Journey of 1,000 Miles . . .: Critical Mass Experience

This last week has been one of the craziest, and yet one of the most rewarding experiences of my life! I had the opportunity to perform in a professional choir! This choir is made up of people from Opera Idaho, music teachers with their master's and doctorates, and it was crazy intimidating for me to sing with them! We had the music for a total of two weeks before we performed it. It was absolutely insane! Monday night I had Back-to-School night until 9:00pm. Then on Wednesday night I had institute until 8:45pm. Thursday and Friday I had rehearsals in Boise from 6:30-10:00pm. Needless to say, I was exhausted all week! And yet, I still went in every morning with a good attitude and ready to teach! It was wonderful!!
Saturday I arrived at Borah high school at 9:30am. I saw our Madrigals choir standing outside the building. One of the students yelled, "Hey look guys, it's Ms. Anderson!" and then started running to me! It was quite hilarious! The doors were locked, so we decided to play a game while we waited. We ended up playing Signs! These kids are amazing! Back-story, this choir performance ended up being the same night as Homecoming. We presented the students with the option of coming and performing with the Critical Mass choir or going to Homecoming. They students discussed it with each other and came back and decided they wanted to perform! After the concert, they went and had their own party as a choir! How cute are they!? It was a wonderful experience to perform with my students! They are all such wonderful kids and it was a pleasure performing with them! They rocked it!!!

Mrs. Cariaga, Madrigals Choir, and myself at the Critical Mass performance Saturday evening.

These kids are amazing! They gave up their Homecoming dance to perform with Mrs. Cariaga and I! We have the best kids!

Then, today, I had the chance to perform just with the Critical Mass choir (no high school students; they were missed) at the St. Michael Episcopal Cathedral in Boise. Oh my goodness, one of the most gorgeous buildings I had ever seen! They had stain-glass windows everywhere and it was just amazing! I learned that the reason they had stain-glass windows is because most of the mass text is in Latin and they used the windows to tell the story. Also, a majority of the people couldn't read Latin either; so they let the windows translate the story! It's like subtitles, but slightly different! It was cool to see some of the different links that this religion had with my own. It was an incredible experience to be able to sing in this beautiful building! I hope to be able to do it again some day!
It was amazing to be there and hear people in the choir open up about their personal religious views. I had some amazing conversations with several people in the choir about their religious views and it was incredible! I'm not going to lie, I admired these people for having such powerful testimonies of their own. They would share their testimonies (I'm not sure if that's what they would call it) with me and I was able to appreciate their dedication to their faith. There was a couple of people that I talked to that I was envious of their dedication. Not that I'm lazy with my testimony by any means; but I think there are times when I'm not the example of Christ that I could be. I struggle sometimes, just like most people. But, I know that I have the opportunity to repent and strive to be better every day!
I'm grateful, once again, for this opportunity and the chance I had for my testimony to grow! I'm grateful for good music too! It truly made for a wonderful experience!