In other real-life news, I’m the Ward Chorister. Notice that’s in all caps. Basically, I’m the chick that no one watches wave her arm like a maniac in 6/8 time because no one knows any of the words to any of the hymns. Least of all songs like “School Thy Feelings”.
Last week was my first attempt at magnifying my calling, and it went a little like this: I asked the second counselor in the bishopric (I know – they actually have Bishops out here! ) if he could tell me the numbers for the hymns. It was a good 10 minutes before church started, so I changed the little numbers, grabbed myself a little seat, and watched the little members file in. My little bliss was short-lived.
Halfway through the announcements, the organist gets my attention and suddenly I realize there are 2 places to change the numbers. I had only changed one of them. “It’s okay though,” she consoles me. “They’re both wrong.” She got a good laugh out of the face I pulled – something akin to the expression a deer has when about to dance with the headlights of a ford.
And dance I did. In fact, I practically flew up to where the numbers were and I had about 5 seconds to grab at paper numbers before the 2nd counselor starts announcing the opening hymn. I didn’t make it in time before he announced the wrong number, the organist corrected him, and then I had to book it down to where the metal stand was, and start flipping pages like crazy.
As I lifted my arm, gazed over the congregation, and the first chords burst forth from the organ I found myself face to face with my greatest fear – singing in public. I don’t know why it didn’t register that I being Ward Chorister means having to sing very loud while trying to act like you know what you’re doing in front of hundreds of people. But there I was, leading the congregation careening down the winding path of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” while shaking like a leaf, and sweating to an extremely unattractive level.
After sacrament meeting was over, I had a kid’s dad come up and tell me that his son thought I had performed a magic trick. Apparently he looked down during the announcements when the numbers were one thing. Then, looking up after they were over, suddenly all of the numbers had changed! What he didn’t see was a frantic Ward-Keep-It-Together-Chorister racing back and forth across the stand tearing down numbers and shoving in others.
Things were so much simpler when there were only 64 hymns in spiral bound, I’ll tell you that - even if they were in Albanian.
