This is my final Worship Center Update post. Let me just tell you that Friday and Saturday were insane.
FRIDAY: BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
On Friday, our sub-contractor finally came out for many of the finishing touches on the technical end. He soldered the connections on the floor pockets (48) and also reconnected 4 VGA connectors (no easy task). At the same time, I soldered a number of cables to prepare the audio rack for the hub (it contains the amps, EQs and what not - the "brain" of our sound system). The sound system got up and running, the lights got up and running, and the screen video system got up and running. The subcontractor, Andrea, and I were there until 2:30am Saturday morning.
SATURDAY: REHEARSAL SNAGS AND WIRING HELL
After getting some sleep, we went down the next morning about 10am to get the stage working for a 2pm rehearsal. As suspected, we still hit several snags and didn't get rehearsing until 3:30pm. I was lacking sleep, highly stressed, and not a nice person on Saturday - I ended up making quite a few apologies.
After rehearsal, I had to wrap up some final audio routing in the sound booth. Then some more video routing to send signals to our foyer and overflow rooms. This included an 8pm run to Wal-Mart and ShopKo for more than $200 of s-video and audio cables.
Later, everything "magically" worked (props to our great God). As I stayed to clean and straighten up to get ready for Sunday Morning, Andrea took the kids home about 10pm to get them to bed. Apparently, the electricity was out in our block at home which also means we have no water pressure. So Andrea had to bring the kids BACK to the church for sponge baths.
EEEK!
While they were "cleaning up" I took a scary, head-first fall down the basement stairs under the stage trying to turn off an electrical breaker at the church (one of the items that did not come in was the relay to turn off the powered speakers on the ceiling). I had just turned on the light in the stair well, turned around to go down the steps and ... missed the first step. I took air! It was one of those moments where time seems to go in slow motion and as I was falling, the only thing I was thinking was, "I'm definitely going to break a bone here." While I am very sore and have several rug burns (from sliding down about 8 stairs), I seem to be okay. Praise God.
There were still several items that didn't come in on time, but nothing we couldn't work around. The sound system worked. The video system worked (in the Worship Center, foyer, and overflow). And the stage system worked. We got home and in bed by 1:30 Sunday Morning. The power and water were back on when we got up at 6am - another praise!
