Easter Vigil 2021

The story, in its entirety, would be 3 1/2 hours long! Here's the short version.

Saturday night, April 3; 6:15 p.m. an electrical power outage hits our area of Harborcreek.

8:00 p.m. We begin the traditional Easter Vigil service after much scurrying to find:

• a portable mic system
• scores of flashlights/battery-operated lighting devices, especially for each musician,
• contacting all the principle players, including Fr. Bob Brugger, who is a "prince of a guy" for going along with us in this (ad)venture! "Jesus probably didn't have electricity at the Last Supper," he wisely noted, "so I guess we can do without it, too."

What you see above is a concoction of three smaller lights held together with blue duct tape,

mounted on a stand at the primary lectern--looks like something out of Star Wars to me!

Do you remember MacGyver (1985-1992) where Richard Dean Anderson played a genius-level guy who solved tough cases by jury-rigging whatever was at hand to get in and out of situations for each week's dilemma--fighting for the good guys? That's exactly what our Sister Mary MacGyvers did for an hour getting set up for this not-to-be-soon-forgotten Easter Vigil. BTW: an updated MacGyver has been on since 2016--an undercover government agent who uses ingenious engineering techniques in his weekly cases.

Here's what the north side of the chapel looked like. 

Yes, there were four emergency lights on. 

Here's the south side.

And here are my orchestra bells with a lantern-type flashlight 

hanging with fishing wire so we could get it to

illuminate the music and the steel bars equally!

The lights came back on at 9:45 p.m. just as Communion was ending and the organ had time to warm up for the last song--which gave new meaning to rousing.

To all of our next year's guests---sure, we'll try to duplicate it in 2022---just for you!