Oh, No, I'm not Catholic...

I don't know how I get myself into these situations, but I was hired to play the ORGAN at a Catholic mass/6th Grade Graduation Ceremony. Yeah...crazy, I know.

So I show up to rehearsal the Friday before the performance I show up at the church. It is the main Catholic church right on Front street. There is no a/c and it was about a bajillion degrees inside. There are fans facing the congregation and the priest....but not the organ! So hot...

This is the inside. There are some scary saints all around the inside and outside of the church. The outside is bright green, too! Love it :)
This is the organ I was to play on. Yes...a full organ. I told them I wasn't very good at the foot pedals, but they said it wasn't going to be an issue since someone had broken them anyway! Ha! Apparantly someone had placed the bench on TOP of the pedals and broke a bunch of them so they stayed pushed down. When I turned on the organ it made a loud "Waaaaaaaaahhhhhh" sound because all the pedals were pushed! HA! They had paper shoved in between the pedals to try and hold them up. It was awesome...I almost had a little slip of the tongue when the guy showed me...good thing I didn't :) heheheheheeh.....
These are the Valedictorians for two of the schools. There were three but I couldn't get a picture of the girl. It seemed like a HUGE deal just to graduate 6th grade. Who doesn't graduate 6th grade!?
That is the balcony in the church. The music lady, whose head is in the left corner of this picture, told me they had to keep the balcony locked during the week because people were climbing up there and...um...doing "no-no" things! Ha! Awesome :)
Notice anything interesting about this congregation? Yeah...I was one of three white people in the whole building! Ha! Love it :) Talk about being out of my element.

The whole production was pretty chaotic. We didn't have a very good rehearsal since none of the kids knew the songs and the organ kept making the loud bass pedal sounds. So at the performance it was pretty crazy. The music lady is really hyper and high strung, so if I asked a question she would kind of freak out. All of my music was spread everywhere 'cause they kept changing the order of songs and there was even one that I didn't have the music to and she just said, "Just follow along, I think it goes like this ' Da da duh....'" I was like, "Uh..........????" Soooo yeah, we pretty much crashed and burned through it! Hahaha! Good times :)

All in all it was quite the experience. At least they paid me for it! Hahaha! :) I don't know how I get myself into these kinds of things!