POWERLESS

The girl who normally plays piano in Sacrament Meeting has been gone the past few weeks and I have had the lovely opportunity to substitute as pianist. Usually, I don't mind. Such a task has proven to be a bit harder than it would have been back home. I don't have a piano here and until recently, hadn't touched any type of musical instrument since January, when we first came. Since we don't have an actual piano at the church, just a keyboard, it added to my "handicap." The past 3 weeks I've just been waiting for something to happen, the keyboard to get bumped or jarred off of it's stand (which is balanced with a thin paperback book) or for me to do something like accidentally hit one of the preset buttons that will send the keyboard into some inappropriate song. Today was the day. I was almost exactly in the middle of the opening hymn when all of the sudden, there was no sound when I pushed the keys. I looked up to one of the members sitting at the front and mouthed "I have no power!" After quickly checking around, he took note that the AC had stopped and that the power, like it often times does, had gone out. I just put my hands in my lap and kept singing. As I looked into the congregation, everyone was staring at me, apparently not catching that the power had gone out. We started the 3rd verse of the song and I was still getting questioning looks and glances. (how do I silently tell a whole congregation that the power went out?) The song ended and the chorister turned and looked at me with a "What in the heck are you doing?" expression. Luckily, when the guy conducting got up, he cracked a joke about it and people starting laughing with understanding instead of staring with confusion. This is the first time in a year that the power went out during church and of course, the odds were on my side. With no power, an apartment on the top floor of a building during the summer in the Caribbean with no fan or AC gets unbearably hot. After a cold shower to cool off (and cool off we did, there's no hot water when the power is out) we packed up our computers, Ipods, personal dvd player, and some snacks and headed to one of the Ross lecture halls across the street from our apartment. We then enjoyed hanging out in a nice, quiet, air conditioned place in which we could not hear our local neighbor boys singing (quite loudly) along to the Back Street Boys that was blaring from their apartment. Ohh.... (sigh) life in Dominica.