On the Flip Side……………….

I wear many different musical hats, speaking in terms of positions that I hold, like Kindermusik educator, piano teacher, choir accompanist, adult choir member, flute teacher, orchestra member, children’s choir coordinator/director, and VBS music rotation leader.  This week I’ve been wearing my VBS hat - teaching the music classes at our local church, Zion Baptist Church, in Covington, Georgia.

 Our theme was “Arctic Edge - where Adventure Meets Courage“.  The songs were written by Jeff Slaughter with Lifeway and, if I ever have the opportunity to meet Mr. Slaughter and shake his hand, believe me, I will do it!  There was not one song that the kids didn’t absolutely love!  Here’s a link to the Lifeway website with the audios of all the songs, in case you’re interested:

http://vbs.lifeway.com/vbs2006/yourvbs/preview_music.aspx

Each morning, we began our day meeting in the church’s sanctuary for a worship rally, singing first our theme song: “Arctic Edge”, followed by pledges to the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible.  Next we recited our motto: “Be Strong, Be Courageous, Follow Jesus”.  Then we would sing “The ABC Peak” after reading Joshua 1:9 from the Bible.  Our last song was a beautiful, prayerful song entitled “Follow” that literally brought tears to your eyes in its beauty and simplicity with the added signing. 

Every day we also saw a video story that left us wondering what was going to happen next!  Talk about cliffhangers!  Thankfully, Dad was rescued from the miner’s cabin up in the Alaskan wilderness and airlifted to the hospital! Ouch - a broken leg! 

And the last exciting event each morning was finding out whose offering bucket weighed more - the boys or the girls!  Four out of five days, the girls won.  But on Friday, the boys came through in a very big way - the bucket was so heavy, that Mr. Wayne, our minister of music, almost couldn’t hang it on the scale!  Way to go, guys!

After the worship rally, classes were dismissed by grade level to go to their respective rooms.  At this point, I would go to the Music Suite to prepare for my classes that started at 10AM and went straight through until 12 Noon.  It’s a good thing that I had the choir room to work in, as I had anywhere from 165 - 170+ kids each day come through my rotation.  The largest group was the 3rd-4th grades combination with over 70 kids one day alone.  We almost didn’t have enough chairs! 

I had the absolute best time ever, teaching the songs, the signing, and the choreography to all the kids and the teachers.  We even had some “Air Guitar” contests on Friday to see who could do the best impersonation of a rock star as well as an opportunity for the teachers to show off what they had learned in music class as well!

At the end of the day, the kids taught me something as well - how to “do the Moo”!  And here’s the visual proof:

It was a wonderful week of fun and I felt some disappointment at seeing it end so soon, although my body has been telling me all week “You’re not as young as you think you are!”  Thankfully, a very nice young man in the 5th grade class informed me today that he thought I was 36!  I grinned and thanked him ever so much!