program. He also led the audience as it participated in several numbers.

People came from all over central Kansas to fill the auditorium, their cars lining the streets surrounding the college. The chorus, made up of 245 singers and a nine-member brass band, returned to the same place it first performed in 1969.

They came from 50 different Mennonite congregations in south central Kansas, representing eight different Mennonite denominations, along with several other Christian denominations. The last time the chorus performed at Tabor was in 1982.

Many people in the audience joined with the chorus in singing an old German song, “Nun Ist Sie Erschienen.”

Bontrager said learning the song was a challenge for many of the chorus members, so he was surprised that so many in the audience could sing it.

An offering was taken to support the work of the Mennonite Central Committee, a service agency providing relief at home and abroad.