A busy CMM weekend (part 1)

On the last weekend in November, CMM was incredibly busy, stretched to two places at once.

Helen travelled to Nottingham to lead David in a Day at Sandiacre Methodist Church.  This was a special event to celebrate the church's anniversary.  The organiser had suggested pushing the start time until after lunch, which made the day very difficult to fit in, but we managed it.  For her team on the day Helen had Felicity leading dance, and Miriam (Helen's sister) also helping out on clarinet and being generally wonderful.  It was also wonderful for Helen to have her dad in the choir, her mum in the audience and her older sister on viola.  Helen's brother-in-law Jon and niece Bethan also made a cameo appearance...

Rehearsals were hard work, but the choir of about 45 were wonderful, and picked it all up amazingly well.  Felicity had a group of about 8 dancers, who learnt two wonderful dances - firstly to 'The Lord's my shepherd' and then to the David and Goliath song.  Felicity also did two solo dances to 'I will bless the Lord' and David's lament over Saul and Jonathan.

We also had some wonderful soloists - Ruth, Miriam, Barbara, Mavis and John.  We also had some wonderful help from Nora who notebashed on the piano and then 'played the orchestra' for the performance.  Nora, amazingly, trained with Roger at Birmingham school of music.

The audience was smaller than the choir, but they joined in with the songs wherever they could and seemed very appreciative.  Despite the snow and the cold outside, it was a great event inside, and hopefully the sense of fun and fellowship was exactly what Sandiacre Methodist were looking for in their anniversary weekend.

The next morning Helen led the service at the church with her mum and second cousin Gillian supporting away.  They had a lovely singing group lead some songs at the start of the service, and Helen was able to busk away on guitar behind Nora.  The service itself went well - Helen was brave and managed to get the congregation waiting on God and asking the Spirit to come.  People seemed to appreciate this focus on 'The God who comes' - one person claimed a word of knowledge and another had a picture.