Thank you so much for welcoming the live ringing of music ministry from your bell choir this past Sunday! We were excited to be back – the last time we were able to ring for you live was March 8, 2020. We want to let you know we appreciate your patience with having the seemingly miles of bells tables up front for months now. Having the extra space between ringers has been a blessing that allows us to keep doing what we like most to do – rehearse and ring for you!
I would also like to thank the sound crew for sharing their time and expertise for our recording sessions. Without this stalwart crew, we would just be a bunch of ding-a-lings ringing bells with no sound – how sad would that be?! So, a big shout out to Tim Bradley, Butch Howard, and Eli Solt!
But wait, there are even more fine folks to thank… Jean Malchow for sewing us beautiful matching masks that even include having an embroidered bell on each one. Karl Scott for donating materials and putting his excellent carpentry skills to work by making extra ringing stands so we can safely ring by keeping our distance from pre-pandemic stand partners. A special thank you to husband, Lynn who generously loaned tables, pads, extra bells when needed and continues to do copious amounts of copying so that each bell choir member can ring from their own music.
And of course there are the ringers… A handful of brave souls who started rehearsals back in May of 2020 using music that only required eight to twelve bells. It was a bit terrifying but we kept at it and slowly started adding more ringers back into the choir as they felt comfortable to do so. It was quite an accomplishment last fall when we had enough returning ringers that we could begin using our 3 octave handbell music. I want to let all the ringers know that they are appreciated and loved. I think they are some of the most talented musicians I have ever had the pleasure of creating music with!
Our bell choir is also blessed with two wonderful individuals who make themselves available to sub for the choir. One of our subs, Jan Shoemaker helped us out last summer and you will most likely see her soon, subbing for us yet again. Raeann Larsen is our other fantastic handbell sub. She has been coming to weekly rehearsals for months – filling in where ever needed – and boy, did we need her!
We look forward to continuing to ring live monthly as it is safe to do so and perhaps even add a couple more recording sessions because there should always be music in worship to stir one’s soul.
