During the 2017 show I was explaining the lights to a viewer and he said "Why don't you add something to the show that explains the lights to everyone?" and I responded "That's a great idea." and the seed for the narrated segment was planted.

The segments have evolved a little over the years so I'm going to describe them by show year.  

An Image for My Voice

Before we get into the history tour I want to mention the host of the narrated segments, Stuart the minion.  I was looking for an image to represent my voice and Julie suggested we use Stuart the Minion.  We thougt he was someone the kids would recognize and he already shared my name.

Because the other matrices were already being used for these segments, we decided to put Stuart on a garage matrix.  That meant I needed a minion that was only 16 pixels wide but still had enough face space to handle the phonemes (mouth movements) and room for his body too.  Fortunately, minions have heads that are only slightly narrower than their bodies.  Because the garage matrix is 50 pixels high and stuart was very short, I chose to have him stand on a christmas present.  We talked about having him pop out of the box and that may be an enhancement in the future. There are two versions of Stuart in the show; with and without a Santa Hat.  I've included the phonemes (eyes open and closed) for the Non-Santa Hat version in the Images section below.

History | 2018

The first narrated segment was in our 2018 show and it covered the Welcome, Light Explanation, Feedback and Why We Do This all in a single segment (Duration:  1 MInutes 46 seconds).  We received a lot of feedback about how it made our show "more personal" and people especially loved the part about how the lights work.

History | 2019

In the 2019 show I broke the 2018 segment into four separate segments as follows (Duration: 2 minutes 52 seconds):

• Welcome to PierceLights and Feedback. - I added a "Help us thank our neighbors" message to thsi segment.

• Our Charity - Based on requests fro viewers, we chose to take donations for the Fisrt Foster Care program at FBC Alpharetta.

• About the Lights - Exlanation of the different types of lights and a count of lights in our show.

• Why We Do it - Sharing the reason we do the show, to celebrate Jesus and share the Gospel meaasge.

History | 2020

In the 2019 show I broke the 2018 segment into four separate segments as follows ( Duration: 3 minutes 19 Seconds):

• Welcome to PierceLights and Feedback - I added a few new lights to this segment. 

• Our Charity - Based on viewer feedback from 2019, we chose to retain the Foster Care program at FBC Alpharetta as our charity again.

• About the Lights - Exlanation of the different types of lights and a count of lights in our show. We were very excited to announce that we exceeded 50,000 LEDs this year.

• Why We Do It - Sharing the reason we do the show, to celebrate Jesus and share the Gospel meaasge.

• End of Show - I added a new segment that only happens at the end of the night to announce teh end of the show.  Over the years we've occasionally seen a viewer watching when the show ended and they expressed confusion as to why it just stopped (at the end of a song).  This new segment says "Good NIght" and reminds the viewer of teh show times. (Duration 71 seconds).

Sneek Peek | 2021

We found Minion (Stuart) Yard Stakes on clearance at Lowe's Home Improvement after Christmas. We bought all they had (3 boxes of 3 minions each).  We look forward to adding them to the show in 2021.