This Weekend

Jean left for summer camp (Spring Escape for the Adventurers) before I arrived home from work Friday night so I walked alone, ate a solitary supper and went up to the church to practice with the praise team for worship. We practiced for a good 2 1/2 hours and things were still 'rough' to put is charitably. And we only had two of the projected 5 singers: our pastor's wife (with whom I enjoy singing very much) and myself. We were accompanied by a piano, keyboard, saxaphone and 12-string guitar (played by our pastor). Many modifications in the music were recommended, which seemed a bit dicey to me, given that over half the singers were absent.

Once home, showered and ready to cap off my Sabbath School lesson preparation, I found it was already nearly bedtime, save for 15 minutes. It took me a bit over an hour to complete. Not a propitious start for the Sabbath, it seemed.

In the morning I was awakened at 4 AM by feline yeowling - I'm not sure that I ever got back to sleep fully despite a diligent effort. I was at the church early, preceded only by the keyboard player. I set up microphones and got the A/V booth open, up and running by the time others showed up, in fact, I made a trip home for something I had forgotten.

Rehearsal went well, actually, though it was truncated to allow the academy handbell group rehearse some of their music briefly as they were playing 5 numbers for the church service as well. Our song run was 4 songs during the service and one closing song. Before our rehearsal I pointed out to the man who organized the slides that changes had been made the night before - late - that I figured he did not know about (he didn't) so that he could update the slides. As he was doing that, in came a couple with a non-functioning laptop containing the powerpoint slides for their mission talk for Sabbath School for troubleshooting and transfer of their file to our computer.

It turned out, the tech helping them and working on the worship slides, wasn't "on" this week for working the A/V booth! The one who was supposed to do it came late, didn't rehearse, and indicated that he'd likely make mistakes but it didn't really matter - he thought he'd go set up tables for potluck. The kind man who was helping the church out missed two other appointments Sabbath morning due to the combination of factors mentioned above.

After practice, with additional changes made, the pastor referred the pianist up to make sure all the changes were reflected in the slides. Later the tech got the keyboard performer to double check things and they found some more things that needed to be updated. Meanwhile, I changed the batteries in the handheld microphones to prepare for the service and ran the soundboard for Sabbath School.

During church I also ran it until just before I was supposed to be down front when I swapped off with one of the bell ringers - the pastor's son. As we all stood up front and the pastor's wife started the call to worship it became clear that her microphone was not working. Her son zipped down, took it, handed her another singer's microphone, fixed the battery problem (I must have inserted it incorrectly) and handed it back to his mom. During that time period we were singing a part where myself and the singer without a microphone were supposed to lead all the congregational MEN in singing the first verse of the first song. For my mess up with the battery, I got (poetic justice, if ever there was such a thing) to lead it by myself.

A couple songs later From there on things went quite well. The pianist quit playing after the 2nd of 3 verses. We all waited but that was it. She just forgot to play the last verse. Until the last song of the run. We had been told to repeat the chorus after we were done singing the song through. ALL the singers forgot! The pastor's wife (standing beside me) figured it out first and started singing again, after the first 1 - 2 words, I figured out what had happened and started which prompted the other two singers to join in. Otherwise, the service went uneventfully.

After the service one of the other singers (church secretary and mother of the young lady singing lead with me and who was getting married today) leaned over and expressed regret that Jean and I had not been given an invitation to the wedding but she wanted me to know that they really wanted to let us know that we were welcome to come to the service. So today Jean and I (after mowing our lawn and the front lawn for our next door neighbors who do not have an abled body individual to mow their lawns currently) got ready and went up to a really wonderful wedding capping off an eventful weekend.

By no means have I exhausted the activities of the weekend. Yesterday afternoon from 2 PM - 5 PM I attended a "Town Meeting" put on by the officers of our conference in a church one town over from ours. It was very good, very informative and with only about 2 dozen souls in attendance, there was ample opportunity for interacting with the officers to let my "voice" be heard on several issues, including pastoral sabbaticals.

The whole day was capped off wonderfully when, after repeated efforts to call Jean by cell phone (no coverage in the mountains of Maine), she called me to let me know she was about an hour from home heading south! When she got home we sat down, put our feet up and talked about our respective day's activities until midnight! The sun awoke me at 6 AM - so another short night. Early to bed tonight, I suspect.

Then this afternoon after the wedding I have gone online and increased my withholding for my 401k and gotten a quote for auto insurance from AARP that may save up about $800 per year! Not bad! I have submitted a request for a homeowner's insurance quote as well. We'll see - we may do it.