The Unmitigated Disaster...

Yesterday as usual, Lifeline Music Ministry have their Saturday practices for mass for the last week of the month. Normally we have 2 days to practice all our songs, which includes the mass proper and the songs to sing on the saturday before and on the day itself

Since last week, we had a jamming session so everybody thought that yesterday would be a practice session for next week's mass. We went on practising until about 4.20pm when Uncle desmond came in and asked us who was playing for mass... When he said that, I kinda feared the worst. Then Patrick called someone to confirm, and when he told us that it was supposed to be us doing the mass yesterday, all hell broke lose. IT was panic at the cabin, ok maybe not but everyone frantically tried to put the pieces together for mass.....

Quote Patrick:

If we could pull this off, it would be God's intervention...

We had one hour to prepare and set up up our mics and musical instruments. We know absolutely nothing about the songs/psalms that we are going to sing. Since the keyboardist isn't around, so I had to take the responsibility to play the mass proper which I have not done before!! To make matter worse, I haven't been playing for Lifeline for about 2-3 months and everything has to be done before Novena Mass starts at 5.30pm. !!!

When mass started, it was a moment of much trepidation and nervousness. Almost everytime before we start singing, I would be looking towards Patrick and Co to see when to start. I was actually leading the mass for the first time but with much unpreparedness....Sigh...

You can say that the mass was kind of like an acoustic mass with the drums and bass around. Father Simon was saying mass, and even he felt that something was wrong when every single mass proper songs was in guitar and it was made worse when the timing was really bad.... It really showed when we sang Our father

Father Simon said, "It was jarring..... The whole thing was like a practice session... What happened to you guys??" and he was the one who coined out the phrase "The Unmitigated Disaster..."

I was like...OH Man...Actually,I felt quite sure that it didn't turn out too bad. But when the feedback started to pour in, I was forced to correct myself. After, all the negative comments, finally we heard some really encouraging words from Father, "You guys were really brave to do this. Thanks for doing this anyway..." Father told us that there was an alternative to the whole situation, which was a Silent Mass with no music, which would mean that the mass maybe shortened to half its usual time.... WE didn't know that until later on...

But the real problem, was a big miscommunication on who should play mass. By right, charismatic group was suppose to play. Somehow, only at the last minute, we found out through certain sources that we were suppose to play yesterday but the message wasn't conveyed to us in time.

This was a really big lesson not on our part but everyone who is playing for Lifeline Mass...Lifeteen, Lifeline and Charismatic group. I would say that the entire schedule should be printed for everyone to see and whoever decides to make changes must be reponsible to inform other.