Well... it's been a long day, it's 2.30 a.m. and my last guest has just departed. Feeling too lazy to wash up all the pots and pans in the sink. Will do them tomorrow morning...or night...
On Christmas Eve I went to my church's midnight carol service. It was beautiful! The church was lit only by candles and the singing was amazing.
Back home, I slept fitfully because I was worried that my alarm would not go off at 7.00 am resulting in me oversleeping. This would be an unmitigated disaster because I was down for sound mixing at the Christmas morning services. Woke up at 4.00am, checked the alarm clock, dropped off, only to wake up 10 minutes later to check again to make sure I had set it right. See my clock is in 12 hour mode, and I recall once setting it inadvertently for 7.00pm, instead of 7.00 am, and waking up at 10.00am!!!
I prayed to the Holy Spirit to wake me up at the right time. Despite this prayer, I still woke up a couple more times in a panic. O me of little faith. However, I resisted the urge to check the clock saying "Holy Spirit I trust you!"
I got up at 6.55am.
At church, I found out that there was no AV operator to put up the Power Point slides for the first service. This was not good because an AV operator was ESSENTIAL to this service. Modern technology has replaced the books of Common Prayer, such that the liturgy and prayers that the people say together, are all on PowerPoint.
I've never operated the AV before, didn't even know how to switch it on! So I phoned Paul, Tech Team boss, who is in Leeds with his family for Christmas, to talk me through it. Meanwhile, the vicar, Colin, apologised to the congregation for the delay caused by "technical problems". I give him the thumbs up and then... just as he was about to start the service I realised with horror that the slides on the PowerPoint show were not moving, and signalled frantically for him to STOP!! Thankfully, he is a quick thinker so he improvised and asked the faithful to talk amongst themselves while we sorted things out i.e while I made another call to Paul. Resolved it. This time Colin asked the congregation to thank me for doing the AV, drawing their attention to the fact that I was new to this. They clapped for me.
The drama did not end there!
For the second service, we drafted in a congregation member to do the AV. However, 30 minutes before the service, whilst doing the sound check for the band I noticed with horror, that despite them being connected, no sound was coming out of both guitars and lead keyboard. When I phoned Paul, the call went straight to voice mail. Major panic!! Phoned up the other soundman, Dave who is in Cornwall at the moment, for help. Was on the point of totally losing it when...like a ray of light...one of the other experienced sound men, Simon...who hadn't planned on coming to church... appeared beside me! Such relief! He sorted it all out for me, completed the sound check and handed back to me to do the mixing for the service. I burst into tears!!!
Despite all this, the service went well. There were a lot of people praying for me!
Home at 12.30! Cooked a Ugandan traditional meal of matooke (green bananas steamed in banana leaves) with roasted ground nut sauce (satay), Chicken baked in Thai green sauce, rice and chapatis (Indian flat bread). My brother and a couple of friends came over for the lunch and then we played a game called 'Knowing Me, Knowing You'. For once my brother was a good sport, and actually stayed to play. They all left after the game, except Chris who stayed to watch 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Dreamgirls' with me. We then talked till late and now I am exhausted. Going to sleep now!
It was a lovely day
