"FAITHFUL ONE" IN WORSHIP

     Today we celebrated All Saints Day in our worship.  Praising Hands offered the song "Faithful One". Even though we signed the song during offering time, the church was so, so quite.

      I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed signing it for worship. The last entry at the bottom of the Song Page has a link to youtube where we have uploaded Praising Hands signing this song.

Thank you for visiting.  May God Bless.

SINGER AND SONG WRITTER

    I am sorry for the delay in my posting.  I have been a little under the weather for a few weeks.  

    Pat will be our guest blogger today.  

    A little about the song "Faithful One" which we are offering in worship on October 25.

    Robin Mark, singer of this  contemporary Christian hymn, is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he is a singer, songwriter and worship leader in his home church, Christian Fellowship Church.

   The hymn itself was written in 1989 by Brian Doerken, a Canadian who graduated from the Mennonite Educational Institute in 1983.  Since then he has been very influential in the area of contemporary Christian worship music, as a worship leader, Singer-songwriter, and worship music producer.  He currently lies in British Columbia and leads Prairie Bible Institutes School of Worship Arts in Alberta.


Thank you Pat.  Thank you all for visiting.  May God Bless.

THOUGHTS ON SIGNING SONGS

     Last Friday was the last practice that Sandy was with us.  Looking back on what we, PH, had discussed with Sandy about signing songs, I thought we could discuss some here.  

        First It is important to realize  Signing is another language.  In fact, if a person knew ASL or another form of signing and were applying for a job, said person could legitimately claim to be bilingual.
       
       The second thing I always explain to new comers is ASL is a conceptual language.  What we sign are thoughts, concepts, not word by word what is being spoken or sung.  One sign can cover more than one word, because it is a concept.  In the English language we have more than one word for a thought, action, or feeling.  Take the words "want, desire, long for", they all are covered by one sign.  Expression or manor of signing may differentiate the degree of wanting but the sign is the same.

     The next thing that we discuss is syntax.  When we are signing songs, however, we stay closer to English syntax.  There are times when ASL syntax works better.  An example of that is in "Faithful One", the song we are signing in October.  In the song the phrase is "my rock of peace"  we sign "my peace rock.

      I will return to this subject in latter posts as each member contributes their insights on the subject.

Thank you for visiting.  May God bless.
   

CLOSING HYMN

      It is customary in our church to end the service with a hymn.  Everyone stands and joins hands while the closing hymn is sung.  Most of the year our closing hymn is "Let there be Peace ". While being sung by the congregation a member or two of PH stand at the front of the church and sign. 
ed
      However, during Advent and Lent the closing hymn is different and PH hasn't signed the closing hymn..  This year we have been requested to learn and sign the closing hymn, "Go Tell it on the Mountain" during Advent.  

       The first Sunday of Advent is November 29.  As I try to give our signing choir about two months to learn a song, this week we will start learning "Go Tell it on the Mountain."  That means that we will be working on two songs at once.  Always a challenge. 

Thank you for visiting.  May God bless.

GUEST BLOGGER

     Today's post is by Sandy, Praising Hands' new friend.

A great big THANK YOU to the Praising Hands of Trinity UMC

The first Sunday my husband and I attended church we were lucky enough to have the Praising Hands preforming.  Signing songs has been an interest of mine for a couple of years now and when I read in the newsletter that they were starting practices again for the season I decided to see if they would mind if I sat in while we were in town.
Rae, Moe and Pat made me feel very welcome and I have enjoyed “trying” to learn their next song (I’m not as good as they are but they really made me feel good about how I was doing.)

I am hoping to take this information home and encourage our home church to do something like this (we are lucky enough to have people there that know signing). 

What a beautiful, visual way to worship!  Again, thank you all for letting me join in for our month here in town.

Sandy

HOME COMING PICNIC

     Yesterday, Saturday, Praising Hands had it's home coming picnic.  We are all back together after a summer apart. Our spouses and our selves gathered at the State park just east of town.  We talked, ate, walked, ate, and generally had a great time.  If anyone came away without gaining at least one pound, it would be very surprising. 
     
     Our new friend, Sandy, and her husband are the camp hosts at that state park.  How glad we all were to have such a lovely setting for our gathering.  Thank you Sandy and Erick for hosting our picnic.

RAINBOWS

     As I had explained before, we try to wear sashes in the appropriate color range for the liturgical season.  However, as we wore green (ordinary times) for "May it be" in August we did no really want to wear green again in October.  We decided that we would each choose a color form the sashes we already have with the exception of Pat.  She is going to have a new sash that runs from creamish yellow through the yellows to golden orange.  It has twinkly multi-color stars on it.  Pat is making this sash from a sample piece of fabric which we were considering for sashes.  It will be fun to each have a different color brightening our appearance.  

Thanks for visiting.