Thankful for my two new homes — a church and a choir

I’ve been singing praises with the wonderfully talented choir at The Welcome Table Christian Church in southwest Arlington for a few weeks now. We rehearse for 45 minutes to an hour on Thursday evenings, when I’m allowed to cut away from my editing for The Dallas Morning News for a while to drive less than 5 minutes to the church to rehearse, then return home to finish out my shift.

Everyone else in the choir, which consists of only about a dozen members plus our director, Michael Black, and our brilliant pianist, Claudia Fuenmayor, has been singing with the group for many years dating to the congregation’s roots in east Fort Worth.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m still learning to read the bass clef notes, but I’m making progress — and loving every minute of it. My fellow members are all familiar with most of the songs we sing because they’ve sung them for the congregation before, even if it’s been a while.

**Our pastor, Jeremy Skaggs, dipped one of the church youth during last Sunday’s baptismal ceremony.**

Our amazing minister, Jeremy Skaggs, is about to go on a three-month sabbatical, and several other folks will be preaching in his stead. I also learned Thursday night that the choir will take July and August off, which bums me out, but I know some folks will be traveling, so it’ll be good to wait until everyone’s back together. I’m including a photo from last Sunday’s service, when Jeremy baptized several of the church’s youth.

I’m grateful for having found this welcoming, inclusive church home, where I had met several times with the adoption reunion support group I’m a member of before one of my friends in the group invited me to join her for a church service last fall. And I’m thankful for the fellowship and opportunity to worship and sing with the kind folks in the choir.

I wanted to share a video from Sunday — each week’s service is streamed live on the church’s Facebook page (hoping you’ll be able to access the link!). If you click to about 19:10, you can listen to the music we sang, a combination of two beautiful pieces, “Down to the River to Pray” and “Shall We Gather at the River.”

Enjoy the music!