Friends, Fun, Food and Song

Thanks, Taylors, for starting February off with a fun evening!

Sittereruds were in town, away from the snow and inversion Up North,

and Anne and Jay invited Roger and I over to their home for dinner with them.

Pat and Clyde have a place here,

and Clyde prepared some tasty pork to make carnitas.

We enjoyed a great meal with our friends,

but even greater was the good company.

We love these guys!

We all laughed about where is the selfie stick when we need it?

(Pat is the friend who teased us to death about having one last summer on our river cruise.)

Every year on Super Bowl Sunday, we have Winger's wings. Roger LOVES them!

We buy them Saturday, the wings in a separate container from the sauce, 

then crisp them up in the oven after church and pour that sticky, delicious sauce over them.

We don't even watch the Super Bowl.

We just like this excuse to have those yummy Winger's wings!

Probably more pics of food are posted on the web on Super Bowl Sunday 

than about any other time.

I don't want to feel left out ;)!

We made (Roger helped) cheesy bacon pull-apart sourdough . . . 

. . . roasted veggie dill pasta salad . . . 

. . . and Rocky Mountain sheet cake (a The Chew recipe).

We spent a great Super Bowl Sunday after church minus the Super Bowl, reading, listening to beautiful music and doing the best part of the Super Bowl . . . eating!

But I have to say that I am glad that the Broncos won!

These Rocky Mountain Brownies must have helped.

Last Saturday morning, I got a phone call from our Stake Music Director 

extending an invitation from our Stake Presidency to our INSTA-CHOIR to provide the music, 

 (a prelude and two numbers within the body of the Sunday morning meeting),

for our next Stake Conference on April 24.

Since we have lived in St. George, we moved here twelve years ago,

our stake has never had a ward or branch choir provide the music; 

it is always done by a stake choir. 

Yikes!

Our name partially explains what we do:

We have a core choir who rehearse with us previous to our performances, 

then we invite visitors to come up before our performances, bring their hymnals, 

take a music "map" at the front,

and join the section (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) they sing.

But through the eight years I have been conducting this choir, our core group has grown. 

We rarely have fewer than 20 core members come to rehearsal, usually we have over 30, 

and there are just barely 200 members in our branch.

But, even then, it's amazing how the visitors add to our sound.

The Lord must really want this music in his Sacrament meetings,

 because he sends his Spirit 

in abundance every time.

But this INSTA-CHOIR concept won't work in a Stake Conference setting.

Our stake has eight wards and one branch and the Sunday morning meeting is held in two buildings -

the Stake Center and another ward building to contain the hundreds of people -

 and is televised into the second one. 

So, I was understandably apprehensive when I asked my wonderful core members, 

who were at rehearsal Sunday for our upcoming performance on February 14,

"By a show of hands, who already knows that you won't be in town  to sing in our Stake Conference on April 24?"

Then I immediately put my arm over my eyes, saying,

"I can't look!"

Only one man raised his hand.

He is the techie expert for the stake and he doesn't know to which building he will be assigned.

I told him that I would be sure to talk to the Stake Presidency 

about him being assigned to the Stake Center so he can sing with us!

I jokingly told all of them to just pretend that they are each assigned to give a talk in conference, 

so they will sure to be in town that weekend!

The Stake Presidency felt inspired to call us to this task, 

so I will just go forth in faith, 

believing that we will have a full, glorious choir!