SUNDAY MEMORIES
Judy Wills
When we lived in San Antonio, Texas for those three years,
we joined the First Baptist Church, downtown.
It was – and is – a very large church. We were part of a Sunday School department of members essentially our own age. While the Sunday School department in our Fort Worth church was mainly made up of Seminary students, I don’t remember the Sunday School in San Antonio being a “military” members group, even though there were several military people in that class.
One “funny” event that happened while we were in that group: Karen was old enough to sit in the worship service (Janet was in the nursery), and she sat with an older couple during the service, since Fred and I were in the choir. To keep her occupied, I had a coloring book for her to take to the service with her. One Sunday morning, before the class started, I was sitting next to a woman I didn’t know. She tapped the coloring book on my lap and said, “I know how you stay awake in the service!” I laughed and told her why I had it. I found out later that she was the Senior Pastor’s wife!! Oh no!! She and I became good friends following that.
And, of course, we joined the choir early on. It was quite a large choir – probably close to 100 members. Again, we had a few professionally trained voices, and that just added to our sound.
The choir director that we had the entire three years there was Lanny Allen – no relation to our Senior Pastor, Jimmy Allen. As a matter of fact, I remember one Sunday evening that Lanny was standing at the pulpit, announcing the next song, and Jimmy came up beside him, as if to sing into the microphone. Lanny, startled, looked at Jimmy and literally pushed him out of the way with a “oh no you don’t!” Jimmy couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket! We were all laughing at this point!
I remember one choir retreat/camp we went to in Kerrville, Texas, the “Hill Country” of Texas. It was just a short weekend camp, but we all connected in a wonderful way, and learned some music along with it…probably learning the music for our Christmas program to come in another few months.
After we rotated stateside from Heidelberg in 1983, we joined a small church in the housing area we lived in.
But in spite of it being a “neighborhood” church, it had a good number of members attending. And it did have a choir, which we joined, of course. We stayed in that church – and choir – for the entire nearly-13 years we lived in Virginia.
We had several Ministers of Music at that church, and we performed some amazing musicals – both Christmas and Easter. I remember one Christmas musical that had acting along with it. The choir was set up to the side of the sanctuary, so all the acting could be on the stage. At one point, one of the songs told about the crucifixion of Christ, and I thought it was a strange place to be in a Christmas musical. But then I realized that – that was the entire purpose of Christ being born as a human – to come and die for our sins, and by being raised from the dead, He gave us eternal life! Amazing!! And thank you, God, for making that way for all the world to live with you in eternity, if we just accept your gift!
~~~~~~~~~~To Be Continued~~~~~~~~~~
Judy is living in Central Florida with her retired U.S. Air Force husband of 50+ years. Born in Dallas, Texas, she grew up in the Southwestern United States.She met her husband at their church, where he was attending the university in her town. After college and seminary, he entered the Air Force, and their adventures began.They lived in eight of our United States, and spent six years in Europe, where their oldest daughter was born. She was a stay-at-home mom for many years .
Judy has always been involved with music, both playing the piano and singing. Always interested in exercise, she was an aerobic dancing instructor, as well as a piano teacher for many years, and continues to faithfully exercise at home.
After moving to Central Florida, she served as a church secretary for nearly nine years.Her main hobby at this point in time is scanning pictures and 35mm slides into the computer. She also enjoys scrapbooking.She and her husband have two married daughters and four grandchildren, including grandtwins as well as a great-grandson. She and her husband enjoy the Disney parks as often as possible.
Old Things R New 
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