Sunday, 5/29. "Back on Track" or "Almost Back on Track"

Well, Sunday was [mostly] a return to music mission normal. Every piece of tape was just as I left it the night before, so I didn't have to send anyone home. That's always a good way to start the day.

Breakfast at the Avid was a little different. There were, uh, there were no waffles. And they were out of milk. I usually have milk on my cereal (the same as 53% of my children's choir singers). They did have Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, though, and honestly the protein probably lasted me longer than the carbs anyway.

But I still missed the waffle. Strong marks for Avid, though. Thanks Adam!

We headed to Belmont UMC to get ready to sing. Shout out to Gayle Sullivan for being so, so good to us. She's the director of music there. And, also shout out to the members of her youth choir that showed up early to help us find our way, serve us lunch...the whole thing. They were great. They sang last week to be commissioned for their own music mission. They are going to San Francisco.

We sang five pieces throughout the service. The first one is our concert opener. Someone got this incredible picture of me from the choir's perspective, which was impressive given we had taken away all their phones.

Ok, so confessions. That's not me. It's Nick. He's conducting our opener! Also this picture was taken during our warmup, not during church. He's doing a great job. The power may be going to his head, though...he enjoyed the power of standing and sitting the choir maybe just a bit too much. But then again, all of us do.

We ran into some friends along the way as well! In what was maybe one of the cutest reunions I've ever seen...

And also, 2 transplanted Oak Grovians!

You may not know that in 2004 I went on my very first music mission. I was serving at Embry Hills, and Janet Johnson invited our choir to travel with the Oak Grove youth choir to Chicago. I took her up on it. This guy and his brother were both on that tour!!! I neglected to get permission to post names with pictures, so I won't name either him or the pastor's wife pictured here. But it was fun to bump into Oak Grovians in the diaspora.

Belmont UMC is beautiful, by the way. I've sung here a couple of times across the years, and it's always a treat. We had to hang out a minute before lunch was ready. I love casual group photos.

The lunch they provided was soooooo yummy. Chicken, green beans, salad. I think there was also potato salad, but I can't comment on it because I've never eaten potato salad since...the incident. They had bread pudding, though, and it was awesome. 

We went back into the sanctuary to do some rehearsal ahead of our afternoon concert, and uhm, the choir found itself. I mean, they sounded spectacular. Not "good for a youth choir" or "good under the circumstances" or "not bad for a bunch of kids." They. Sounded. Great. They filled up the room. They sang with nuance, good vowels, good pitch, and good balance. We lingered there almost longer than we should have because we were enjoying it so much. Well, I was anyway.

The Saint Paul was our first proper concert. They were ready for us and had chairs and everything!

The choir, embracing their recently found power, well more than filled this room with sound. I actually found myself trying to quiet them a little bit, which is a gesture I think I've never used with a youth choir! Just before our final song I thanked the audience and told them we were going to sing one more song and visit with them, and one of the audience interrupted me to thank us for coming and bringing light to them...because it has been such a long, difficult time. It meant a lot to me because she didn't talk so much about how well we sang (she could have!). She talked about bringing peace and hope...and bringing peace and hope is really what we are trying to do.

...which makes it all the much sweeter that we were able to visit.

I know that's a lot of pictures, but it isn't even enough. Everybody engaged and chatted. I know because many of them came to me after to tell me what their person had said to them. Lori told a moving story of one in particular. Lori asked if she had any grandchildren, and she said, "I used to have 3, but now I have 2. I lost one to suicide a few weeks ago, and this is the first time I have been able to smile since." 

That is what I mean by music in mission, y'all. It isn't about the music. The music is a means to a much more important end.

Also, in another small world kind of moment, I met one of the singer's mother's first grade teacher. I think that means we're related somehow.

We changed on the bus and headed toward St Louis. I said "almost back on track" because on the way the bus AC stopped working, which required an extra stop and some creative work by our amazing bus driver, Will. Megan said we had Sully as a bus driver, and now that she said that I can't unsee it. We did get it working again, and we came in a little later than we'd like, but honestly that is actually 100% back to normal for Music Mission.

We checked into the hotel and did devotional. I took this picture of the youth at devotional:

But the youth were getting in the way of the amazing decor, so I photoshopped them out.

Totally kidding. I forgot to take a picture, so I took one of the empty room. And I don't possess the photoshop skills to put them in. Or honestly the time. We didn't have a lot of time for devo, so I invited them to share about their conversations after the concert and other parts of the day. We'll get our notes started tonight.

I did the room taping and all that. Picked out the pictures for the blog. Went to bed. No concerts tomorrow because nobody can staff appropriately to host us on Memorial Day. We'll double up on Tuesday. Of course you can find out all about it here tomorrow!