This Saturday, July 23rd, the 3rd Annual Church Choir Festival will be held at San Salvador Mission in Piru, Ca from 2:00pm to 10:00pm. The event has grown rapidly from 3 years ago. This year we are going to have 10 different choir groups, including a choir from Monterrey, Mexico that is coming specifically for this event. Along with these wonderful groups there will be recording star, Yesenia Flores. She was a commercial recording artist that has committed her life to Christ and now performs in only church related events. This definitely will be a treat for our local church community. Along with the various choirs will be Bishop Thomas Curry, who will be celebrating an outside mass at San Salvador Mission because the Church can no longer hold the large number of expected parishioners. There will be various church groups selling different types of food for those who have an appetite for good food and uplifting music.

The choir festival came about from the need of bringing a spiritual up lifting to the Fillmore /Piru community with the approval of Father Barney Gatlin. Juan Arredondo, was the leading drive behind this event. Since Juan sang in the church choir and worked as a professional sound engineer, he had a desire to unite the local church choirs and have them perform for the local parishioners in praise of God. Juan contacted his dear friend, Fernando Mejia, a seminarian from Fillmore who was attending the seminary in Monterrey, Mexico. Fernando thought it was a wonderful idea and knew of a group of university students that had a choir who would be interested in participating. The first year 35 people from Monterrey, Mexico along with six seminarians participated in the first ever choir festival as well as other groups from our local churches.

Each year the event grows bigger and bigger to the point of where we are today. The day after the event, there is a gathering of the choirs and their families at the Galvez home, where the participants and their families come together and relax as they swim, play games and have fellowship. We hope this event continues to grow and the communities of Fillmore and Piru will continue to embrace this wonderful festival.