We had to arrive early at church to prepare, and as soon as I got there I had to get make-up on which took quite a while for me! They had to put all this stuff on my face and do things with my eyes. Is it always that...scary?
We forgot to bring our camera with us so Aonghas made a mad dash back home to pick it up. As he went back, we were informed that we had to play music in the foyer as people arrived for the play. We didn't have the music we played for the Sunday Christmas service, so we just grabbed hymn books off the shelf and played from the beginning of the book!
The hall was full and the show was soon about to start, so we had to rush off to our positions.
For those of you who don't know what the play is about, here's a brief summary (just remember that parts of it were in Chinese so it's not accurate!)
Desperate lonely girl (Jennifer) has no one for Christmas. All her friends have dates, are married, etc. etc. except for her. She wishes she could have a boyfriend. After many unsuitable guys court her, she finally finds the right guy (James). They get together.
They attend...Bible study class and learn about the birth of Jesus...
An Angel (Calum) tells Mary (Angie) that she is pregnant with Jesus (doll) and she breaks the news to Joseph. King Harrod (the Minister) finds out about it and isn't happy. Mary's water breaks and she gives birth.
I went upstairs to my balcony spot where I would appear as an angel. This time around I had printed my words in giant font on 3x3 A4 paper. There was no way I could screw it up this time!
I managed to say the first lot of my lines without mistake and even surprised some of the kids in the audience when I appeared! As soon as I was finished though I had to dash back downstairs into the hall to play my cello for the next scene.
The rest of the play went almost flawlessly. Ben accidentally missed his cue and didn't show up in one of the scenes he was supposed to!
We came to the final scene where all the people came to see the newborn baby Jesus. I almost tripped up on my lines, saying 'Messiah the God' instead of 'Messiah the Lord', but hopefully no one noticed!
After the play, the choir sang with the audience and everyone were handed candles to hold. There was a minor incident in the foyer where the candles were being lit, with a small fire breaking out (or so I heard...you could see a lot of smoke!).
It was also only then that I realised the lapel microphone that I'd been using all this time in rehearsals and in the actual performance had an on/off switch, and it had been on 'off' the whole time! I was wondering why it never made a sound whenever I tapped it! I always thought it was just because they turned my microphone down whenever I wasn't using it!
While the singing was still going on, Grace gave me a really cool present which I will talk about in another post!
Once it was all finished, everyone came out and enjoyed some snacks that had been prepared.
For Oddfellows, we went back to the hall afterwards to receive our Secret Santa presents which had been put underneath the Christmas tree. People got pretty good presents.
A lot of the girls got jewellery, soft toys and t-shirts,
I gave my Secret Santa Peter this physiotherapist peanut (he's studying physiotherapy), so hopefully he liked that. I had to make the box myself too!
Before the end of the night, we also presented Jenny with the bottle of grape juice that Jireh and I had bought the day before for her, for all her hard work in putting together our part of the play, directing us, and putting up with us all this time. She seemed genuinely surprised which is good!
It was a great way to kick off Christmas, and we didn't want to leave! All our work paid off and everyone seemed to enjoy it!
(Thanks On for some of the photos! I tried taking some from the balcony when I wasn't in action but they all turned out blurry!)
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