Combined Choir

We had a great combined choir rehearsal tonight at Zion Lutheran Church in town with that congregation's choir as well as the one from Redeemer. The three choir directors (for Dad's info) are Linda Samuelson (Trinity), Diane (Mosbeck) Johnson (Zion) and Ruth Stenson (Redeemer). Diane Johnson recognized Aaron in the church parking lot and said hi. Apparently she taught him music at Challenger a few times this year already so they are well acquainted. She remembered me as a small boy.

We found our places in the sanctuary pews and sat down, watching all the others come in. I saw just a few famiilar faces. Deb Fulton, Daniel's kindergarten teacher at Challenger, was there and this lady sat down right in front of Mike Lehrer and I and her face rang quite a bell in my head of someone I recognized from long, long ago... I was going to ask Mike whatever became of Nancy Fellman, my old swimming instructor from the 70's, but didn't get a chance. Our combined choirs totaled probably 50-60 members and for once we had a "real" tenor section. It sounded so great having so many guys singing at once and we balanced the ladies out pretty nicely. We sang "I'm Going Home" again from the Cold Mountain movie with Nicole Kidman. I'm going to have to rent that one to see what the song sounded like there.

Our combined choirs will be performing at Redeemer's Saturday evening service this weekend at 5:00 (practice at 4:30) and then will sing the early 8:30 service at Zion this Sunday followed by the late service at Trinity, so we will have a full three services to attend... I can't wait to see the look on Aaron's face when he has to sit through all that...

After the practice, we headed downstairs for an old fashioned Lutheran coffee fellowship with all kinds of bars and lemonade. Down there, I again saw the lady that had earlier sat down in front of me and asked her why she looked so darn familiar to me. She said her name was indeed Nancy Fellman... Good grief! At our table was Diane Johnson and another lady who apparently graduated from Lincoln in 1984, a year prior to when I would have. Her first name was Cory, but I couldn't recall her last name, unfortunately. Daniel had yet another visit to his buddy's AWANIS program at the other church in town here. The pastor and his wife who drive him with their boys obviously had a good time with him. He basically took the one vacant seat that was left in their minivan so it was truly a vanload of boys.

It actually snowed today in TRF if you can believe that. It's been in the 30s now for several days. Nothing stuck to the ground, though, so that's good. I'll have to wait another week or two before I think about starting the whole planting thing here.

Take care everyone,

Jim, Aaron, Daniel, and Andrew