Clemster's Playground

Monday, March 20, 2006

Dart Guns, Youth, and Throat Problems

I apologize for being so negligent to my blog lately. As is always the case, my life is pretty uneventful from day to day. People ask what my plans are for the weekend and it's rare that I have any outside of church and youth. So here are a few things of note from the last little while.

Last Sunday night, Steve came to College and Careers armed with dart guns. We've been going through Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul and we figured it would be fun to "get in touch" with our boyhood again. So we turned off the lights in the church, and the seven of us ran around shooting each other with dart guns. We had a ball and were quite impressed that those dollar store guns stood up to our abuse. The guns were pretty weak so it was tough to feel it when we got shot. The only time you knew for certain was when you got nailed in the face which happened a lot. At the end of the night we ambushed the girls as they left the room they had their study in. So it was a pretty complete night in terms of getting in touch with our boyhood. Mwahaha.

On Friday Steve left for a week-long vacation in Miami so that left me in charge of youth on Friday night. We should have just cancelled the night since only four youth showed up. Only four showed up for a couple of reasons. First, it was the end of March Break so I'm sure some of the youth were out of town. Second, we've changed the format for youth and I know that a number of them aren't happy with the changes. We've split the group into junior and senior groups. Unfortunately we only have two seniors so the youth don't completely understand the logic. Senior is now grades 11 & 12. We've got a fair number in that group in our church but they haven't been coming out. We're pretty sure it's because they don't want to hang out with the younger youth (especially the grade 7 & 8s) on their Friday nights. Seniors and juniors will alternate each week and I know the juniors aren't fond of meeting every other week. I know I wouldn't be if it were me. I'd want to meet every week like they way it was. I'm not sure how much in favor I am of the new format, but I'm going to stand behind Steve and make sure not to voice my doubts too much in front of the youth.

I led worship last night and it was definitely a struggle because of my voice. My throat hasn't had much in the way of vocal stamina over the last few years and last night was probably the worst it's ever been. So what do you do when there's only one other person singing and you suddenly can't push the proper notes out of your throat? Not much so I tried to sing through it, but it was tough. It was pretty frustrating hitting wrong notes and not being able to correct them because my throat wasn't cooperating. Just before the message I went into the washroom and gargled some warm water hoping it would help. When I started singing during communion everything seemed okay. I need to find some kind of way to loosen and limber up my throat before I sing. I'll have to be careful not to pick too many long songs as well. It's especially hard to get the needed power behind those low notes. Maybe it's time to seek out a teacher and learn those silly sounding warmup techniques.

P.S. - I still can't believe Blogger hasn't added "blog" to their dictionary yet.

Matthew.

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