More Caroling

Right now I'm feeling a bit like Enrichment is the calling with least returns for the amount of effort put in. For the last two months, we have been struggling to pull this together, meeting at least once a week if not more, and things finally came together only to have a grand total of five people show up. Three of whom (including myself) were on the Enrichment committee. I came home feeling more than a little deflated last night. I could blame finals, except that we have Enrichment at this time every year and we've had better turnouts in the past.

The problem is, I think what we ended up with turned out to be a very good activity. We got names of people from the bishops of the two Ann Arbor wards, and went out caroling, and the five of us who did carol had a wonderful time, and I think the people we went to really appreciated it. I think lots of girls in the ward would have really enjoyed it as well, and so I feel kind of sad that they didn't have the chance, or take the chance, to participate. If the activity itself had been a bomb, maybe it wouldn't bother me so much that people missed out. But I think this one had a lot of potential. I hope there's something we can learn about this for next time.

But there are some up sides to last night. Like I said, the caroling was a lot of fun, even if we were only able to hit four of the names on our list because we had only one car full of people. My favorite stop of the evening was the one where we actually couldn't find the person we were supposed to carol to. When we got to the address, we found out that it was an apartment and we didn't have the apartment number. So we chose a random door, with a wreath hung on it, and got a mother and her two sons, who peered around the door at us as we sang with big grins on their faces. And when we gave them the treat plate at the end, of course, their grins got even bigger. I think the fact that they had no idea who we were made it that much more fun - hopefully for them as much as us.

Also, the caroling at the retirement home beforehand (unconnected to Enrichment) was a great success. Since I was the organizer, I worried about it right up until we started. I had printed out Christmas music, put it in order, wrote down which verses we would sing, made copies for everyone. I sent out an email and a Facebook message to recruit, and then sent around signup sheets in Relief Society and Elders Quorum on Sunday. I visited the retirement home so the activities director could show me where we were singing. I sent her the list of names of people who had signed up. And so I felt invested in the activity, and was relieved that it all came together. We had nine or ten people show up, which turned out to be a really good size for the space where we were singing (and we had almost as many guys as girls). We weren't necessarily the best little choir, but we were enthusiastic, and the people we sang to really seemed to appreciate it.

Our first run-through was upstairs on the assisted living floor, where they were eating dinner. I discovered that people don't really know "Here We Come A-Wassailing", which surprised me (after struggling through the first verse, I decided it was best to skip the last two and move on). I also started people out too high on Away in a Manger, and we stopped that one after one verse as well. But other than that, it went well, and when we went downstairs to the lobby everyone was more confident (and we skipped "Here We Come A-Wassailing" and I was much more careful about our starting pitches!). Both upstairs and downstairs we got to mingle a bit with our audience after our caroling, and I left with a really good feeling (which helped me be a little less discouraged about Enrichment later that evening). And I think everyone who showed up had a good time, as well - I would love to do this again next year.

So now there is just one more caroling activity on the calendar. Our ward Christmas program is Sunday, and we had an amazing turnout for choir after church last Sunday. I'm feeling pretty good about things. We have two more rehearsals, one tomorrow, and one right before church - both of those will be hard times to get people out so I am hoping things come together. As much as I love singing and Christmas, I'll be a bit relieved when this is all over.