Thursday, December 11, 2014

Well, well, well. It certainly has been a long time (not that many or should we say any people have noticed) since we've blog-ed-ed anything. We do hope that by the grace of God you & yours are in the best of health, love & peace, as for us, well I guess we could say things could be worse but we won't because whatever God throws at us, is what it is & all thanx be to Him.
Just to bring you up to par with our going ons, since our last post, let us see it's been over a year.....other than Roger battling with an ongoing disability, being laid off of his job (after 36 years) & trying different options to help stay afloat ('cos Gov'ment cheese just ain't working out for us), everything is just "peachy". God IS good. All the time. He closes doors but opens others & our faith has yet to deplete (as did Roger's disability funds) so we're surviving with His grace & mercy of course. Oh & did we mention that our littlest granddaughter Bonnie Marie will be 18 months next month? Such a sweetie.
*Before we continue with our venting, on a sad note, our good friend Ivan Madrigal (bass player, vocalist, our favorite sound engineer) has had a terrible set back happen to him last Saturday, May 10th. His love, his better half, his wife of 16 years passed away of cancer. Thing is, it happened all so suddenly as cancer sometimes does. Please pray for her reposed soul & also for Ivan, his & her respective families. May God lead her to His promised land with all the angels & saints. Amen.
Now down to the nitty, gritty. However, this time around we're going from venting to praising. Always give credit where credit is due. Last month caeli was asked to provide music for the Confirmation Mass at Resurrection Church in Los Angeles, CA. Monsignor Moretta has asked us to come back year after year for the last 6 / 7 years, we're honored & humbled to do so. This gig usually entails rehearsing with the confirmandi a week before & the Sunday before as Confirmation has been scheduled to fall on Mondays. So, the Sunday prior (Divine Mercy Sunday) we got to the church early so we proceeded to set up because regular Sunday Mass was at 6pm. We decided to attend Mass while there waiting for the rehearsal, with a chance to receive our Lord in Holy Communion on this Divine Mercy Sunday. While we were setting up, the 6pm Mass choir started to trickle in & set up themselves. Monsignor had forewarned them to make an effort to hurry out of there because of the rehearsal afterwards. For the most part they were good sports about it (except for 1 or 2 mad dog-ers). Now, we'll to t...r...y to make a long story short (wish us luck), the keyboardist shows up & starts his set up & prep. Their sound peeps show up, connecting cables, speakers & stuff. Choir members, mainly female were trickling in, one after another, after another, after...(well, you get the picture). Before we knew it there were about 20 to 25 members & almost each of them had their own mic (Yikes!). We thought to ourselves, oh brother maybe we should step outside for an hour long coffee break. After hearing so many bad "volunteer choirs", you tend to assume that every one of them is a carbon copy of everyone else. In this case, not so. For the most part, the keyboardist was playing the riffs & melodies, bass & drum machine while a few other members played guitars. As we,ve said in the past, TUNING IS ESSENTIAL PEOPLE! A couple of guitar were off but with that said & some cheesy stops, the accompaniment wasn't all that bad. However, in the vocal department, we have to give "cudos" to the director & members (all volunteers) for the exceptional job the did. Not only did they take on the job of a choir, but to our understanding, the also head the task of a family prayer group that just had given a retreat in the parish hall which started the Friday before. I believe the title of their group is "Grupo Jesus y Maria". Again, hats off in recognition to these people for being God's hands bringing others to know, through prayer & SONG, God's true love & mercy. So you see, not all of our blogs are to rant & vent, Until next time, stay well, stay blessed & stay with God!