Not only because it was Good Friday, either.  I did join the choir yesterday for services at noon.  It was interesting because our priest skipped all over the place, leading many to believe that we were going to skip over the reading of Christ’s Passion all together.  Actually, one of my favorite moments of mass every year.  Resembling a play, with readers assuming various roles in the passion, the priest serving as Jesus and the congregation serving as the chorus of people sending Christ to his crucifixtion. However, Father Steve eventually got back on track and continued onward.  Someday, I would love to suggest that the choir (or soloist… never heard a choir version) sing “I Only Want to Say” from JCS.  The meaning of the song is found within the Bible if not the exact words.  Every year, I find myself reflecting on the sentiment.  Christ praying to His Father in the garden questioning whether or not He will actually be able to do “His will” moments before he is handed over.

I just learned that an EHS alum is part of the ensemble in a semi-professional production of Superstar at the Croswell Opera House in Adrian, Michigan that ends its run tonight.  If only Cindy’s mother would have let me know sooner…  Semi-professional since amateur rights are not available at this time 🙁

Private school is where it’s at these days.  Want proof?  Just check out these pictures I took today (yes, with my cellphone- why, can you tell? 😛 ) in the preschool classroom room at my church (where they have school during the week):  😀

Oh yes, click for larger pics! 🙂

Being that it’s been five days since my last post, I would suppose it’s time to write something again.  But what?  I suppose I can write about this weekend.  This post will actually go back a bit though, since earlier events pertain to this weekend.  For the most part the weekend was quite ordinary.  4th/5th grade ministry on Saturday night and Sunday morning, the service I went to at 8:00, er I mean 9:00 (sure felt like the earlier time for some reason…  You did set your clocks forward, right?), dodge-ball for gametime, yep- quite ordinary.  So let’s focus on the other stuff.

First off, back in January we started something which should have become regular.  As I make a video every year for my cabin at summer camp, I was asked to make some short videos for the regular service every few weeks.  Well, they handed me a camera back then to record the kids at various moments during the services I was there.  Another filled in for me at the third service.  Mission part one accomplished.  Part two would be editing, and that became the big problem.  They have a Mac set up at the church where they do their own editing using iMovie.  Now, if I had a job at the church this wouldn’t be a problem as I would just use this computer, but I don’t, so I could easily use mine instead.  Not so easy in fact.  First off, my computer is not a Mac (though I have experimented a bit with OSx86 to turn my computer into what’s known as a hackintosh by installing OSX to my external hard drive).  I quickly found out that the Firewire port on a Mac is not the same as an IEEE-1394 port on an HP (two names for the same thing, only “Firewire” is copyrighted by Apple) so the firewire cable they had didn’t work.  We tried a USB cable for the camera, but that required drivers my computer didn’t have, and I couldn’t find one on the web.  A few weeks went by, and we experimented in saving the videos on their Mac then transferring them to my computer.  Let’s just say slow and awkward.  The default format on the Mac of saving video is a format with the extension .dv.  I could save each video as .mp4 or try to find a program on my computer to convert the native .dv files.  Yeah, too much work.  So they look to get the right cable to go to my computer.  They find one at Radio Shack for $20 and one online for 50¢.  Which would you go with?  Well, they bought both, hoping to be able to return the overpriced Radio Shack one should the cheap one not work.  Last Wednesday, fingers crossed, we tried the cable.  Worked like a charm.  We finally got the video from the camera to my computer in a format my computer liked, mpeg-2.  So, Friday night I worked for a few hours to get that first 4-minute video done, and brought it with me Saturday night.  Popped in on the computer from my flash drive, which held both .wmv and .mpg versions of the video,  and we were ready to go.  Not so fast.  No audio cable from the computer to the sound board.  Sigh.  Well, I just played it in silence since the worship team was practicing anyway.  We left a message for the tech director to leave us the proper cable, and come Sunday morning they had one waiting.  Then, we had the computer taken away and replace with a different one because they needed the one elsewhere.  The one they gave us was not turned on and literally took 20 minutes to boot up, log in, and finish loading Windows.  Good thing I had the .wmv version as there was no way this computer would be able to handle MPEG-2.  In any event, mission completely accomplished.  Hopefully next time we will record a new video and do it again, minus the mishaps.  Ideally I will transfer the videos before I leave for the day.

This weekend was also a time I got to teach again, finally.  I last taught in December.  I taught a lesson on stuff.  No, I am not being general.  The theme of the year is living like a Christian, so this week was about having and wanting stuff, whatever that stuff is to you being video games, stuffed animals, trading cards, or whatever.  The start of James chapter 5 tells us a bit of God’s feeling on this topic:

1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

(James 5:1-6 ESV)

Stuff- not so bad.  Love of stuff- watch out.  It is not wrong to be rich of course, but if your heart is with your money or things, then that’s a problem.  After all, Jesus Himself said you can’t serve two masters.  If you serve money, you will not be able to serve God at the same time.  I showed them some pictures of way overdoing collecting stuff (here and here for example), and I acted out a person on the phone trying to get something no matter what it took, even hurting someone to get it. I thought my teaching went fairly well, though still a few minutes long.  There was a video at the start (not the one I put together) that I should have ended earlier than I did.

…but also not that motivated right now to post.  It’s probably my sleep cycle right now that wakes me in the middle of the night and keeps me up for the next hour before I can fall back asleep.  Hopefully tonight I will sleep longer.

Tonight a message on Worthy led me to a discovery of a few things.  First off, remember Weird Al?  Well, there is now a Christian band called Apologetix that parodys popular songs, replacing the lyrics with more Godly lyrics.  As I write this, I am listening to Enter Samson, a parody of Metallica’s Enter Sandman.  They have parodies of  songs from artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Eminem.  Apparently they have releases dating back to 1994.  I am of two minds about this.  One one side, I am happy to hear Biblical lyrics to popular songs instead of the sometimes not-so-family-friendly originals, but on the other hand it’s just not the same as true worship music.  When listening to these songs, who doesn’t think of the original if known?  So even while listening to the new lyrics for Enter Samson, I am still thinking “Exit light… Enter night…” which is diametrically opposed to Christianity which would turn those phrases around.  With Weird Al, there is no problem since his songs aren’t any more Christian than the originals- just a lot funnier (speaking of which, have you ever heard Bob?  The lyrics are all palindromes!).  😀

Going to the video in the message’s link led me to another discovery when I decided I wanted to post the video here for you.  After noting this was on tangle.com, I wanted to find it on Godtube.  So I typed “godtube” in the url bar and ctrl-clicked to add the www prefix and com suffix.  Tangle.com loads.  Wait- what?  Did I type that right?  I am tired after all.   Tried again, same thing.  Well, apparently Godtube rebranded itself as Tangle.  So I figured the embedded code might still work on this blog, which led me to discovery #3- the tags C added, Godtube and Teachertube are no longer there.  They must have been lost in the last upgrade.  Well C, when you notice this post, please add them again.  Except of course, change the Godtube tag to Tangle.  The current embed code looks like this (example video):

<embed src=”https://www.tangle.com/flash/swf/flvplayer.swf” FlashVars=”viewkey=981d5415aa832f57770a” wmode=”transparent” quality=”high” width=”330″ height=”270″ name=”tangle” align=”middle” allowScriptAccess=”always” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”https://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” /></embed>

Let me see if I can dig any of these up on Youtube since that is one of the default tags and hence is still there.  Ah, here we go:

Baa!  We’re Lambs

Devil Went Down to Jordan

Enter Samson

And for C, Found God! 😛

The last day or so has been a bit busy.  Part of it was me wasting time on Hamsterball, a clone of the 80’s hit arcade game Marble Madness, and part was preparations for church this weekend.  I have been wasting a lot of time on Hamsterball.  Those who remember Marble Madness will remember that the game uses a trackball.  The player would madly roll that trackball to guide his or her marble downhill (in one case uphill!) to the exit, encountering many an obstacle on the way down.  Two players could even play at the same time, adding to the madness.  Hamsterball plays a great tribute to this game, but it looks like the two player game is limited to either a one-on-one battle to knock the other off a platform, or playing just one board at a time instead of an entire tournament.  Actually, the battle part can be up to four players- one-on-one-on-one-on-one, as it were.  Instead of a marble, the wonder of current technology allowed the programmers to turn it into a hamster ball, with the hamster dutifully running in the ball as it moves.  You can play in resolutions of 640×480 up to 1280×1024, in a window or fullscreen.  Unfortunately, fullscreen for me means the game is stretched to fill my widescreen display making the ball look flat.  When windowed, the game displays a correct aspect ratio fortunately.  In lieu of a trackball, I have tried to play this game using a mouse, the track-pad on this oversized laptop, and an analog Saitek game controller.  The game controller works the best for my purposes, but I still would like to get an arcade-style trackball at some point.  I missed out on buying one for $50 back when I could afford one.  The game itself starts with ideas from Marble Madness and takes off from there.  Besides the classic enemies like an enemy ball and disappearing floors, you will encounter fans, saws, giant hammers and mousetraps, and much more.  Remember the world on Marble Madness where your marble goes up ramps instead of down?  Well, add sideways to this game in a world where the gravity changes depending on where your ball is on the screen.  Here are some pictures from the game (click for larger size).  You can also find a bunch of videos on Youtube:

The business with church involved the 4th/5th grade ministry and children’s drama.  I had a script to finish memorizing for the rehearsal which started at 3:30.  In addition, for the review game, Jeopardy, for 4th/5th grade I made some cards to draw for the categories and point values.  Sure, we could have let the students pick for themselves, but when there are 30-50 kids in the room, with half of them (two teams) having to agree that would have caused the game to drag.  One of the pastors used a die to decide in the past, but where’s the fun in that when we could have the kids draw from a box cool-looking cards instead?  On top of that it was rewards weekend.  As such I had to call about ten kids in my small groups to remind them to bring their reward sheets with them.  Most of them did, but a couple still forgot or couldn’t find them.

An odd thing happened this weekend.  There was a guest pastor from California, and for some reason on Saturday night he thought the service was two hours (it’s really 1½ hours) and so we were wondering in kids ministry what was going on when 6:45 rolled around, then 6:50 and the parents still weren’t there to pick up the kids.  I learned the next day of what happened.  The pastor was corrected and had to shorten his message by a half-hour otherwise chaos would have ensued between the two morning services as people for the second service arrived to a full parking lot because the first service hadn’t left yet 😯 . In the end, everything worked out well.  The review game was only its usual chaos, the drama went well- if not always perfect- for the three services, and the kids were too fully engaged in the room games Saturday night to care that their parents hadn’t arrived yet (I do feel for the other classrooms though that didn’t have carpetball, four-square, and air hockey).

I once again served as song leader at mass today.  Between the first and second readings is the responsorial psalm.  The leader leads the congregation in the main verse and then chants the rest of the psalm… hopefully, correctly.  This morning was not the case and one word mispoken made me wince.

The 3rd verse is supposed to be read as follows:

The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed
and restore him from his bed of illness.

Honestly, it would have been perfect except for one word.  Instead of “sustain,” I said “The Lord will KEEP him on his sickbed.”  One would hope that God would not intentionally keep someone on his sickbed.  When I made my face after the psalm was complete, the organist asked what was wrong and I told him what had happened.  Apparently, he did not notice.

I also sang “Amazing Grace.”  This is one of my favorite pieces.  However, I did not realize how many verses there are: 6.  I did a bit of sight reading since we rarely get past verse 4.  I have always been fascinated by the first verse.  Alot of hymnals include the words :”saved a wretch like me.”  I always learned that the sound “saved and set me free.”  There seems to be a lot of that word changing going on in our hymnals that change seasonally… generally, in songs that seem un-politically correct.  Our chief organist has a fit every time the choir practices a song and the words are not the same as in the past.  But we have to sing the most up-to date words or the congregation will be lost.

Ok… off to rehearsal.

Winter Blast 2009 that is.  Meh- this post is two days late I know. I just didn’t feel like doing a second post on Sunday, and I did start this yesterday but I really didn’t have the time I needed to write the whole thing between work and small group.  Anyway, back to the post.  Friday night through Saturday night had a mini-camp known also known as a winter retreat, titled Winter Blast.  While older kids will be going to a bonafide camp for two days instead of just one in the coming weeks, we packed that time into just 24 hours right at the church.  It helped that we didn’t need to burn eight hours getting them there and back.  It also helped the parents’ budgets since those buses cost money, and so do the extra meals.

Friday evening:  I arrived at about 5:30 and headed into a pre-retreat meeting for the leaders.  We were provided with a small meal and information on the weekend including check-in instructions and the entire schedule for the retreat.  As you can see below the schedule was quite packed and the kids were kept busy:

Once check-in started I took my post handing out T-shirts.  From the beginning there was a problem- the actual sizes, and what the parents based their pick on, were the real sizes of youth medium, youth large, and youth extra large.  As it turned out, youth xl wasn’t available so they went with adult medium instead.  So the sizes we had were M, L, and um- M.  Adding to the confusion were the tickets they gave the parents to pick up the shirts.  They said simply small, medium, and large.  I’m not sure why this ended up being confusing for me as all I had to do was take the tickets at face value and hand out the three sizes according to what was on the tickets.  Probably many of the parents who told me that no, this wasn’t the right size.  I know because of their confusion the tickets were eventually dropped and I was told to go with the sizes printed on their name tags which were the actual sizes.  It was a breeze from there, except we ran out of some of the sizes, and ended up with a bunch of extra youth medium shirts.  In my opinion these shirts, at least the child sizes were smaller than they said but not being a parent I don’t know that for sure.

Enough with the T-shirts.  That just went way too long.  So after that, the retreat was officially underway.  After a brief introduction we went outside to play the first games.  This was Friday night- anyone remember the weather report for Chicago/Midwest?  An arctic front was moving in.  The temperature hadn’t dropped much yet, but that wind was just biting.  Not enough to keep us from having fun, but cold just the same.  After my team lost both games (we switched halfway through- everyone played both games) we went in for pizza.  There was a lot of it.  I think they had at least three or four pizzas left over, and when I say pizzas I don’t mean some dinky 14-inch- I mean a large tray about 16×32 or bigger.  We certainly got our fill.

Next up was the lesson, which started with some up-front games.  This is how each session started.  These games required one or two kids from each team come up to the front and participate in some quick contest.  Over the three sessions we had games including fast-eating contests with gelatin, whipped cream, and baby food; a singing game; and a mummy game (wrap the contestant with toilet paper).  My team won a couple of them, but the results were generally spread out.  I don’t think any team dominated.  Following the up front games were worship (three or four songs), a short drama involving Private Prepared and Private Slacker (guess which one was the positive model? 🙂 ), a lesson from Ephesians chapter 6 (armor of God- hence the military theme you saw on the game schedule), and a small group time.  We went up to our “cabins” for small group time (classrooms really).  The first one we spent together, three of us leaders and nine kids in my room.  For Saturday’s small groups we split into three groups with three kids each.  In these groups we tried to solidify the lesson in their minds and talk about how they could apply it in their own lives.  We also talked to each of them about where they were in their spiritual walks.

With the Friday session over, it was time to go to bed.  We were running late so the optional video was canceled.  One of the boys went behind something to change into his PJs.  A couple others saw this and walked over to him.  Big mistake on their parts.  We learned from this that he doesn’t wear underwear under his PJs to bed.  I really didn’t need to know this fact.  At least I don’t need to pour bleach into my eyes or anything like that to destroy the image like those other two kids.  😯   The interesting thing is I had that boy in my cabin over the summer and either I never discovered this about him, or it is something that changed since then.  Hmm.    Well, it was time for lights out.  As usual when more than one or two kids are put in a room together, it took some time to get them to be quiet and go to sleep.  At least there were only nine of them- last year we had a larger room with about 30 kids.

So next day, after about 3-4 hours of sleep, I woke up to a couple of the kids talking about a half-hour before wake-up call.  That was it for me- no going back to sleep so I got up.  Bathroom and teeth-brushing aside, it was time for breakfast.  Why do they brush their teeth before breakfast anyway?  Eating will just dirty them up again.  Personally, I choose to take care of my teeth after breakfast so they are fresh until midmorning snack or lunch.  For the most part breakfast wasn’t bad, though the sausage patties left something to be desired.  The head of the kitchen studied under a world-famous chef, but when the source isn’t good no chef can do anything about it.  Following breakfast was another session and another set of games.  This time I thought my team won one of the games, but I found out later I was wrong.  A pair of leaders had been playing on our side and apparently we got penalized for it as they were too good.  Oh, well.  Fair is fair.  Lunch consisted of hot dogs, fries, and peas & corn.  Then they brought in ice cream bars much to the delight of the kids.  Afternoon was much the same as the morning, and I know we won at least one of the games.  The temperature, by the way, I think was lower than the night before for our games, but without the icy wind so it actually felt a lot better.  After the games was free time.  Sort of free anyway.  Since there was a 5:00 service at the church the kids were confined to only a few areas: the gym for dodge-ball and beachball volley ball, the cafe area for board games and crafts, and the junior high room for things like 4-square, air hockey, and carpetball.  They had another area briefly to watch a video, but that was done shortly after the start of the service as the younger kids needed it.

Dinner time with linguini and meatballs followed, with a wrap-up ceremony with the parents to end the time.  That’s where, to my changine, I found out our team came in fourth place.  Well, my teams had first place last year and second place for the last two summers, so I could accept this though it left me wondering as I thought the Saturday games went well for us.  When I asked, that’s when I found out about the penalties for the one game.  Better luck next time, eh?  So all in all, I had a good time with this and will continue to do it as long as I’m working with this ministry.  Well, time to wrap this post up I guess.  I know I skipped over some things like unpacking and packing and the group photo (taken from the roof!), but this post is long enough, don’t you think? 😛

I am too tired and lazy right now to write up anything, but upcoming are two posts.  The first is about an interesting day I had on Friday with a musician who came in and talked to the students.  What sort of musician?  You will have to wait for the post for an answer to that.  😮

The second post will be about the winter retreat we just had, essentially a 24-hour lock-in at my church, also known as the reason I am too tired to post right now.  Note the lack of an accompanying picture to complement this post which just serves to give proof to my tiredness. 8)

Why bother making this post at all?  Why to add to my diminishingly-increasing post count of course. 😉

Until tomorrow. 🙂

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, ^[ Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

These words taken from Isaiah chapter 9 foreshadow the arrival of He whose birth we celebrate this day.  The God made man in the form of an infant immaculately conceived and born in a lowly stable.  My prayer for this early Christmas morning is that the world would remember to set aside a few moments in the joy and chaos of presents, parties, and merriment to remember.  The church choir performed “For Unto Us a Child is Born” from Handel’s Messiah at mass tonight.  Not an easy piece but very beautiful and really set the mood for the late evening mass.  The choir loft was filled with people singing the praises of the savior’s birth.

While at mass, I could not help but to wax philosophic on she who is no longer with us, physically.  However, I know that every time I open my mouth and any note good or bad that comes forth is in great part due to her influence upon not only my singing voice but to every part of me.  I felt her presence so strongly tonight that it was almost overwhelming.  I sincerely hope that Emily’s family experiences the sheer love she had for them on this first Christmas since she was called to her great reward.  From the hundreds of students who walked through the doors of her music room, to the thousands of troops around the world who met her through care packages, letters, and in person  she touched so many.

May you all (from the casual reader to the best friends I have ever known) feel the joy that comes in celebrating the Most Blessed Time of the Year.

Well, this being the last weekend before Christmas it is time to start talking about what’s been going on in Christ’s house, eh?  At least the particular earthly house of His that I visit on a regular basis- I can’t speak for any of the thousands and thousands of other ones around the world.  Aside from advent, which began at the beginning of the month, the real show began last weekend.  At the, er, other branch of this house that I attend.  That is to say, the worship service including the choir was on tour with two stops.  I did not take part in the choir last weekend as I am also involved in children’s ministry and I needed to be at my usual place.  That was okay because although the other church is larger, the stage is smaller so not all the members of the choir would fit.

Since I wasn’t there I’ll just skip ahead to this weekend.  We sang three choir pieces, all of which had to be memorized, and five worship songs, which the entire congregation sings.  One of the songs was from a previous year so I more or less had it memorized already, meaning only two songs for me to work on for the last month.  One of the interesting things to note about this choir is the altos seriously outnumber the sopranos and the tenors outnumber the basses.  The women of course outnumber the men.  Now I couldn’t do anything about the altos vs. the sopranos, but as a lyric baritone (tenor II) I dutifully stepped down to the bass part.  This wasn’t at all unfamiliar territory since I had sung baritone in choir for years before my tenor range opened up.  The choir songs were The Night that Christ was Born, a strange up-tempo rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Light of the World.  Now I said that we did one of these songs before so I knew it (the first one I listed), but really we did two of them before.  The other one though had a very different choir part so the choir part (most choir songs we do are solos/duets with choir background) was new.  I lasted for the Saturday night service and the first Sunday service.  After that my voice started going- the upper range.  I just don’t have the endurance I should.  I should exercise my vocal muscles more.  Well, I should exercise all my muscles more, but that’s going a bit off topic here… 😛

Following two of the choir performances I rushed to serve in the 4th/5th grade room, where I made it for the lesson and small group time (the important part).  While past years have often meant a video during this weekend and cookies, we had a real lesson this year instead of the video (still had cookies at the end- yum).  It was on patience.  Zechariah and Elizabeth had to wait several decades for a child before God finally gave them one.  The Bible says they were “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” and so their childlessness wasn’t due to sin in one of their lives.  Eventually, God gave them the son they had waited for all of their lives into their sixties.  Naturally since it was customary to name the son after the father he would have had his father’s name, only Zechariah the Baptist isn’t a name we know.  Rather, God had them name their son John of course.  In fact, these were the first words out of Zechariah’s mouth after God allowed him to speak again (his disbelief over having a child at his age earned him the inability to speak until John was born- good thing he wasn’t in a choir, at least that we know of! 🙂 ).  So in small groups then we talked about how patient they, as 10- and 11-year-olds, tended to be.  They got to rate themselves and talk about what kinds of things makes them impatient.  Waiting for big gifts like video game systems topped the list, but there were other things like healing.  Two of my kids are actually going through cancer in ther families- an uncle and a mom.  Big ouch on the mom.  If anyone wants to add these two to their prayer lists their names are Daniel (mom) and Matt (uncle- currently not responding well to treatment I understand).  This while my pastor and associate pastor are both being treated for prostate cancer… 🙁

Christmas part 2 coming later following Christmas Eve service.