Singing Praises

I sing in our little ward choir at church. I like to sing. I am certainly not an outstanding singer and I don't really sing solos, but I like to sing in a group and I can follow the notes okay (most of the time) and I like how singing makes me feel.

In the past, I have always sung the soprano part and would occasionally try to pick out alto notes while singing congregational hymns. But since I started singing in the choir in our ward here in Amarillo, I have been singing alto, mostly because at the time they really needed some altos and I decided to give it a try. I do struggle with hitting the right alto notes all the time, but it's been a good experience overall.

Our ward choir is pretty small and we have several choir members who have other responsibilities on Sunday and can't often make it to practice. But we usually end up with a decent group when we sing in Sacrament Meeting. I am always amazed when we sing in Sacrament Meeting at the extra power I feel -- somebody once said the angels always sing with the ward choir and I believe it!

Yesterday was Easter Sunday so the choir performed a special number in Sacrament Meeting. It was a very pretty -- and powerful -- arrangement of "Redeemer of Israel." The accompaniment was written for the organ and while it wasn't extremely difficult, none of us are accomplished enough organists to pull it off very well. So in the end, we decided that one of us would play the manual (keys) and one of us (me) would play the pedals. (It was actually kind of fun to be able to only focus on the pedals!)

I thought the song was just beautiful -- and wished I had been in the congregation to listen and just soak it in instead of concentrating so much on my organ pedals. :-)

It turned out that Brian had to speak so he was sitting on the stand, which left the kids sitting by themselves while I went up with the choir. When I came back down to sit with them, I saw that Courtney had tears running down her cheeks. My first thought was that they had been fighting over something (which unfortunately happens way more often than I would like to admit). So I asked her what was wrong and who she was fighting with.

Her response was a smile as she said, "Mom, I'm happy. It's the Holy Ghost."

I love the power of music.