Under the Direction of....

Early this spring a woman from my church asked if I would be interested in conducting the National Anthem during "Lutheran Night" at a Twins Game.  It took me all of five seconds to respond an enthusiastic, "Yes!"

On July 30th the kids and I, along with my dad, headed to the game extra early so I could be where I needed to be.  While waiting for my part to begin, I heard that it was "Hot Dog Night" and the first 20,000 fans got a hot dog for $1.  I pulled out my phone pretty fast to check in with my dad who was in the stands with the kids 1 1/2 hours pre-game.  He informed me they had already gotten their hot dogs; Jake (an extreme hot dog enthusiast) was especially happy about that!

I spent about an hour with "my" volunteer choir.  Basically anyone from local Lutheran Churches (or not so local...there were a few from a couple hours away!) could volunteer to sing with the choir.  We had kids about 5 years of age up to 70s and 80s.  I would guess there were 60-70 people who volunteered.  We all got ushered down to the area behind center field and waited under the stands until our time to sing came.  We had a couple run-throughs behind the scenes and generally watched the pre-game set-up.

At 6:53 - seriously, that's the time I was told to have everyone ready - we started to walked out.  At 6:57 they announced the choir "under the direction of Kerry Murphy" and we were singing...

Jake and Maddie were in charge of all things photo related.  Maddie recorded it on her phone.  Jake was the photographer.  They had fantastic seats right above where we were singing.

It was such a fun experience and I'm very excited that I got an opportunity to do this!

Then it was onto the fun of the game.  Someone in our family has a slight crush on #7 and was quite excited that all his warm-ups were taking place right in front of our [spectacularly] awesome seats.

They were playing the White Sox and we really did have the best seats we've ever had!  We were in the front row right behind center field.

(This was my wide-angle lens. Things actually were much closer than this in real life.)

It was a great game and tied all the way through until the last inning.  The stadium went crazy when the sacrifice fly went up and the runner tagged home.  Jake said he was pretty sure he was the loudest one in the stadium.

Mike couldn't make the game because he was in Dallas for work that night.  It was a one day trip that, unfortunately, fell on this one fun day.  Thanks, dad, for hanging out with us and keeping the kids occupied while I got to check something off the bucket list that I didn't even know I could add!